Fred Trump III, President Donald Trump’s nephew, used his X account on Tuesday evening, September 8, 2026, to publicly dispute the president’s account of pitching in at Ground Zero following the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, taking direct aim at his uncle’s claim that he brought a crew of workers to the site.
Fred Trump Jr., the president’s older brother, suffered a heart attack at 42 and died in 1981; his son, now 63, is the Fred Trump III at the center of this dispute. He opened the post from the account @FredTrump_ by explaining why he was speaking up when he did: two reports touching on the 9/11 tragedy had come out that day, he wrote, and he wanted to address them immediately, because waiting until the 25th anniversary on Friday would detract from the solemn memories of the day.
He makes a point of not discussing his uncle in personal terms publicly, he wrote — but one claim in particular cut too deep for him to stay quiet: the notion that his uncle had turned up at the site with a crew of workers to lend a hand.
This is no first break between the two men. The rift has been out in the open for years, and public criticism of his uncle has come from Fred Trump III ever since his tell-all memoir, “All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way,” was published in 2024. The book 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
The subject has drawn the President back again and again in recent days. Trump, 80, told Fox News in an interview on Sunday, September 6, that 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 once more described how he had been evacuated from the U.S. Steel Building, now called One Liberty Plaza; the tower creaked so badly, he said, 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
In both appearances, the president also said he was in the middle of putting up a large building in New York City when the World Trade Center was struck.
The only crew his uncle claimed to have taken to the site, Fred Trump III wrote, would have consisted of secretarial and accounting staff from Trump Tower. He knew a number of those employees and was fairly confident they were not physically up to the work — though he added that had they been capable, he had no doubt they would have tried.
The near-collapse story drew his fire as well. He called it ironic that the grandfather of one of his very close friends had been among the original engineers of the U.S. Steel Building, a structure he said was constructed to be strong. An engineer — the brother of one of his partners — was summoned right away to inspect the tower, he wrote. Inspectors cleared the building for occupancy in the end, initial worry notwithstanding, rather than leaving it 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
Over the years, the president’s telling has not stayed the same. His earliest version had him dispatching dozens of construction workers to the site. By the 2016 campaign, firefighters had entered the story, hustling him out of the U.S. Steel Building after it started creaking in the days that followed the attacks. A new element surfaced by 2021: he was physically lifted away from the scene.
Two days after the towers fell, Trump spoke to a German broadcaster from a spot several blocks from the wreckage. His own workforce at the site, he said then, numbered more than 100 construction workers, with roughly 125 more due to arrive. He was at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan when the towers were struck. That address sits two and a half miles from both the World Trade Center and the U.S. Steel Building.
The White House Response
The president “was relaying his experience of a city reeling immediately after and in the days and weeks after the horrific attacks,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said. Journalists who questioned the account were committing a disgrace, in his framing, and he cited public trust in the media as being at a historic low. No information supporting the president’s version of events came from the White House.
A total of 2,977 victims were killed in the attacks. Friday, September 11 marks the 25th anniversary, and Trump plans to skip the memorial event at Ground Zero that day.
A Second Post About Rudy Giuliani
Fred Trump III followed through on Wednesday morning, September 9, turning his attention to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani had said he would attend memorial services, as was his right, he wrote, and Giuliani said soon afterward that he was offended by Mamdani’s attendance.
Fred Trump III used the same post to say he had not voted for Giuliani in any of his campaigns, while crediting the former mayor with uniting the city after the attacks. Giuliani had gone too far this time, he wrote, and he said he wished the former mayor would finally go away.
