OAN’s Brooke Mallory
1:19 PM – Sunday, September 10, 2023
President Joe Biden chose to send his vice president to the 9/11 event at Ground Zero on Monday rather than spend September 11th at the terrorist attack sites where 2,996 people lost their lives on that tragic day 22 years ago.
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As Biden returned from Asia with plans to commemorate the disaster at a military installation in Alaska, Vice President Kamala Harris stood between Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul and NYC Democrat Mayor Eric Adams at a ceremony, remembering the victims of the 2001 attacks in Lower Manhattan.
In the midst of Hochul and Harris’ animated discussion, the victim names at the National September 11th Memorial Plaza were read out by the victims’ families. Harris stayed for approximately an hour before boarding her aircraft back to Washington, D.C.
Mayor Adams, who has regularly criticized the White House’s handling of the migrant crisis that is depleting local resources, and Vice President Harris, did not seem to speak much or acknowledge each other.
Despite Biden’s recent rejection of Hochul, who was denied a meeting with him when she visited the White House on August 30th to discuss the flow of illegal border-crossers, she and Harris still seemed to be getting along.
80-year-old Biden departed Vietnam on Monday morning but will not be making it to the areas where the devastating 9/11 attacks occurred, like the Pentagon outside of Washington, D.C., the World Trade Center in New York, or the field where United Airlines Flight 93 fell in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
At Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, which serves as a refueling stop for Air Force One on return flights, the president will instead address service troops, first responders, and their families.
In honor of the late U.S. senator and combat veteran, Biden earlier that day paid a visit to the John Sidney McCain III Memorial in Hanoi and traded coins with a U.S. military veteran.
A 9/11 memorial installation was also installed by his staff on the executive mansion’s North Portico early on Monday, but no ceremony is planned for the president’s arrival in Washington, D.C., later this evening.
Former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump often conducted memorial ceremonies in one of the three locations where the aircraft crashed while they were in office.
Harris, 58, attended the ceremony at the site of the World Trade Center together with former mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg, Alejandro Mayorkas, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Kirsten Gillibrand.
Republicans, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who are both running for the GOP presidential bid in 2024, also flew to New York to meet with 9/11 victims’ families and to pay their respects to the first responders who lost their lives.
“No one who lived through the horror of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks can ever forget the agony and the anguish of that terrible day. It was a terrible day,” GOP favorite and former President Donald Trump said in a video posted to Truth Social.
“We will say a prayer for each of the beautiful families left behind, whose pain is beyond comprehension… God bless the memory of all of those who perished in the 911 attacks. We will never, ever forget,” he concluded.
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