Donald Trump
stated on November 21, 2015 in comments during a speech:
"I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering" as the World Trade Center collapsed.
Fact-checking Trump's claim that thousands in New Jersey cheered when World Trade Center tumbled
Arguing that there are terrorist sympathizers in the United States, Donald Trump says he saw "thousands" of New Jerseyans celebrating after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
"I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down," the Republican presidential candidate said at a Nov. 21 rally in Birmingham, Ala. "And I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering."
The next day, ABC This Week host George Stephanopoulos asked Trump if he misspoke, noting that "the police say that didn't happen."
PolitiFact - Fact-checking Trump's claim that thousands in New Jersey cheered when World Trade Center tumbled
Trump’s Revised 9/11 Claim
By
D'Angelo Gore
Posted on August 5, 2016
Donald Trump said that a reporter was “trying to change his story” after writing an article that Trump said supported the discredited claim that Trump watched “thousands and thousands” of people in New Jersey celebrate the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
But it’s Trump who has changed his story, not the reporter.
However, Kovaleski, an investigative journalist at the
New York Times, has not changed his story.
Trump’s
original statement was that he saw on TV “thousands and thousands” of people cheering in New Jersey after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. He didn’t simply say that there were “people dancing” in the streets or on rooftops.
A day later, on ABC’s “
This Week,” Trump stuck to that story: “It did happen. I saw it. … It was on television. I saw it. … There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down.”
But we and other fact-checkers found no evidence that thousands of people in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. What is true is that local and national news organizations tried to verify reports of celebrations in New Jersey cities and turned up little or nothing.
Trump's Revised 9/11 Claim - FactCheck.org