Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is calling on Mayor Zohran Mamdani to voluntarily step aside from the 25th anniversary Sept. 11 commemoration, arguing that the day belongs to grieving families, not to a politician whose past remarks about radical Islam have drawn a growing backlash.
Giuliani made the case during a Tuesday appearance on Newsmax's "Bianca Across America", framing his appeal not as a demand but as a matter of basic decency. The man who led New York through the worst terrorist attack in American history stopped short of insisting Mamdani stay away. Instead, he suggested the current mayor make what Giuliani called "a gracious act" and bow out on his own.
The backdrop: Mamdani, a Muslim, announced last week that he will attend the Sept. 11, 2026, ceremony despite a petition from victims' relatives urging organizers to exclude him. The petition, described as growing, centers on Mamdani's past comments about radical Islam and the Sept. 11 attacks, comments whose specific content was not detailed in Giuliani's interview but that have clearly struck a nerve with families who lost loved ones that day.
Giuliani chose his words carefully. He did not call Mamdani names or question his right to hold office. He aimed squarely at what the anniversary means to the people who lived through it.
"I think Mayor Mamdani has to take into consideration that the most important thing here, to me at least in terms of the human part of it, are the feelings of these people that went through an indescribable experience."
He went further, sketching out the kind of statement he believes Mamdani could make. Giuliani suggested the mayor could acknowledge that families may have misunderstood his past remarks, then step aside anyway, not because of political pressure, but out of simple respect.
"He may say 'they misunderstand what I say.' I don't think they do, but I'm sure he says that. 'But out of deference to their feelings, I'm not going to make that day more difficult for them.'"
The former mayor was blunt about one thing: the attacks were carried out in the name of radical Islam, and that reality cannot be separated from the families' reaction to Mamdani's presence.
"I know these people were killed in the name of his religion."
Giuliani added that there is "no point in evoking hurt on them" and that the day "is not about" Mamdani. It is about the people who suffered an indescribable loss.
Mamdani has shown no sign of reconsidering. His public statement last week cast his planned attendance as an act of solidarity with the very people asking him to stay away.
"I will proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack by standing alongside them at this year's 9/11 commemoration."
The statement frames his attendance as honoring victims. But a growing number of those victims' relatives see it differently, and they are not alone. The president of the Catholic League has also called on Mamdani to stay away, citing concerns about his past comments on radical Islam and the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mamdani's tenure has already generated a string of controversies that extend well beyond this dispute. Israeli leaders across the political spectrum condemned him after he called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "war criminal," drawing bipartisan rebuke.
His administration has also faced scrutiny on public safety. Under his watch, hate crimes have surged in New York City, with Jewish residents bearing a disproportionate share of the violence, a pattern that has raised pointed questions about the climate his leadership has fostered.
And his governance decisions have drawn fire from multiple directions. Mamdani purged business leaders from the NYC Mayor's Fund advisory board in a move critics viewed as ideologically driven, and his judicial screening panel drew outrage for including a lawyer who represented a cop killer while seating zero Jewish members.
On the fiscal front, an independent study found that Mamdani's flagship universal childcare program will cost billions more than he promised, another mark against an administration that has repeatedly struggled to match its rhetoric with responsible execution.
What makes Giuliani's argument notable is its restraint. He did not demand Mamdani be barred from the ceremony. He did not call for protests or political consequences. He asked the mayor to weigh the feelings of people who watched family members die, and to decide whether his presence would make their pain worse.
Giuliani also spoke about his own spiritual journey during the interview. He described receiving last rites several months ago and said he has "become much more spiritual," spending more time reading about and studying his Catholic faith. He recounted a recent meeting with Pope Leo XIV at the Canticle of Peace prayer gathering in the Vatican's Pontifical Gardens, calling the pope "a nice, regular man" who "talks to you like you want to talk to him."
That personal turn gave his comments about the 9/11 ceremony added weight. Giuliani was not speaking as a partisan looking for a fight. He was speaking as a man who led a city through unspeakable loss, who nearly died himself in the years since, and who believes the anniversary belongs to the families, period.
Several questions remain unanswered. The specific Mamdani remarks that have angered families were not detailed in the interview. The size and structure of the petition, whether it is a formal document or an informal coalition, is unclear. And no one has explained what mechanism, if any, could actually prevent a sitting mayor from attending a public ceremony in his own city.
Mamdani may have every legal right to stand at Ground Zero on Sept. 11. But Giuliani's point was never about rights. It was about decency, and whether a mayor who has spent his tenure provoking one controversy after another can summon enough of it to put grieving families first.
