NEW YORK — As the United States prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a television interview Donald Trump gave on the day of the tragedy is once again drawing attention.
The interview, conducted with New York television station WWOR, came as the city struggled to comprehend the destruction of the World Trade Center. Trump, then a prominent New York real estate developer, spoke by phone about what he had seen and what associates near Lower Manhattan had told him.
At one point, however, the conversation shifted from the devastation to one of Trump’s properties: 40 Wall Street.
When asked whether the building had suffered damage, Trump explained its history and then remarked that it had become the tallest building in downtown Manhattan after the Twin Towers collapsed.
“Now it’s the tallest,” Trump said during the interview.
The comment has remained one of the most frequently revisited moments from Trump’s public response to the attacks. For critics, the decision to discuss the relative height of a commercial property while New York was still facing an unprecedented catastrophe reflected a striking lack of sensitivity. A WWOR journalist who participated in the interview later recalled being stunned by the remark.
The statement was also factually incorrect. Contemporary analysis found that 40 Wall Street was not the tallest building in Lower Manhattan on September 11. The building was approximately 25 feet shorter than 70 Pine Street, which stood one block away. Although 40 Wall Street had once held the title of New York’s tallest building decades earlier, that period occurred in the 1930s, long before Trump owned the property.
The broader interview also showed Trump describing the extraordinary scenes unfolding around Lower Manhattan. He said associates at 40 Wall Street had reported heavy debris in the surrounding streets and described the disappearance of the World Trade Center towers as difficult to comprehend. He also speculated about what might have caused the buildings to collapse.
The interview has taken on additional significance because Trump’s later accounts of his experiences surrounding 9/11 have occasionally been disputed or fact-checked. Among them are claims about seeing events from his apartment and statements that he went to Ground Zero and helped with cleanup efforts. Reporting has found that some of those later descriptions differed from what was documented at the time.
Still, the 2001 television appearance remains a historical record of how one prominent New Yorker described the unfolding disaster in real time. The remarks are now being viewed through the lens of 25 years of political debate surrounding Trump’s relationship with the attacks and his later public career.
For families who lost loved ones, survivors and first responders, the anniversary remains centered on the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks and the lasting consequences for New York and the nation.
As the milestone anniversary approaches, the resurfaced interview illustrates how even brief comments made during a national tragedy can remain part of the public record—and become newly scrutinized decades later.
