25 Years After: Revisiting Trump’s Role as a Champion for New York

“This country is different today, and it’s going to be different than it ever was for many years to come.” –Donald Trump, Sept. 11, 2001

A lot has been made about the special occasions President Trump has presided over during this term: America 250, the FIFA World Cup, and the ensuing Summer Olympics coming to Los Angeles in 2028. However, another important, albeit more somber, event Trump will preside over is the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Any ordinary native New Yorker holding the office of president during this occasion would be a wholesome footnote.

But that it is Donald Trump — a man more synonymous with the fighting spirit of New York than any other, who played a key role in building its skyline and served as the voice for countless Americans and New Yorkers demanding their desires be heard about how to rebuild Ground Zero after 9/11 — is especially poetic.

Trump was a symbol of hope, strength and resilience in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and in the years that followed.

In the days after Sept. 11, he not only sent crews to aid in the cleanup and recovery efforts at Ground Zero, but also personally appeared there on Sept. 13 — when it was still considered a great risk to do so given the uncertainty surrounding the threat of additional attacks, the falling debris and continuing fires at the site, and the health hazards that have now claimed the lives of more Fire De[artment of New York firefighters than the attacks themselves (343 on 9/11, more than 600 since) — as a sign of unity, support and appreciation for the job being done.

It would have been worthy of praise if all he did was make a generous financial contribution toward recovery efforts, as many other ultra-wealthy New Yorkers and Americans did.

But putting himself potentially in harm’s way and immediately offering his vision for moving forward as a non-public official surely impacted first responders desperate for any morale boost available. In hindsight, it also foreshadowed the unshakable courage and resolve he would exhibit during assassination attempts against him years later as president.

While it was unimaginable for a long time — even to the present day for many — to imagine the New York City skyline without the Twin Towers, decisions about what would come next ultimately had to be made, presenting no shortage of strong opinions. Some — specifically family members who did not want something built over a graveyard of their deceased loved ones—felt rebuilding Ground Zero into a peaceful and quiet space was most appropriate, since thousands lay somewhere beneath the ground, never identified. An overwhelming majority, however, wanted the Towers rebuilt as a sign of national strength and resilience, believing a void in the skyline would signify that the terrorists had won.

Trump strongly shared the latter opinion, quickly stating his belief that rebuilding was an absolute necessity for both the city and country. But after the first design for the new One World Trade Center — the Freedom Tower — was decided on, Trump strongly criticized it as an “egghead design, an empty skeleton” and a “disgusting pile of junk” that was the “last thing we needed representing the World Trade Center.”

Not long after Trump’s critiques, the initial Freedom Tower rendering was ultimately scrapped. And while it is impossible to know how big a role they played, Trump was undeniably the most prominent voice in the public pressure campaign against it.

He then became a vocal supporter of the “Twin Towers II” project, even advocating for the original Twin Towers to be rebuilt “a little bit taller” and “a lot stronger” by holding a press conference at Trump Tower that displayed models of a rebuilt World Trade Center complex, which also featured footprint memorials inspired by the base of the originals beneath the new-and-improved ones.

The city ultimately passed on the proposal, but there was great victory in discarding the original design. Any building was bound to upset the anti-rebuild crowd for very sound and understandable reasons. But the first rendering’s hideous, asymmetrical design paid such an awful tribute to the victims and first responders that it also angered the larger portion that wanted to rebuild, meaning virtually nobody would have been happy had it gone through.

Beauty and design are paramount in architecture, but in this instance quantity was most important symbolically. Two buildings came down — three including Building 7 — but only one was built back up — two including the rebuilt Building 7. Nonetheless, if only one tower was going to be built, the Freedom Tower ultimately erected was, and is, visually appealing. Perhaps that should come as no surprise, as it was initially proposed for another project years prior by none other than Donald Trump.

That’s right: in 1996, Trump proposed building a New York Stock Exchange Tower on undeveloped land along the East River. Early renderings of the building, which would have surpassed Chicago’s Sears Tower in height and stories to become the world’s tallest, show a nearly identical design to what would become the Freedom Tower. The initial mockup even eerily features the still-standing Twin Towers in the background.

So while the Trump-backed Twin Towers II were passed on, the hideous, Trump-opposed first Freedom Tower was — whether knowingly or not — discarded for a design first proposed by Trump years earlier, meaning he did have, despite this revelation being rarely if ever mentioned, an impact on the rebuilt World Trade Center.

Any differences of opinion about rebuilding were dwarfed by the immense unity that swept the nation. Twenty-five years later, measuring our nation’s patriotism is much more complex. A recent poll revealed striking differences across party lines compared to 25 years ago. In 2001, 90% of Republicans and 85% of Democrats considered themselves proud to be American. Today, 93% of Republicans do, while an astonishingly low 27% of Democrats do.

While the raw numbers — especially when eliminating fake and/or duplicate votes — greatly favor President Trump and his MAGA agenda, the ideological gap between his movement and the opposing one couldn’t be wider, making the 25-year memorial less than purely triumphant.

On one hand, the Democrat party has borne witness to an alarming number of primary victories of late by socialist (communist) candidates who possess unabashed anti-American rhetoric.

Unbelievably, this is occurring largely in the same New York City that was led by America’s Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, and served as a testament to American resolve and patriotism after 9/11.

Now, under Mayor Zohran Mamdani — who appointed as his Chief Counsel an attorney who previously represented a convicted al-Qaida member who was also the brother-in-law of a 9/11 hijacker, and who has claimed that Muslims are the true victims of a post-9/11 world due to discrimination — the city’s identity is unrecognizable. 

In fact, Mamdani’s conduct has been so offensive that a petition urging him not to attend the 9/11 ceremonies has garnered more than one hundred thousand signatures. Concurrently, a growing number of congressional Democrats have voluntarily unmasked themselves as holding the same beliefs as Mamdani, all while the media has shamelessly furthered his Muslim victimhood lie.

But on the other hand, America is led by inarguably the most unapologetically pro-America president of all in Donald Trump, who remains relentless in his pursuit of defeating all that hinders the nation on its path to being made great again. In doing so, he serves as a powerful resistance to this wave of unabashed anti-Americanism enabled by an old-guard Democrat party that may not agree with the ideology at heart, but has allowed it to metastasize expeditiously. Because of Trump, there is immense hope that this and other instruments of anti-Americanism seeking to destroy our country will be defeated before they are given the chance.

On this 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, as we pray for the departed souls and their friends and families, may we also thank God that one of the gatekeepers who watched over New York on that dark Tuesday now watches over the nation at large. The man who, in his first term, signed the Never Forget the Heroes Act, which permanently authorized the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and ensured compensation would continue for people suffering from 9/11-related illnesses and for families of people who died from those illnesses, without the fund repeatedly facing expiration.

President Trump has never forgotten, may we all never either.