Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Mayor Zohran Mamdani exchanged a cordial handshake at Ground Zero on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, days after Giuliani publicly demanded Mamdani stay away from the ceremony.
The two men greeted each other Friday at the site where nearly 3,000 people were murdered on September 11, 2001. The New York Post reported the exchange was genial and brief, a striking contrast to the week of public confrontation that preceded it. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio also attended and spoke with Mamdani at the memorial "for a very long time, doing most of the talking."
The handshake capped a week in which Giuliani, 82, made clear he did not want Mamdani anywhere near the ceremony. On Sunday, the former mayor went on Newsmax and said Mamdani's attendance personally offended him. He claimed the current mayor "doesn't agree that September 11 was an Islamic terrorist attack on the United States of America."
Giuliani, who led the city through the worst attack on American soil, did not hold back during his Newsmax appearance. Just The News reported his full remarks, which framed the anniversary as sacred ground for the bereaved:
"The reality is this ceremony is for the families and for America to remember historically. Having lost friends there and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he's coming."
Giuliani also said the day demanded honest teaching, not spin. "Never forget means we have to teach people about it," he said. "We don't want to give them propaganda. We just want to give them the truth."
He was not the only one who wanted Mamdani to stay home. Over 110,000 people signed a petition opposing the mayor's attendance at the 25th anniversary ceremony. 9/11 families organized the petition drive, and the opposition drew support from first responders and survivors across the city.
Jeannette Puccio-Pick, whose father Joseph Pick was killed on the 94th floor of the South Tower when she was nine years old, put the families' anger in personal terms. Breitbart published her statement the day before the ceremony:
"The mayor affiliated himself politically, personally and professionally with those who have minimized and justified the murdering of my father."
She added directly: "We don't want you to come. We don't want you there." Despite that, Puccio-Pick said she would attend the ceremony regardless, to honor her father.
The opposition to Mamdani's presence was not simply about tone or symbolism. Critics pointed to specific associations. Mamdani campaigned with Brooklyn imam Siraj Wahhaj, who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. His chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, previously represented Ahmed al-Darbi, an al-Qaida operative who pleaded guilty to terrorism charges connected to the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker.
Retired Port Authority officers also demanded that Mamdani stay away from the ceremony, adding another layer of opposition from people who were at Ground Zero when the towers fell.
For families who lost someone that day, these associations are not abstract political disputes. They are a direct affront. Giuliani framed it that way, and the petition signers backed him up in volume.
Mamdani's response to the pressure was measured and indirect. Asked Tuesday about Giuliani's call for him to skip the ceremony, the mayor declined to engage personally:
"I think that the focus of memorial services should be on the New Yorkers who were killed that day, their families, the survivors, the first responders, I don't think it should be on politicians."
But the mayor also used the anniversary week to go on offense against his predecessors, without naming them. On September 8, his administration released more than 170,000 pages of previously undisclosed documents revealing what city and federal officials knew about toxic air conditions near Ground Zero after the attacks. The records contradicted years of public assurances that the air was safe to breathe.
Fox News reported that the documents showed asbestos levels at Stuyvesant High School's auditorium were roughly 500 times higher than the EPA's cleanup benchmark. Residents at Independence Plaza North still had asbestos levels more than double the EPA's risk-based clearance level as late as February 2003, over a year after the attacks.
A February 28, 2002 internal memo from the Bloomberg administration warned that the city could face "major public relations problems" and lawsuits if residents were not properly informed of the real health risks. The memo specifically referenced concerns raised by then-Congressman Jerrold Nadler:
"If Nadler's concerns are justified, we are not informing people of the real health risks in lower Manhattan, the City may face major public relations problems and is leaving itself open to a barrage of lawsuits."
Mamdani framed the document release as an act of accountability. "People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air," he said earlier in the week. "And then, when they began to contend with the symptoms of the illnesses that followed, the government that had not hesitated to send them into harm's way was nowhere to be found."
The mayor signed executive orders declaring September 11 a citywide "Day of Remembrance and Service" and updating the city's emergency preparedness procedures, moves that signaled he had no intention of ceding the anniversary to his critics.
Giuliani had made his position clear well before Friday. The handshake itself lasted only a moment. The Washington Examiner noted the two men shook hands briefly and appeared cordial before parting ways. Neither man made public remarks about the exchange afterward.
The civility at Ground Zero on Friday does not resolve the questions that drove the backlash. Mamdani's associations with figures linked to terrorism and extremism remain on the record. The 110,000-plus petition signatures remain on the record. The grief of families like Puccio-Pick's remains as raw as it was 25 years ago.
Mamdani tried to redirect the anniversary toward the government's post-9/11 failures on air quality, a legitimate issue, and one that the newly released documents support in damning detail. Thousands of first responders and downtown residents are still living with 9/11-related illnesses because officials told them the air was safe when internal records said otherwise.
But pivoting to a cover-up by prior administrations does not answer the specific objections Giuliani and the families raised. It changes the subject. The families did not ask Mamdani to release documents. They asked him not to come.
He came anyway. He shook Giuliani's hand. And nothing about the handshake addressed why more than a hundred thousand Americans, including first responders who risked everything at Ground Zero, did not want him there in the first place.
A handshake is easy. Answering for the company you keep is harder.
