Rudy Giuliani urges Mamdani to not attend 9/11 anniversary

Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City who later worked as President Trump’s personal lawyer, publicly criticized current Mayor Zohran Mamdani for planning to attend a 9/11 commemoration ceremony at Ground Zero on Friday.

“Frankly, whatever he’d like to say, he doesn’t agree that September 11th was an Islamic terrorist attack on the United States of America,” Giuliani said in an interview with Newsmax on Sunday. “Having lost friends there, and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he’s coming.”

Giuliani led the city through the aftermath of 9/11 as mayor. Now, he has taken to espousing conspiracy theories about Muslims and Mamdani. He is the most prominent of a series of conservatives who have called on Mamdani not to attend the ceremony, including in a petition with 100,000 signatures that cites the mayor’s support for people who are viewed as being “dismissive of American institutions or insufficiently critical of extremist ideologies.”

Giuliani’s criticism was heavily tinged with anti-Muslim sentiment and false claims about Mamdani’s beliefs.

“They have every desire to take us over. This is not, they want to be just another religion, they want to dominate us,” Giuliani said of Muslims. “Mamdani is a clear supporter of that.”

Mamdani has already responded to an online petition that wanted to ban him from attending the ceremony. He also signed two executive orders last week related to 9/11, one to overhaul the city’s emergency preparedness plans and one to establish the day as a “Citywide Day of Remembrance and Service.”

“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, reaffirming that we will never forget the solemn day felt by all of us who call this city home and, frankly, by all of us who call this country home,” Mamdani said in July.

Mamdani will be with four of the five living presidents at Ground Zero, and Vice President Vance. Trump will be at the ceremony at the Pentagon, another site of the 9/11 attacks, where he will give a speech.