Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump Tells INSANE Story About Where He Was On 9/11

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

Trump’s latest 9/11 LIE is absolutely bonkers. He claims two firefighters literally picked him up and carried him to safety near Ground Zero, a story with no evidence to back it up. Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor break down the latest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, Tommy, the president is marking the 25th anniversary of 9-11 by putting a new twist on an old story he tells about two big, strong firefighters who supposedly lifted his big, strong body into the air and carried him to safety. Seems more like a recurring dream of his. Was he at the Minnesota State Fair? Yeah. Isn't that where they do that? Basically, yeah.

Let's listen. I'll never forget, two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us and two firemen. Big, strong guys. And I'm not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under the arms and said, got to get out of here. here and they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I'm big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, fellas, I can run myself. But they were amazing. But they thought it

was coming down and didn't come down. U.S. Steel. That story is so weird that I don't even get what he's talking about. So Trump was, of course, at Trump Tower when the planes hit the World Trade Center. and he's told the story before with a different twist on it. In 2016, he told the story, and he was at One Liberty Plaza, which he said, the U.S. Steel Building. And there were fears at the time, a couple days later after 9-11, that it might collapse, that One Liberty Plaza might collapse. But no one has found any witnesses anywhere placing Trump there. There's certainly no evidence that there were any firefighters who lifted him and can't

carried him away. And why would you pick up, this is 25 years ago, why would you pick up like a grown adult male who's perfectly capable of moving? He's not in a wheelchair. Right?

And it's like, he just, he just tells this story now all the time. And then he got really mad. Yeah, that was a long post. Long post.

I was trying to say that this is right, that Matthew, Matthew Kalamari, his security card. Remember Matthew Kalamari? Yeah, that's a real Trump 1.0.

Yeah. Can testify that this happened, but no one else can testify. No one can find the firefighters. No one can see anyone. You'd think that people would remember seeing Donald Trump carried by firefighters away from a building that they thought was going to collapse. For no reason. The other thing he did on 9-11, the other clip that is often shared around this time, is him calling into a New Jersey local news show. And basically his reaction to watching the towers come down was that he now owned the tallest building in Manhattan.

which, by the way, was not actually true. And also, he also claims that he sent like 100 to 200 construction workers to Ground Zero to help. And a senior FDNY official who spent months there said that's not true. He's never seen Trump or any of the workers that he sent there. You know who did actually flood into New York after 9-11? Canadian firefighters. Oh, yeah. And they went to Ground Zero and they just helped out.

And they didn't ask questions. And now we are threatening to invade them. Yeah. So the best part of this little thing is potential 2028 hopeful Ted Cruz was on CNN last night and was asked to defend Trump making this story up. Do you think that's appropriate? September 11th was 25 years ago. It was a horrific moment for our entire country. And you could doubt whatever you want about Donald Trump. But the man is a New Yorker. He loves New York. And I have every doubt that what he's conveying there is what he experienced. And it was a traumatic

experience for all of us. Donald Trump famously talked shit about New York and moved out of the state. The important thing, Tommy, is that this is Donald Trump's lived experience of 9-11. And who are we to question Donald Trump's lived experience of what happened to him on 9-11? Is it true? No. But it's what he feels. Ted Cruz is sounding like a professor of liberal arts called Brown or something.

Can you flag one other thing that rub me the wrong way? So Trump told a story at that event about a guy named Wells Crowther, who is sometimes called the man of the red bandana. He posthumously awarded Wells the Presidential Medal of Freedom. If you haven't heard this story, I just encourage everyone to Google this. It's like one of those things, like hard to imagine the amount of courage this guy showed. He's a 24-year-old Boston college grad, volunteer firefighter, equities trader on the 104th floor of the South Tower. He was walking down on like the one working stairwell. heard people screaming for help on the 78th floor,

went and rescued a bunch of people, went down and then came back up, and then went down and came back up, and went down and came back up, and stayed 18 people. And the only reason his parents know what he did is because people kept saying, like, this man in the red bandana saved my life,

and it was this big New York Times report, and his parents were like, oh, my God, that was like our son. It's, like, hard to talk about. And so it's an amazing story. It's glad that he, it's cool. I'm glad he gave them the family, family, the Presidential Medal of Freedom,

but he made this weird quip about how Wells is now more famous than him, and he doesn't like that. No, come on. And, like, it was obviously a joke. And, but it's like this pathological need to make everything about himself, everything. Well, and it's like, yes, it's a joke, but why are you telling that joke? Right. And jokes, that's not.

