Trump reflects on 9/11, New York’s resilience and the day that changed history

President Donald Trump said watching the second aircraft strike the World Trade Center from his Midtown Manhattan apartment made him realize that history had entered a new era. “I said, wow, we are now in a different time,” he recalled in an interview with Trey Gowdy on Fox News’ *Gowdy America*. “The world has just changed.”

Trump said he initially watched a business program on television as reports described a fire at the World Trade Center. Early explanations suggested that a boiler had exploded, but he rejected that possibility because, as he put it, boilers were in the basement rather than at the top of the building.

He said the second aircraft’s approach looked so unusual that he wondered whether it might be a missile. From his apartment, he watched it head toward the second tower and then saw it strike. Trump said he had spent years observing aircraft movements and recognized that the plane was not following the usual path along the Hudson River.

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I said, wow, we are now in a different time. So I saw it, and I said, the world has just changed.

Trump also recalled going to the site shortly after the attacks. He said he had been building a property in New York and had many construction workers available to help. The destruction, he said, appeared “so terrible and so hopeless,” with the collapsed buildings leaving what looked like a mountain of debris.

Despite the devastation, Trump praised New York’s recovery. He said the debris was removed quickly and that the new World Trade Center was approved and built at remarkable speed.

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People can say what they want about New York, but they rebuilt that project so fast, it was so incredible to see.