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Trump Participates in a Steel Across America Event at the White House, Sep. 8, 2026

September 8, 2026 · The White House · 0:28:29

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump spoke at a Steel Across America event at the White House on September 8, 2026, three days before the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Frank Siller — whose brother Stephen, a firefighter, died at the World Trade Center — introduced the President and presented an American flag containing 9/11 steel from the South Tower. “It marks 25 years since a day that was etched forever into the memories of Americans,” the President said. “On 9/11, nearly 3,000 precious souls were stolen from us, killed by evil terrorists at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and on Flight 93… We will never forget, we say it and we mean it.”

The President recognized Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, whose firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, occupied the top floors of the World Trade Center and lost 658 employees. He retold Lutnick’s story in detail: at the office by 6 a.m. every morning for years, Lutnick took his son to school for the first time that morning at his wife’s urging, and watched the attack from the West Side Highway — “he said, ‘Oh my God, my people, my people.’” Lutnick, the President said, rebuilt the firm “bigger, stronger, better than it was even at the beginning” and gave much of its profit to the families of those who died.

Trump also credited his administration’s cleanup of Washington — “we did 81 monuments, statues, and fountains” restored, in what he called “one of the safest cities anywhere in the country” — and returned to Iran: “They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon… The blockade has been so powerful, so effective.”

Why it matters

The event binds the administration’s steel and manufacturing message to the 9/11 commemoration that anchors this month of the chronicle — the same week as the Pentagon observance paged in this series — with the Commerce Secretary’s own September 11 story as its human center. Steel is Commerce and trade policy; the vow repeated here is the defense frame Secretary of War Pete Hegseth carries.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Participates in a Steel Across America Event,” September 8, 2026 (official upload, embedded above; the upload’s description places the event in Washington, DC). Remarks as delivered at the event.