False claim Trump said World Trade Center attack didn't happen in speech | Fact check

Isabel C. Morales, USA TODAY
Updated ·3 min read
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The claim: Trump said there was no attack on the World Trade Center

[En Español: Falsa la historia de que Trump dijo que atentado a las Torres Gemelas no ocurrió]

A Jan. 25 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a video clip of former President Donald Trump giving a campaign speech days earlier in Laconia, New Hampshire. In the clip, Trump talks about terrorism and mentions the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

“FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. ACKNOWLEDGES THAT THERE WAS NO ATTACK ON THE TWIN TOWERS," the post reads in Spanish. "Everyone knew it and knows it, and there is nothing new in this."

A similar claim on X, formerly Twitter, was shared more than 2,400 times.

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Our rating: False

Trump did not say there was no World Trade Center attack. The full video makes it clear he said that kind of attack did not occur during his presidency because of the measures he had implemented.

Trump said that during his presidency there were no attacks like 9/11

The post shows a clip of Trump’s speech on Jan. 22, the day before New Hampshire's primary. In the full speech, he criticized his biggest competition for the Republican presidential nomination, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Trump said she condemned his border policy, which he said kept the country safe during his presidency.

“We wanted to stop terror from coming into our country," said Trump in the speech. "But I couldn’t talk about it because I didn’t want to do that and the following day something happens. So I went four years keeping my mouth shut on that particular subject. But now I talk about it all the time. We had no attacks. We didn’t have a World Trade Center. We didn’t have the attacks like you’ve seen and certainly that you see in other countries.”

Fact check: No, Trump didn't win New Hampshire 'every time,' as he said in victory speech

The context makes clear Trump was saying there were no major terrorist attacks on the U.S. while he was president, not that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks did not happen. At no point in his speech does Trump say there had never been an attack on the World Trade Center.

In fact, Trump has spoken publicly several times about where he was during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. While he was still president in 2019, he delivered remarks on the 18th anniversary of 9/11 and said he was in a building in Midtown Manhattan when he saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

But he has shared different versions of that day, as The Washington Post reported. At times, he has said he was in Trump Tower, four miles from the World Trade Center, and could see people jump from the buildings.

USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

AFP also debunked the claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: False claim Trump said 9/11 attacks did not happen | Fact check