And people are like, oh, couldn't you tell us a joke? Jokes are usually funny. And there's often a time and a place for them. I don't tell a lot of jokes at funerals. Also, also, the whole point of a joke, There's some kernel of truth to every joke that you're making. Right. Right.

Deep down inside. You do care. Of course he cares. That this literal hero is getting more praise than you on 9-11 where you saved 18 people. So, yeah. Anyway, next up, U.S. attorney Janine Piro has an urgent warning for all Americans that you came out with this morning. Let's listen. If you know someone that things they've got an opportunity that's too good to be true.

that they've been contacted by someone who's got the inn on cryptocurrency, because none of us really understand cryptocurrency as much as we'd like to. And that includes, I'll bet everyone in this room. You've got to tell them to stop. It's what the president is very much aware of the scams and cryptocurrency fraud that is being literally imposed upon Americans. And he is well aware of the dangers to Americans and you might want to speak to him about that. Yeah. Fact check.

True. He's well aware. So no one is more aware of the risk. Well, there might be one person. We'll talk about him too. So Piro there was discussing DOJ's targeting of an ostensibly exclusive crypto opportunity promoted by a famous person with insiders

making money while ordinary purchases absorb the losses. But alas, it was not Donald Trump. It was a Chinese language marketplace operating through telegram that allegedly supplied scam organizations with fake crypto investment websites, wallets, payment infrastructure, money laundering services. But, you know, the parallels are just striking. It's incredible that she had just no self-awareness in that moment. Didn't even remember that Trump coin existed or that World Liberty exists.

Just for listeners don't know what we're talking about. The Trump family founded a crypto company in 2024. It's called World Liberty Financial. The Trump administration just secretly, just preliminarily. approved their application to be a National Trust Bank. I forgot about that. A charter bank. An Amaradi back firm secretly bought half of the company before it really even existed,

before the inauguration. So everything about this is sketchy. One of their biggest investors, a guy named Justin Sun, who himself got a little hot water over crypto, now says World Liberty is a scam. Well, like, the founders are Steve Whitkoff's kid, a guy named Chase Hero who has a long rap sheet is a known scammer. Like, someone literally made a website, chasehero scam.com. And then another guy who was a pickup artist.

But the New York Times reported in July that nearly a million people who bought Trump's meme coin lost around $3.8 billion. That was as of June, while Trump himself reported making over $630 million from the meme coin. That is just shocking. Just stealing from people who are your fans. And it's like because it's crypto and as our U.S. attorney, our woman in D.C. pointed out, because people don't. know a ton about crypto and it's hard to understand. It almost is like that, but it's basically just like Trump's starting a business where he just scams a bunch, which he's done before in his life, before crypto was available.

Yeah. And just started a business, scammed a bunch of people and made a whole bunch of money. And it's like maybe barely legalized corruption. It's a classic pump and dump scheme. Yes. Except you are pumping to your biggest fans. These are the people who like you the most, who would go out and buy Trump coin. Those are the people he has the most contempt for.

That he's pumping. Because we are, you know, because we're straight shooters, widely respected on both sides, as our friend once said, we should talk about Hunter Biden's crypto scam. Who says bipartisanship is that? Yeah. So you guys might have seen Hunter Biden released a crypto coin called laptop. Because he had sex on his laptop.

Because there was a laptop with a lot of nudes on it about him that Rudy Giuliani maybe got that gave to some. weird guy, whatever. You guys know that story. He posted a long screen on Twitter about it. I'm going to read to you from it. By now, you may have seen the article in the Wall Street Journal that I'm launching a meme coin called MoneyLaptop. That's like MoneySigned Laptop. The symbol they used to try to end me is now a symbol of resilience, redemption, and recovery. This most AI written shit I've ever heard of my life. It goes on to say, you should not expect me or anyone else to make this token more valuable for you. Laptop isn't just about owning something.

