While Republicans express “offense” at plans for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to attend September 11 remembrances this week due to his Muslim faith, President Donald Trump provoked outrage on Tuesday when he told what seems to be a fabricated story about his heroism following the terrorist attack.

Before a crowd that included over 100 first responders, Trump described being at ground zero with a construction crew he said he’d deployed to help with the aftermath of the attack. He described walking beneath the US Steel building, now known as One Liberty Plaza, which was believed to be at risk of collapsing.

“The United States Steel Building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is, it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaks, but it never came down,” Trump recalled. “And I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big, strong guys—and I’m not the smallest guy in the world—they grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here!’ And they literally lifted me up."

“This is not easy to do. I’m big," Trump continued. “They lifted me up, and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself,’ but they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down. It didn’t come down.”

Trump has claimed on multiple occasions to have been present in the immediate aftermath of the attacks and has told a version of the same story before, including on the 2016 campaign trail.

But many aspects of the tale are in doubt or contradicted by both the public record and others known to be involved in the recovery.

Trump said he saw the attacks happen from his office in Trump Tower, about four miles away from the World Trade Center. In an interview with WWOR-TV that day, he infamously boasted (incorrectly) that he now had the tallest building in downtown Manhattan after the collapse of the World Trade Center.

While Trump himself was documented on September 13 to have been a few blocks from ground zero and said he’d visited the site, his claim to have sent over 100 of his construction workers in the immediate aftermath of the attack and to have “helped a little” himself has been disputed.

In 2019, Richard Alles, a New York City Fire Department battalion chief on the day of the attack, who said he was on the scene about 20 minutes after the second tower collapsed, told PolitiFact that he had no knowledge of Trump sending a crew of men to help with the wreckage.

“I was there for several months—I have no knowledge of his being down there," Alles said, adding that if Trump had sent a crew of 100 workers, "there would be a record of it. Everybody worked under the direct supervision of the police and fire department and the joint commander for emergency services. Is there a chance he was ever down there by himself and I didn’t know it? It’s possible, but I know of no one who ever witnessed him there.”

Other outlets, including The Associated Press and The Washington Post, said they contacted Trump’s 2016 campaign to ask for details about his activity following the attacks, but received no response.

Neither of the two firefighters who supposedly carried Trump to safety has ever publicly come forward to discuss their run-in with the famous New York developer, and Trump did not mention the incident during interviews at the time.

Trump has a history of lies surrounding 9/11, including that he saw “thousands” of Muslims “cheering” in Jersey City as the towers fell and that he personally “predicted” the attacks in one of his books.

He has also been found to have misled the public about his philanthropy related to the tragedy: In 2001, he pledged to donate $10,000 to a recovery fund for victims and first responders, which the city comptroller’s office ultimately found was never delivered. More than 15 years later, his foundation gave $100,000 to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.

His business empire also received $150,000 from a post-9/11 recovery program meant for businesses affected by the attacks, which Trump has claimed was reimbursement for allowing victims to use his building at 40 Wall Street to take shelter. But the application made no mention of shelter and instead stated that the request was for compensation for lost rent, cleanup, and repairs following the attacks, according to a 2016 investigation by the New York Daily News.

Journalist Ron Filipkowski described Trump’s tale about the firefighters as yet another instance of what he’s called “stolen valor,” but was astonished by its specificity.

“I know he’s lied about his non-role in 9/11 rescue and recovery before, but never this level of detail,” he said. “Trump could have made the ceremony with 9/11 first responders today about the many heroes who died attempting to rescue people and others who risked their lives and long-term health. But instead, he created a fictitious event featuring himself, who did nothing, as the hero of 9/11.”

Making it more offensive, other commentators said, was the double standard from Republicans, like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who have claimed “offense” at the fact that Mamdani, as a Muslim, was planning to attend 9/11 memorials on Friday.

“The people mad about the Mayor of New York attending the 9/11 event must be ENRAGED that Trump just lied about being at ground zero on 9/11,” wrote Tim Fullerton, a former digital strategist for the Obama administration, on X. “This is all about honoring the victims and not just to score points. Right???”

Mamdani on Tuesday released around 170,000 pages of records indicating that Giuliani’s administration had misled New Yorkers about the severity of air quality risks near ground zero after the attacks.

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