• Trump's assertion that his 2000 book warned of Osama bin Laden attacking the World Trade Center is inaccurate, with no such prediction found in the text.
  • The book mentions bin Laden briefly without linking him to a specific threat, while U.S. intelligence had flagged al-Qaeda risks years before 9/11.
  • Despite repeated fact-checks, Trump has continued to make this claim, including as recently as October 2025 during his second presidency.

A Misleading Narrative

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, contained a warning about Osama bin Laden orchestrating an attack on the World Trade Center, but fact-checks consistently debunk this assertion. In recent statements, Trump has emphasized, "You know I wrote about Bin Laden one year before the attack on the World Trade Center, and I said, 'You gotta go after Bin Laden.' It was in my book," suggesting that had officials heeded his advice, "you wouldn't have had the World Trade Center tragedy." However, a review of the book reveals only a fleeting reference to bin Laden, describing him as "a shadowy figure with no fixed address" without any predictive warning.

What the Record Shows

While the book does include a general prediction of a major terrorist attack worse than the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, it does not identify bin Laden or al-Qaeda as perpetrators. Dave Shiflett, the ghostwriter of the book, has even characterized the work as "his first work of fiction," adding context to its content. At the time of publication, bin Laden was already a known threat, having been on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list since June 7, 1999, and U.S. intelligence agencies had warned President Bill Clinton in December 1998 about al-Qaeda's plans for attacks in the U.S., including aircraft hijackings.

Ongoing Repetition Despite Corrections

Trump has maintained this false claim over the years, including during his 2016 campaign and into his second presidency, with recent instances noted in October 2025. Efforts to reach out for comment from Trump's representatives were unsuccessful, but sources familiar with the matter indicate that the claim has been fact-checked multiple times since 2019 without evidence to support it. This pattern of repetition raises questions about the narrative's persistence in political discourse, even as historical records clarify the timeline of pre-9/11 intelligence.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the specific details of the book's prediction; it has been updated to reflect that the warning was general and not tied to bin Laden.