It's about saying something. Everybody gets knocked down. How do we help each other in our country? get back up. They turned laptop into a weapon. I turned it into a token laptop because the truth matters. Fucking kill me. Can I tell you some laptop economics? Yes. Because it was launched today. So, John, here are the laptop economics. So the coin went from $3 to almost $300 in value almost instantly. And then it crashed by about 98%. This is what they call a rugpole in the business where people who own it early wait for others to buy it. They inflate the price. They dump their coins. you make a lot of money. I'm going to read you a tweet from a crypto analytics company called bubble maps. A laptop was a bloodbath. 80% of traders lost money. Two lost $100,000 to a million

dollars. 100 lost $10,000 or more, 700 lost 1,000 or more, 11,000 smaller losses. Thank you, Hunter Biden. They also posted a chart of like the profit and loss of the coin. It found that 10 accounts made a profit of between $100,000 and a million for a total of $3.4 million or so. Another 78 accounts made a profit of between 10,000 to 100,000 for a total of 2.1 million. So that's about 88 insiders making millions of dollars, and then everyone else got just a hosed. Do you think H saved some tokens for the big guy? Hunter? It's like, this is honestly so sad because I'm sure he has huge debt.

Someone, I would love to know who sold him on this idea. He doesn't know what this shit is. I mean, I think he knows enough shady people that it's probably he had his pick of His pick of, or they had their pick of, they're like, oh, Hunter Biden. He seems like an easy mark. Yeah. And like, no one should infantilize Hunter or the Trump family here. Like, everyone knows at this point that every meme coin is a scam. It is a pump and dump scheme. This is the end goal of almost every meme coin. But here we are. Like, also, try to track down this stuff is so funny because you're like, okay, it launched on base blockchain.

Bubble Maps has the best analytics. I'm going to Coin Gecko for the latest evaluation and trading volume. But Hunter, like, has made money on this. Well, we don't know. Like, we don't know if he, we don't, we know that those. I think he's got 30% of the tokens were reserved for him and other founders. Yeah, but then he's got like a two-year lockup apparently. Somebody, somebody got an early allocation, maybe people who are subscribers to his substack. Right, right.

Which I know you are. Which I, yes, I am. But we also know that Andrew Callahan from Channel 5 News tweeted out that he gave Hunter like a file with his entire subscriber list. and then Hunter blasted the fucking meme coin scam information to that list, which might be illegal. You can't give away your list like that, Andrew. But the whole thing is a disaster. What a fucking...

It's just... Of course, though. It's like just... Yeah, it's the most grifty thing ever. And if our listeners want to get information from a podcast that will never try to sell you a meme coin, unless Lovett is fully in charge of our financials... I was going to say, I don't know if we can promise that.

Please subscribe to Pod Save America here in YouTube. We are trying to build. the progressive counterweight to all the right-wing crap you see on YouTube. When you subscribe to us, it really helps us out and get good information out there, so please do. And it's free. Unlike that meme coin. Hey, it's John. Last year, 2,500 people joined us at CricketCon for conversations with some of the smartest organizers,

least annoying politicians, and most interesting voices in politics about how to fix this mess. We're doing it again, November 5th through the 7th in Washington, D.C. with even more podcast panels and workshops. Plus, there will be drinks, which will need after the midterms, no matter which way they go. Get your tickets at CricketCon.com, where we'll also announce the lineup. If you're a friends of the pod subscriber, a limited number of discounted tickets are still available. Get them before they run out. See you at CricketCon.

Before we move on to the next topic, Piro at that same press conference, she did get some other questions. There was one topic. She wasn't super excited to discuss. Here's what happened when a reporter asked about the status of the reflecting pool case that almost cost Piro her job. No. No and no. Who wants to know about this? How many times do I have to say no?

I am not talking about that. Anyone want to talk about this case? Oh, of course. I love how offended she gets that someone might ask a question about a case that they made a huge deal out of. You criminally charge someone for something that they didn't do, which was known at the time, and then you dropped the case. And then your boss, the president, who ordered you to do the prosecution, almost fired you.

