Fact check: There's no evidence Donald Trump helped with 9/11 response (September 2020)
www.usatoday.com
... President Donald Trump has made many public comments about his memories of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Some of his claims have become popular memes among his supporters.
"Two days after the 9/11 attack Trump was at Ground Zero with hundreds of workers that he paid of his own pocket to help find and identify victims. He's been a patriot to the country he loves forever," a viral meme spread widely across Facebook reads.
Trump made a somewhat similar claim himself on Sept. 11, 2019, claiming that after seeing the attacks, he joined support efforts at Ground Zero alongside his employees.
"Soon after, I went down to Ground Zero with men who worked for me to try to help in any little way that we could," the president said during remarks at the Pentagon. "We were not alone. So many others were scattered around trying to do the same. They were all trying to help."
There is no evidence that Trump helped with efforts at Ground Zero. Emergency responders who coordinated response efforts have cast doubt on the president's claims.
The image often used in viral memes is also not at Ground Zero. ...
Trump also erroneously claimed that a building he owned, 40 Wall St., was now the tallest skyscraper in New York City. The building was slightly shorter than 70 Pine St., another building near 40 Wall St. in Lower Manhattan.
In the days following the attacks, emergency workers at Ground Zero sifted through rubble and debris, attempting to find the fallen.
"I was there for several months -- I have no knowledge of his being down there," Richard Alles, a New York Fire Department battalion chief during 9/11, told PolitiFact.
"There would be a record of it," Alles continued. "Everybody worked under direct supervision of the police and fire department and the joint commander for emergency services.
"Is there a chance he was ever down there by himself and I didn't know it? It's possible, but I know of no one who ever witnessed him there."
There are no reports from the time that show that a large contingent of workers hired by or working alongside Trump were helping with the cleanup. ...
Does it even matter?
In Oakland, California public-sector union workers illegally covered up the former mayor filing for office late by deleting footage and faking timestamps so that she would not be eliminated from the election.
I mean does it matter really? America is in such a spiral of grift and graft, does any of this even matter?