President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani offered different messages on Friday commemorating the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001. It has been a quarter of a century since the terror attacks on the World Trade Center, which killed nearly 3,000 people and in countless ways changed the trajectory of the nation. Friday's anniversary is a somber day when political leaders put aside partisan differences to honor the victims.
Mamdani, who serves as the mayor of the city where the attacks occurred, attended the memorial in downtown Manhattan where the twin towers once stood. Trump, meanwhile, attended a ceremony at the Pentagon, which was also attacked on 9/11 that resulted in the deaths of 184 people. It was the second consecutive year that the president has opted to attend the ceremony there instead of New York City.
Vice President JD Vance attended the ceremony in New York. Mamdani addressed the anniversary in a video posted Friday morning on X. We remember the people who opened their homes to those who could not get home.
We remember the workers who carried their colleagues down hundreds of stairs, then turned around and went back up to find someone else who needed help,” he said. There is a “sacred obligation to those who were stolen from us to care for one another as they cared for strangers, to live lives worthy of the sacrifices they made, and to build a city worthy of their courage,” the mayor said. That is how we remember.” Meanwhile, multiple Republican lawmakers, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, have said Mamdani should not attend the ceremony.
Some, such as former Republican Governor George Pataki, have taken issue with people Mamdani has not explicitly distanced himself from. Pataki told City & State New York earlier in September, “With respect to the mayor, I think anyone who doesn’t intentionally distance themselves from [left-wing streamer] Hasan Piker, who has said that America deserved the attacks of September 11th, should not be there." Mamdani condemned Piker's comments about 9/11 during the mayoral debate last year, and Piker has since disavowed them. An online petition against the mayor’s presence gained more than 100,000 signatures.
The petition cites the mayor's associations with individuals, including Piker and other politicians and figures, whom organizers describe as controversial, as reasons he should not attend. Democratic leaders, along with Mamdani’s Republican rival in the 2025 mayoral race, Curtis Sliwa, have supported his presence at the 25th anniversary remembrance, and the mayor has repeatedly said he will attend on Friday. New York City mayors have traditionally attended the annual September 11 remembrance ceremonies at Ground Zero.
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