[See the UPDATE at the end of this post, which indicates that the information published in the Time article was most likely incorrect.]
Donald Trump has said repeatedly that on the morning of 9/11 he watched the burning World Trade Center towers from his midtown Manhattan apartment.
One controversial aspect of his claim is that he could see people jumping from the WTC as he watched from his apartment, which is four miles away. Some experts doubt that is feasible. But no one has disputed that Trump was in NY that morning.
Here is Trump talking about 9/11, and mentioning that he was in his apartment at the time:
Donald Trump may certainly be telling the truth about where he was that morning. But late last night, after a tip in a comment, I found an article about skyscrapers that appeared in Time magazine on December 20, 2004, Going Up … and Up: When Height Is All That Matters.
At the start of the Time article was this intriguing paragraph (emphasis added):
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Adrian D. Smith, a well-known architect in the Chicago office of Skidmore Owings & Merrill, was in a meeting with Donald Trump. The hyperbolic New York City developer was in Chicago to go over the design of a proposed Trump residential tower in that city that he had decided should be — what else? — the tallest building in the world, around 2,000 ft. In the midst of their meeting, the two men got word of the first plane that hit the World Trade Center. “When the second plane hit, we all rushed to the television to see what was happening,” says Smith. “That was the end of the meeting.” And also the end of the 2,000-ft. tower. A few weeks later, Trump’s people came back with a revised proposal — at 900 ft. or so.
The 2004 Time magazine report raises a potentially troubling and politically embarrassing problem for Trump unless there is independent proof as to where Trump was on the morning of September 11, 2001.
[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon. This post also appears, in a different format with other details, at her website]
[UPDATE 7:15 AM: A commenter has managed to find an article written in 2002 that contradicts the information in the Time article. It reports [emphasis added]:
Adrian Smith recalls where he was on the morning of 9/11. In what can only be described as sickening irony, he was with representatives of Donald Trump, preparing to go live with a press conference to unveil his new design for Trump Chicago…
In addition, there is this video interview of Trump on German TV, which according to YouTube was taken on September 13, 2001. Although it’s not clear that date is correct, and although it is reported that flights resumed on September 13, 2001, it seems that the bulk of the information available so far tends to favor the veracity of Trump’s account over that of the article in Time. I conclude that the likelihood is that the meeting in Chicago was with Trump’s representatives, rather than with Trump himself as Time had reported.]
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