Yeah. And then you had to like drag your little briefcase with your files into a meeting where you blamed Doug Bergham to save your own job. But you're like, let me talk about my Chinese company crypto targeting case. How dare you ask me about the man I smeared? Unbelievable. It's the worst. Unbelievable. I love the voice, too.

No. No, no. She's like on the five again. All right, finally, we have a Vivek Ramoswamy clip that you have told me about, but I have not seen. Go ahead, set it up for it. So, Vivek, I minded my own business last night. I am scrolling through Instagram. Actually, Elijah texted it to me.

And there is a video Vivek Ramoswamy released of himself at a batting cage, hitting baseballs. and releasing like his 10 point plan for like Ohio jobs or some shit i like the the facts did not sink in it was the visuals okay stuck with me so let's watch the video here's 10 things i'm going to do for ohio slash your property taxes abolish your state income tax yore cut your electric bills and prosecute Medicaid fraud bring higher standards to our schools slice your health care costs bring high paying jobs what the fuck yeah put human traffickers in prison where they belong Teach kids to be proud of our state and our country. Crush fun in our cities.

Coming in 2027. It appears that Elijah uploaded the version where he added sound effects. I was like he's orgasmine every time he hits the back. This is the second time he's. This is the second time, Elijah, was downloaded of a vague Ramoswami video. The first one was tennis, and then he added very sexual grunting sounds.

I was like, did no one think to cut that out of the video? Oh, my God, that's amazing. Now, don't let those. I was going to say, that sounds distract you from that swing. They got 80-year-olds at the village is swinging harder than that, John. Also, it was like a... Good for them. Good for them. It was also like a, like he's like swinging down.

Dude, it was like a half a golf swing almost. Okay. Hitting a baseball. Also, he's like holding the bat as far away from him as well. In tight khakis. Charlie's on a t-ball in a t-ball league where they swing better than that. Yeah, no, my three-year-old daughter can rip a ball harder than that. Listen, hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things to do in sports. It is totally irrelevant to the job of governor, right?

So who cares? But you guys recorded that video. No one made you. You decided to release that video. Like, if I was running for office, I would not swing a baseball bat. Yeah. I probably wouldn't pitch that video. And then once I saw the way he swung the bat, I certainly wouldn't release the video.

It's a lot like Karen Bass's video here in Los Angeles of identifying a pothole and then not fixing it and then putting out the video. Amazing video. One of the funniest ones ever. But also, John, Instagram fed me another video of a kid who was at the batting cages when Vivek was there. No way. the inside scoop. So this guy said that Vivek's team came in. They asked for the slowest cage, which is a 40 mile per hour pitch.

It's like slow pitch softball. He said Vivek made contact only five times out of 25 pitches. So in the video. I was going to say, I was surprised by how many times they hit it in that video. They're replaying his garbage ass swings where he's like hitting foul tips over and over and over again. And then this kid said that Vivek left without talking to any voters. There's a bunch of people at the batting cage. you're running for governor, you're in Ohio, you don't talk to anybody.

And this is why in a red state that Donald Trump won by double digits, Amy Acton, who is running against Vivek Ramoswamy, could be the next governor. Could win. And it's also just like, it tells you something about, I don't know, the Republican Party, it's like, there's this hyper-masculine kind of thing they're going for. And if I'm Vivek Ramoswami, you just kind of know, like, that's not your identity. At least you're kind of good at tennis, I guess. Also, sick of that. Why is he, he's dressed like a fucking day trader? Like, what is he, what is he, like he's on, he should be on wall, like what is,

yeah, these are my tight khakis and my polo, let's go swing the bats. Why? What I can do. He's such a dork. That guy. Remember he was at Doge? Well, he was so annoying that Elon kicked him out of Doge before Doge existed. That's how, that's how bad he is.

Elon Musk found him annoying. I can confirm how annoying he was. Remember, I was on his, on his bus in Iowa for. from one stop to another and I interviewed him. And he was like lecturing me about the storage of classified information. I'm like, brother, I know a little more about this than you do. You are wrong.

You cannot, if you're president, take top secret stuff and leave it by the shitter at Mar-a-Lago. I promise you that is the case here. Although I guess you can. At the end of the day, you got away with it. That's for sure. All right, that's all we got for today. Everyone, please remember to subscribe to Podsave America.

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