Oscar-winning filmmaker-actor and longtime, vocal Trump critic Ron Howard is trending after the President’s recent anecdote about two firefighters rescuing him near the U.S. Steel Building in New York City following the 9/11 terror attacks.X account MAGA 2028 US, aka @teaseryy, posted a picture of Ron Howard on Tuesday and captioned it:“Ron Howard said, ‘Trump is a self-serving, dishonest, morally bankrupt ego maniac who… is hustling the U.S.’ What's your response to Ron??”Howard, 72, used the same words to describe Trump in a January 2020 post on X. He wrote:“In the entertainment industry, many who have known/worked w/ Trump think that while his reality show was fun and ran a long time, he’s a self-serving, dishonest, morally bankrupt ego maniac who doesn’t care about anything or anyone but his fame & bank account & is hustling the US.”Back then, the Beautiful Mind director was responding to a user who asked:“Question: why is the smallest of achievements heralded as better than the second coming of Jesus when it comes to Obama, but with Trump it is only negativity from Hollywood & Democrats?”Before joining politics, Trump launched a reality TV series called The Apprentice, earning him fame in the early 2000s.Exploring Ron Howard’s past remarks about Donald TrumpAhead of the 2024 presidential election, Ron Howard was asked by Variety about the Trump-Vance campaign, because the director had adapted JD Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy into a 2020 Netflix movie. Howard stated:“I have been surprised and concerned by a lot of the rhetoric coming out of that campaign. There’s no version of me voting for Donald Trump to be President again, whoever the Vice President was. But given the experience that I had then 5,6 years ago. Yeah, I’d say that I’ve been surprised.”The Oklahoma-born actor continued:“And look, we gotta get out and vote for whomever. But be thoughtful. Listen to what the candidates are saying today; that’s what’s really relevant: it’s who they are today. And make a decision, an informed one.”Ron Howard also said he wasn’t “qualified” when fans urged him to run against Trump in 2020. He tweeted at the time:“That is very flattering, but I assure you I am not qualified. We need qualified and dedicated elected leaders.”In a June 2018 tweet, Trump misspelt “border” as “boarder” while calling out Democrats, to which Ron Howard replied:“Please learn to spell, Mr. President, and please stop trying to frighten US citizens with distorted information and shock rhetoric. So, 1930s fascist. Demagogue. Disappointing.”Immediately after winning the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump posted that the “only BAD thing” about the victory was that he didn’t have the time to “go through a long but winning trial on Trump U,” which was “too bad.” Ron responded:“Sorry, Mr. President-elect. Not buying this one and I doubt you would either, coming from anyone with your record of rationalization.”That same year, Ron Howard told BBC News that he “routinely characterizes” Trump as a “self-serving gas bag” and explained it as an American expression used to describe a person who “won’t shut up.” In the same interview, the Thirteen Lives director said he met Trump that made him realize that he is a “great, great self-promoter.”Ron Howard admitted that the real estate figure “built his brand” and was “selling” whatever Americans wanted to hear, but that didn’t impress the “voter” in him as he considered Trump lacking in both vision and leadership. Answering whether Donald could “do the job,” Ron Howard said:“I think he’d be overwhelmed and become a kind of a puppet or he’d push back and make mistakes.”Ron Howard has never clarified which side of the political aisle he is on. In 2020, he shared that the first time he cast his vote was in 1972 for Republican candidate Richard Nixon. Meanwhile, he endorsed Democratic candidate Barack Obama via the ‘Funny or Die’ campaign ahead of the 2008 election.In brief, an overview of Donald Trump’s latest comments about 9/11On September 8, 2026, Donald Trump was speaking at a White House event and described his alleged involvement in the rescue operations following the 9/11 attacks. He began:“For nine months, rescue and recovery crews worked day and night on the site. I want to just thank my people; I took a lot of my men. I was building a big building in New York, and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened. And they were, they had no hesitation; everybody went down with me… It was a big group of people. Wasn’t too much we could do, I’ll be honest; it was, you know, it was raw, and nobody’s seen anything like it, ever.”Trump continued:“We had other buildings; the United States Steel building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down; the truth is it creaked a lot, it creaked. It still creaks. But it never came down… I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two… big, strong guys, and I’m not the smallest guy in the world, they grabbed me under the arms and said, ‘Gotta get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I’m big.”The POTUS claimed the firemen lifted him and started running when he told them he could run by himself. He described their efforts as “amazing,” while noting that the building, now called the One Liberty Plaza, never really came down.Trump later clarified on Truth Social that it was “obviously not on the same day” as the World Trade Center collapse, “but shortly thereafter.” He added he was there with a “large group of construction workers” as well as his then-Head of Security Matthew Calamari. The politician also shared videos of him in the streets of NYC talking to reporters in the aftermath of the terror attacks.On that fateful day 25 years ago, Donald was reportedly having his usual day at the Trump Towers in midtown Manhattan, four miles away from the World Trade Center, according to several sources, including WION. On September 13, 2001, two days after the attacks, he spoke to NBC News from the streets of NYC. However, whether he was at the U.S. Steel Building or was rescued by firefighters is not part of the public record.