Mamdani shares pleasantries with Rudy Giuliani as families gather at WTC memorial for 9/11 anniversary

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani shook hands with former Mayor Rudy Giuliani as families, mourners and politicians gathered at the site of the September 11 attacks, 25 years after the devastation.

Mamdani, who was 9 years old and in his fourth grade classroom on the Upper West Side when the World Trade Center was hit , has faced an avalanche of anti-Muslim rhetoric and pleas from right-wing critics, including Giuliani , to avoid this week’s 9/11 ceremonies.

They could be seen briefly chatting and shaking hands before they each parted ways at Friday’s solemn ceremony in lower Manhattan.

The city’s first Muslim mayor has steered this week’s commemorative events to ensure focus remains on the families, victims, first responders and the city’s recovery, and his office released thousands of never-before-seen documents that appeared to reveal that Giuliani’s administration and subsequent mayors knew the dangers of the toxic aftermath despite assuring the public of lower Manhattan’s safety.

Giuliani, once seen as “America’s mayor” in the wake of the attacks, has spent the last several years in courtrooms across the country battling criminal indictments, bankruptcy and a defamation lawsuit surrounding the 2020 presidential election as he became consumed by baseless conspiracy theories.

The 82-year-old former mayor joined pleas from right-wing figures calling on Mamdani to avoid Friday’s memorial. Giuliani has said his presence “offends” him and claimed Mamdani is “disturbing the people who are the most important people at that celebration.”

“He stands in direct support of the movement that killed their children,” Giuliani said last week . “You’d have to be a fool to resist that.”

Twenty-five years ago, a commercial airliner hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, the first of four attacks on September 11, 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 people and set in motion a series of profoundly world-changing events.

Mourning Americans are gathering across the country and at the site of the attacks for a familiar annual ritual: reading the names of the people who were killed at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania.

A ceremony at the site of the Twin Towers began with a tolling bell and a moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., the moment the first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, hit the 96th floor of the skyscraper.

More moments of silence followed to recognize the moment a second plane struck the building, when the towers collapsed, when the Pentagon was hit, and when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania , after passengers fought back against the plane’s hijackers.

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