Fact Check: Is Trump's claim his book predicted 9/11 attack 26 years ago true?

WASHINGTON, DC: President Donald Trump hasn't been shy about making some big claims since taking office for his second run as the POTUS, and he made another one this week.

During a press briefing on Monday, March 16, while speaking about the ongoing US-Israel war with Iran, Trump claimed that he predicted 9/11 a year before it happened in his book. But does his claim really add up? Let us find out below.

Claim: Trump claims his book predicted 9/11, Osama's plan 26 years ago

Trump told reporters on Monday, "I predicted the Afghan fugitive would knock out the World Trade Center. I made that prediction a year before he did it," as he referred to the September 11, 2001, attacks. He added, "I wrote it in a book". 

Back in 2018, when he was serving his first run as the POTUS, Trump wrote on X, "I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center."

After the Afghan fugitive was killed in May 2011, Trump took to social media and wrote, "Of course, we should have captured the enemy long before we did. I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center. President (Bill) Clinton famously missed his shot. We paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars & they never told us he was living there. Fools!"

In this 2000 book, the POTUS wrote, "One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama is public enemy Number One, and U.S. jetfighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later, it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis."

Fact Check: False, Trump's book didn't predict the 9/11 attacks

The claim made by Donald Trump that his 2000 book predicted the 9/11 attacks is not true, as there was nothing original or clairvoyant in the reference to Osama in his book. The book did not do anything more than point to him as one of many threats to US security.

Moreover, as for the mention of the World Trade Centre, Trump did indeed say that the US was at risk of an attack that would make the 1993 World Trade Center bombing pale by comparison. 

Interestingly, he was referring to the February 1993 van-bomb attack below the North Tower of the WTC in New York City, where a 606 kg bomb was intended to make the tower collapse onto the South Tower, taking down both skyscrapers and killing tens of thousands of people. 

However, the plan failed in scale, killing six people and injuring over 1,000.

Furthermore, Trump had also claimed that he made predictions on the Afghan fugitive when "nobody really knew who he was", but Laden was well-known to the CIA, as he also fought in the American-backed operations against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.