From former presidents to current City Council members, politicians of all levels of government representing a wide range of ideologies each paid their respects in Lower Manhattan Friday, honoring the victims and the heroes of the Sept. 11 attacks on the day\u2019s 25th anniversary.<\/p>\n
To the sound of bagpipes, some put away old rivalries for a few hours.<\/p>\n
Like former Mayor Bill de Blasio and ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who caught up with Gov. Kathy Hochul standing behind them.<\/p>\n
Rudy Giuliani, who was lionized as \u201cAmerica\u2019s Mayor\u201d after the attack, chatted paces away.<\/p>\n
Outgoing Rep. Adriano Espaillat embraced old ally Cuomo, who then turned to State Attorney General Letitia James \u2014 whose 2021 sexual harassment report on Andrew Cuomo helped end his career.<\/p>\n
Standing in for President Donald Trump, who honored the anniversary at the Pentagon, was Vice President JD Vance. He was seen embracing former Mayors Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.<\/p>\n
Nearby, U.S. Commerce Secretary and former Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick was there to honor the 658 employees he lost in the North Tower on that fateful day.<\/p>\n
Though speeches from politicians were not allowed, the ceremony, at times, got political.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9\/11 families,\u201d said Terry Strada, a widow whose husband, Tom, was killed in the attacks.<\/p>\n
She called out dignitaries at Ground Zero for what she alleged is continued protection of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its potential harboring of the Al-Qaeda attackers.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Trump can still change that. Tell the Saudis to stop lying. Tell them that if they want to be friends with the USA, they cannot continue to deny all of this, all of the pain, all of the destruction that we have all been suffering through,\u201d Strada said during the annual commemoration ceremony.<\/p>\n
\u201cVice President Vance, thank you for being here today. Please carry that message back,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Then, after weeks of Giuliani advocating for Mayor Zohran Mamdani to skip the ceremony<\/a>, and Mamdani releasing hundreds of thousands of pages<\/a> of never-before-seen 9\/11 documents, the pair met.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the animosity seems to melt away. It\u2019s really hard to harbor hard feelings towards someone, despite what you may have said days earlier, when you\u2019re surrounded by an environment: the reflecting pool, the names inscribed in the stone, and the families that are looking so sad,\u201d Hochul said, describing the interaction on CNN.<\/p>\n Republican gubernatorial candidate and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman was also at the ceremony. He was honoring the memory of his nephew, Senior Court Officer Thomas Jurgans, who died trying to evacuate people from the World Trade Center, according to the Blakeman campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From former presidents to current City Council members, politicians of all levels of government representing a wide range…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[113412,111557,25,8889,9,24,12,56,63,65,64,27,200],"class_list":["post-344594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-9-11-25th-anniversary","tag-9-11-anniversary","tag-app-top-stories","tag-bernadette-hogan","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344594","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=344594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}