Did Donald Trump predict 9/11 attacks? Tycoon made shock warning in 2000 book

US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump "warned" of the horrific September 11 attack on the World Trade Center in a book published less than two years before the world's worst terror strikes happened, it is being claimed.

While laying into the then President Bill Clinton, Trump's book The America We Deserve, referenced fears of an atrocity on the Twin Towers and named Osama Bin Laden as a threat to the United States.

In the book, published in January 2000, he referred to the 1993 less severe attack on the Twin Towers. He said the US was in danger of “the sort of terrorist attacks that will make the [1993] bombing of the World Trade Center look like kids playing with firecrackers”.

He also spoke of the emerging threat of Osama Bin Laden not being taken seriously enough, adding: “One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin-Laden is public enemy number one, and US jet fighters 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."

It a later section he wrote: "We know who and what the threats are. The problem is that we’re totally mishandling them.”

The revelation has made Trump an unlikely hero among conspiracy theory circles with some branding him a modern-day Nostradamus and others hoping he will expose the "truth about the run-up to 9/11 within the US" if elected.

There are many unproven conspiracy theories around the New York terror attacks. Some claim the atrocities were planned from within the US as a way of getting public support for military strikes on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Trump secured help from a group of ex-White House domestic and foreign policy advisers, to turn his ideas into policies.

Trump's so-called prediction of the horror strikes and several references to the Bush administration’s handling of events leading up to them have led many conspiracists to claim he is "giving off messages" that he will expose the truth about it all if elected as president.

Trump has been critical of George W Bush, who was in power when 9/11 happened, saying numerous times the Twin Towers "came down on his watch". 

And it seems Trump agrees with his new status as Nostradamus.

In interview on the Alex Jones Radio Show, he said: "I said in that book that we better be careful with this guy named Osama bin Laden. 

"Nobody really knew who he was. But he was nasty. He was saying really nasty things about our country and what he wants to do to it. 

"I talked to you about Osama bin Laden, you better take him out. I said he’s going to crawl under a rock. You better take him out. And now people are seeing that, they’re saying, 'You know, Trump predicted Osama bin Laden' – which actually is true.

"And two years later, a year and a half later he knocked down the World Trade Center."

On US TV topical program, MSNBC’s The Morning Joe Show, host Joe Scarborough appeared shocked about the ‘predictions’. 

He said: "He predicted, basically predicted, the attacks from Osama bin Laden.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait…wait. OK, hold on a second. Is this really Trump before 9/11? Have you read this?

“Are we making…? Did someone…? Did you make this up?”