2001 Interview Shows Trump Praising Courage Of Rescue Workers, Promising To Rebuild

Lower Manhattan was still bleeding smoke and ashes in a cloud that turned the sun’s rays into a glaring haze when a man walking though the rubble of Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center had stood just two days before, paused to salute those who were laboring in the shadow of death.

And to vow to rebuild.

A Sept. 13, 2001, interview with President Donald Trump shows Trump focused on the work of digging through the tons of debris to find survivors, but also looking beyond America’s time of tragedy to what would come next.

“It’s like a whole different city and world,” Trump said. “I cannot believe the sight of lower Manhattan without the World Trade Center. Therefore, we have to rebuild. Not necessarily in that form, but we have to rebuild. At least as good and maybe better.”

Trump would later submit a design for a structure similar to the World Trade Center that was passed over in favor of the current Freedom Tower.

In the interview, Trump mused upon the destruction, citing the “thousands and thousands of lives” lost in the terrorist attack that was coordinated with an attack on the Pentagon and and a third attack that was foiled when passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 fought against their captors, leading to a crash in Pennsylvania.

Trump’s focus during the interview was the men doing the hazardous, risky work of combing the debris to retrieve the dead and hopefully find survivors.

“I have hundreds of men inside working right now and we’re bringing down another 125 in a little while. They’ve never done work like this before,” Trump said. “Its terrible.”

“Not only is it devastating, but its very dangerous because every few minutes a whistle would go off and everybody would just run because you have all the buildings around it which are in such a weakened state that people just don’t know,” he said.