{"id":344708,"date":"2026-09-12T04:20:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T04:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/344708\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T04:20:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T04:20:34","slug":"gov-kathy-hochul-leaves-9-11-ceremony-early-to-go-on-cnn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/344708\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Kathy Hochul leaves 9\/11 ceremony early to go on CNN"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul dipped out of the ceremony<\/a> marking the 25th anniversary of the 9\/11 terror attacks early on Friday to do an interview on CNN.<\/p>\n

Hochul, who is seeking re-election this year, left the solemn annual memorial<\/a> event at the Ground Zero reflecting pool just before 11 a.m. as family members of the victims were still reading the names of the 2,977 people killed on Sept. 11, 2001,\u00a0along with the six slain\u00a0in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n

Follow live updates as America honors the 25th anniversary of 9\/11, in NYC and across the nation<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI saw a lot of pain this morning, I hugged a lot of families and saw little babies that never knew their grandparents. And it\u2019s a hard time for New Yorkers, but we really do come through in the toughest of times together, more united,\u201d she told Wolf Blitzer as the name-reading was ongoing.<\/p>\n

Hochul left the solemn ceremony at the reflecting pool just before 11 a.m. Friday as the list of names of victims killed on Sept. 11, 2001 were being read \u2014 so she could sing her own praises on CNN. Getty Images<\/p>\n

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani (right) at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum plaza in lower Manhattan on Friday, Sept. 11, 2026. Paul Martinka for NY Post<\/p>\n

The Democrat, who is seeking a second, full four-year term in November, also discussed Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s recent release of thousands of pages<\/a> of documents related to the air quality in Lower Manhattan after 9\/11, saying New Yorkers \u201cwere let down\u201d by the city and state\u2019s misrepresentations.<\/p>\n

Mamdani stayed for the full program, along with former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who serves as the chairman of the the National September 11 Memorial & Museum\u2019s board of trustees.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to thank all the dignitaries that are here and families that stayed until the end, because everyone one of these names matter,\u201d Michael Massaroli, who read the final names at the ceremony, said.<\/p>\n

But Hochul had already long wrapped her interview with Blitzer by then.<\/p>\n

A person pauses at the 9\/11 memorial Friday morning ahead of a ceremony commemorating the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Getty Images<\/p>\n

During the sit-down, she also highlighted her admin\u2019s initiatives like increasing police patrols around Jewish institutions<\/a> ahead of High Holidays.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve allocated over $70 million, a tripling of the money that have been allocated just a few years ago, to give to synagogues and places that need to be secure, money for security cameras, different lighting, different ways that people can feel safer,\u201d Hochul said, also praising her state-level initiative to implement protest \u201cbuffer zones\u201d around houses of worship.<\/p>\n

The governor separately announced a $2.2 million state grant<\/a> to fund free admission to the 9\/11 Museum every Sunday for New York residents and students.<\/p>\n

Hochul Press Secretary Kara Cumoletti defended the governor\u2019s decision to leave the ceremony early, pointing fingers at Vice President J.D. Vance, who she claimed left at the same time.<\/p>\n

More coverage on the 25th Anniversary of 9\/11:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe governor departed the ceremony at the same time she does every year, alongside former presidents and Vice President Vance,\u201d Hochul\u2019s spokesperson wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe then went on national television to commemorate the 25th anniversary of September 11th, the victims, and their enduring impact on New York. Trying to manufacture a controversy out of that is both false and beneath the solemnity of the day,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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Hochul\u2019s GOP challenger for governor, Bruce Blakeman<\/a>, was also at Friday\u2019s ceremony.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Nassau County executive also left the \u201cvip area\u201d of the memorial mid-ceremony, per a spokesperson, but he did so during the reading of his nephew\u2019s name, a court officer who perished during the attacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cBruce Blakeman was at the Memorial today as he has for the last 25 years and after had lunch with his family. He later attended the NYS Court Officers Memorial for his nephew Sgt. Tommy Jurgens, Sgt. Mitchell Wallace and Captain Harry Thompson. Tonight he will attend services in Manhattan for Rosh Hashanah.\u201d Blakeman spokesperson Chris Boyle said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York Gov. Kathy Hochul dipped out of the ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the 9\/11 terror…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5301,113412,34583,5058,426,57,9,11,10,58,7037],"class_list":["post-344708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-9-11","tag-9-11-25th-anniversary","tag-9-11-memorial","tag-cnn","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-us-news","tag-world-trade-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344708","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=344708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}