9/11 False Claims: Fabricating a Role at Ground Zero, Promoting a Debunked Conspiracy Theory, and Collecting a Recovery Grant Meant for Small Businesses
Tier 3Documented2001-09-11 to 2019-09-13
Factual Summary
Over nearly two decades, Donald Trump made a series of false or unsubstantiated claims about his actions and experiences related to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including claims that he helped at Ground Zero, that he witnessed large-scale celebrations by Muslims in New Jersey, and that he lost "hundreds of friends" in the attacks. Separately, a Trump-owned property collected $150,000 from a federal recovery program designed for small businesses affected by the attacks.
Trump claimed on multiple occasions that he was at Ground Zero in the days following the attacks and helped clear rubble. In a 2015 interview, he stated, "I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen, down on 7-Eleven, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down." In other interviews, he claimed he had "hundreds of men" working at the site. No contemporaneous news reports, photographs, or official records have confirmed Trump's presence at Ground Zero in a cleanup or rescue capacity. The Salon investigation published in September 2019 documented the full history of these claims and found no evidence supporting them.
Trump repeatedly claimed that on September 11, 2001, he personally watched "thousands and thousands" of Muslims celebrating in Jersey City, New Jersey, as the World Trade Center towers fell. He made this claim at a November 2015 campaign rally and repeated it in subsequent interviews. Extensive fact-checking by The Washington Post, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, and the Associated Press found no evidence that any such large-scale celebration occurred. The Associated Press reported on September 17, 2001, that "rumors of rooftop celebrations of the attack by Muslims" in Jersey City were "unfounded." Former New Jersey Attorney General John Farmer told ABC News that "the reports of widespread celebrating were not true. Simply not true." No video, photograph, or contemporaneous news report documented the celebration Trump described.
Separately, a 2006 investigation by the New York Daily News revealed that Trump's property at 40 Wall Street received $150,000 from the World Trade Center Business Recovery Grant program, a federal program administered by the Empire State Development Corporation and funded through Community Development Block Grants. The program was designed to help small businesses recover from losses suffered after the September 11 attacks. According to the grant application, the corporation through which Trump owned the building reported 28 employees and $26.8 million in annual revenue. Under federal Small Business Administration standards, which define a small business as one with less than $6 million in annual revenue, the property would not have qualified. However, the Empire State Development Corporation used an alternative definition of a small business as one with fewer than 500 employees, a standard that required SBA approval that was never obtained. A subsequent Government Accountability Office report found widespread problems with the administration of the program, noting that many subsidiaries of large companies received funds intended for genuinely small businesses.
Primary Sources
1. World Trade Center Business Recovery Grant program records showing $150,000 disbursement to 40 Wall Street LLC
2. Government Accountability Office Report GAO-03-88: review of the Small Business Administration's disaster loan program and related business recovery grants
3. Associated Press report, September 17, 2001, characterizing rumors of Muslim celebrations in New Jersey as "unfounded"
4. C-SPAN video archives of Trump's November 2015 campaign rally in which he claimed to have witnessed celebrations
Corroborating Sources
1. The Washington Post Fact Checker: "Donald Trump's outrageous claim that 'thousands' of New Jersey Muslims celebrated the 9/11 attacks," November 22, 2015
2. PolitiFact: "Fact-checking Trump's claim that thousands in New Jersey cheered when World Trade Center tumbled," November 22, 2015
3. FactCheck.org: "Trump, Carson on 9/11 'Celebrations,'" November 2015
4. Salon: "Trump keeps claiming he helped at Ground Zero on 9/11. There's no evidence that happened," September 13, 2019
5. New York Daily News: investigation into 40 Wall Street receiving $150,000 from 9/11 recovery fund, 2006
6. Rolling Stone: "How Donald Trump Cashed in on 9/11"
7. Snopes: "Did Donald Trump Take $150K from the 9/11 Small Business Fund?" (rated Mostly True)
Counterarguments and Context
Trump has maintained that he saw Muslims celebrating from his apartment window and that the media suppressed the footage. His supporters pointed to a single, brief news segment from a New Jersey television station that mentioned unconfirmed reports of a small number of people celebrating, though the segment did not describe anything approaching the "thousands and thousands" Trump claimed. Regarding the $150,000 recovery grant, defenders noted that many other subsidiaries of large companies also received funds from the same program due to the administering agency's expansive definition of small businesses, and that the program's eligibility problems were systemic rather than unique to Trump. PolitiFact noted that the Grant program was "an expansive grant program that benefited a lot of businesses." Regarding his claims of helping at Ground Zero, Trump has not provided evidence but has continued to assert his presence. The factual record shows that his claims of witnessing mass celebrations were investigated and debunked by multiple independent organizations, that no evidence supports his claimed role in the Ground Zero response, and that his property received funds from a program for which it would not have qualified under federal standards.
Author's Note
This entry is classified as Tier 3 because the evidence consists of primary sources including program disbursement records, government audit reports, contemporaneous news archives, and systematic fact-checking by multiple independent organizations. The "thousands celebrating" claim has been definitively debunked. The Ground Zero presence claim lacks any supporting evidence despite extensive investigation. The $150,000 grant is documented through program records, though the GAO report makes clear that the eligibility problems in the program were widespread and not unique to Trump's property.