Neither Blakeman\u2019s campaign nor Williams responded to a request for comment prior to publication. Anabilah-Azumah told The New Republic that his comments were not about 9\/11 victims, their families, or the first responders who acted that day, but were instead commentary on the militaristic shift that occurred in the country following the attack. \u201cI believe that elements within the US government orchestrated 9\/11 in order to get the public to accept mass surveillance and \u2018forever wars,\u2019\u201d Anabilah-Azumah told TNR.<\/p>\n
Local leaders were outraged by Blakeman\u2019s attachments. Democratic Representative Jerry Nadler, whose district includes Ground Zero, said that it was \u201cdownright appalling\u201d that Blakeman would \u201ccampaign with, and seek endorsements from dyed-in-the-wool 9\/11 conspiracy theorists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nadler\u2019s colleague Representative Nydia Velazquez shared his sentiment. \u201cI\u2019ve spent more than two decades fighting for 9\/11 victims and their families to get the care they need after that horrific day,\u201d she said. \u201cI never thought I\u2019d see someone, like Bruce Blakeman, running for governor while associating with 9\/11 conspiracy theorists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Neither Blakeman\u2019s campaign nor Williams responded to a request for comment prior to publication. Anabilah-Azumah told The New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10],"class_list":["post-343977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}