President Donald Trump’s nephew has publicly disputed the president’s account of pitching in at Ground Zero after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, writing on X on Tuesday evening, September 8, 2026, that his uncle’s claim about bringing a crew of workers to the site offended him.
Fred Trump III, 63, is the son of the president’s older brother, Fred Trump Jr., who died in 1981 after a heart attack at 42. He explained his timing at the top of the post, writing from the account @FredTrump_ that two reports touching on the 9/11 tragedy had come out that day and that he was addressing them immediately because holding his remarks until the 25th anniversary on Friday would detract from the solemn memories of the day.
He added that he makes a point of not speaking publicly about his uncle in personal terms, but that the assertion that his uncle had brought a crew of workers to help at the site offended him so deeply that he felt he had to say something.
The post continues a rift that has been out in the open for years rather than marking a first break. Fred Trump III has been a public critic of his uncle since the 2024 publication of his tell-all memoir, “All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way,” in which he alleged that his uncle said his severely disabled son should die and described a scheme to cut him out of the family fortune.
What the President Has Said
Trump, 80, has returned to the subject repeatedly in recent days. In a Fox News interview on Sunday, September 6, he said he had gone to Ground Zero and worked there. At the “Steel Across America” event at The Ellipse in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, September 8, he again described being evacuated from the U.S. Steel Building, now called One Liberty Plaza, saying the tower creaked so badly that he and others believed it was about to fall.
“They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself,’ but they were amazing,” Trump said at the event.
The Nephew’s Point-by-Point Rebuttal
At both appearances, the president said the World Trade Center was struck while he was in the middle of putting up a large building in New York City.
Fred Trump III went on to say that the only crew his uncle claimed to have taken to the site would have been made up of secretarial and accounting staff from Trump Tower. He knew a number of those employees, he wrote, and was fairly confident they were not physically up to the work — adding that had they been capable, he had no doubt they would have tried.
He also took issue with the near-collapse story. As for the U.S. Steel Building, he wrote, it was ironic that the grandfather of one of his very close friends had been among the structure’s original engineers, and the building was constructed to be strong. He added that the brother of one of his partners, an engineer, was summoned right away to inspect the tower; despite the initial worry, the building was ultimately cleared for occupancy rather than left creaking and on the verge of falling. He said he hoped that brought some truth to the story, and signaled that a second post would follow.
An Account That Has Shifted
The president’s telling has changed over the years. At first he said he had dispatched dozens of construction workers to the site. By the 2016 campaign, he was describing firefighters hustling him out of the U.S. Steel Building after it started creaking in the days that followed the attacks. By 2021, he had added that he was physically lifted away from the scene.
Speaking to a German broadcaster from a spot several blocks from the wreckage two days after the towers fell, Trump put his own workforce at the site at more than 100 construction workers, with roughly 125 more due to arrive. When the towers were struck, he was at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan — two and a half miles from both the World Trade Center and the U.S. Steel Building.
The White House Response
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said the president “was relaying his experience of a city reeling immediately after and in the days and weeks after the horrific attacks.” He called press scrutiny of the account a disgrace and pointed to what he described as historically low public trust in the media. The White House provided no information supporting the president’s version of events.
The attacks killed 2,977 victims. Trump plans to skip the memorial event at Ground Zero on Friday, September 11, the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
A Second Post About Rudy Giuliani
On Wednesday morning, September 9, Fred Trump III posted again, this time about former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He wrote that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani had said he would attend memorial services, as was his right, and that Giuliani said soon afterward that he was offended by Mamdani’s attendance.
In the same post, Fred Trump III said he had not voted for Giuliani in any of his campaigns, though he credited the former mayor with uniting the city after the attacks. This time, he wrote, Giuliani had gone too far, and he said he wished the former mayor would finally go away.