Donald Trump’s nephew disputes US President’s 9/11 claims

President Donald Trump’s nephew, Fred Trump, has publicly disputed his uncle’s accounts of his activities following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including claims that he sent workers to assist at Ground Zero and was taken to safety from a building feared to be in danger of collapse.

Fred Trump addressed the claims on social media, days before the 25th anniversary of the attacks. He said he was particularly troubled by the president’s assertion that he had sent workers to help at Ground Zero following the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Fred said the claim “so offends me that I need to speak out.” He also challenged the suggestion that Donald Trump had been constructing a skyscraper in Manhattan at the time, noting that Trump World Tower had opened months before the attacks.

“The only crew he claimed to bring to the site would have been secretarial and accounting employees from Trump Tower I knew many of them, and pretty sure they were not capable physically to help (if they could, I am sure they would try),” Fred wrote. Fred also disputed the president’s account that two firefighters carried him away from the U.S. Steel Building because of concerns that the structure might collapse.

According to Fred, the brother of one of his business partners was an engineer who was called to conduct an immediate inspection of the building. He said there were initial concerns about its condition but rejected the suggestion that it had been evacuated because it was “creaking and ready to fall.”

Trump said on Tuesday that he had been dragged away from the U.S. Steel Building following the attacks. The report noted that he was in his office several miles uptown when the attacks occurred and called into a local television programme that day.

The report said it was possible Trump was referring to events in the days following the attacks, noting that a federal building near the U.S. Steel Building was evacuated on September 12. However, it said there were no contemporaneous news reports corroborating Trump’s account.

Trump later defended his version of events in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday night, maintaining that his claims about his activities following 9/11 were accurate. Fred Trump has previously been publicly critical of his uncle. In his 2024 memoir, “All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way,” he wrote about the Trump family and his relationship with the president.

Fred is the son of Donald Trump’s older brother, Fred Trump Jr., who died of a heart attack in 1981. The White House had been approached for comment on Fred Trump’s latest remarks, but no response had been reported.