Donald Trump has triggered fresh controversy by claiming two firefighters physically lifted him to safety after the September 11 attacks – with the US President then sharing a clip of him talking to reporters after the tragedy. Mr Trump made the extraordinary claim during a 9/11 commemoration event in Washington on Tuesday, describing how he said firefighters grabbed him and ran with him when a nearby building appeared to be in danger of collapsing.

Mr Trump made the claim during a ceremony in Washington marking the 25th anniversary of the attacks, adding a dramatic new detail to his long-disputed account of his role in the aftermath of 9/11. According to The New York Times, Mr Trump has repeatedly claimed that he took a construction crew to Lower Manhattan after the attacks and was heavily involved in the recovery effort. However, his account has been challenged by people who were actually involved in the operation at Ground Zero.

Mr Trump said: “I was building a big building in New York, and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened.”

He then described an alleged incident involving the nearby US Steel Building, now known as One Liberty Plaza.

Mr Trump said: “The United States Steel building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down.”

He continued: “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.”

Mr Trump added: “This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself,’ but they were amazing.”

The New York Times reported that the claim forms part of Mr Trump’s “evolving — and often disputed” account of what he did following the attacks.

Richard Alles, a retired New York Fire Department deputy chief who spent months at Ground Zero, previously challenged Mr Trump’s claims.

Speaking in 2019, Mr Alles said: “I spent many months there myself, and I never witnessed him.

“He was a private citizen at the time. I don’t know what kind of role he could have possibly played.”

The latest claim is particularly striking because Mr Trump has provided no names for the two firefighters he says rescued him, while the White House has not publicly produced evidence establishing when the alleged incident occurred.

There were genuine fears about the stability of One Liberty Plaza in the days after the attacks, with evacuations taking place amid concerns that the building could collapse.

But there is no evidence specifically placing Mr Trump at the building during those fears.

PolitiFact reported that accounts support the fact that concerns about One Liberty Plaza prompted evacuations, but found none that specifically said Mr Trump was there. It also found no evidence that he brought hundreds of workers to Ground Zero as he has repeatedly claimed.

Mr Trump has now sought to reinforce his version of events by posting footage on Truth Social showing him in Lower Manhattan after the attacks.

However, the footage does not show the alleged firefighter rescue, nor does it establish that he was at the actual Ground Zero recovery site when the incident supposedly happened.

He commented: “The Failing New York Magazine wrote a story that I wasn’t down at the World Trade Center after the Tragedy of September 11th, because nobody saw me there. Well, I don’t think I would be the first thing on anyone’s mind but, I was there, obviously not on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter, with a large group of Construction Workers.”

The New York Times reported that a photograph of Mr Trump taken on September 18, 2001, has subsequently been used to suggest he personally travelled to Ground Zero with hundreds of workers.

But Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien told the newspaper that the Trump Organisation had only around a dozen people working at the relevant site at the time.

Barbara Res, a former executive vice president at the Trump Organisation, was also sceptical of Mr Trump’s account.

Ms Res said: “Listen, if he was there and he was escorted by firefighters and first responders, it would be the headline of The Times the next day. He’d make that happen.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom did not hold back, with a post on X by the Governor Newsom Press Office describing it as “an absolutely disgusting thing to lie about”.

Mr Trump has been making claims about his presence in Lower Manhattan since the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

On September 13, 2001, he told a German television station that he had more than 100 men at the site and expected hundreds to become involved.

PolitiFact has since said it could not verify that Mr Trump directly helped with the clean-up or repeatedly visited the site during the following weeks and months.

Mr Trump also gave a version of the firefighter story during his 2016 presidential campaign.

The White House responded to questions about his latest claim by providing a clip of that earlier speech.

Mr Trump said at the time: “I never knew I could run that fast.”

His latest account, however, goes further, claiming that two firefighters actually grabbed him under the arms, lifted him off the ground and ran with him because they feared the building was about to collapse.

The comments came as Mr Trump honoured the emergency workers who died during the attacks, including volunteer firefighter Welles Crowther, who was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Almost 3,000 people were killed when hijacked aircraft struck the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.