Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump took different approaches to marking the 23rd year since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, with the GOP presidential nominee starting the day in campaign mode.
In yet another contrast to the former president, Harris, along with President Joe Biden, opted to mark the anniversary more somberly. The Democratic nominee was not slated to make public remarks at ceremonies Wednesday in the three locations struck by hijacked jets, while Trump began the day after his combative debate with Harris by phoning in to the “Fox & Friends” morning show.
Harris and Biden started the day of remembrance with separate statements issued on official White House letterhead.
“On this day 23 years ago, terrorists believed they could break our will and bring us to our knees. They were wrong. They will always be wrong. In the darkest of hours, we found light,” Biden said. “And in the face of fear, we came together — to defend our country, and to help one another. That is why terrorists targeted us in the first place: our freedom, our democracy, our unity.”
Harris said the al-Qaida operatives who hijacked four airliners that day had “failed,” adding: “In the days that followed, we were all reminded that unity is possible in America. … We fought for the country we love and the ideals we cherish. All of this work continues today.”
Trump struck a less unifying tone on Wednesday morning, calling the Tuesday night debate “rigged” and claiming that Harris appeared to have been given the ABC News moderators’ questions in advance. (He presented no evidence to support that claim, however.)
“I mean, I’ll be honest, I watched her talk, and I said, you know, she seems awfully familiar with the questions, and you get pretty good at that stuff after a while,” he said of the vice president. “But when I saw how, how totally rigged that was.”
He also repeated a line from the debate on foreign policy, contending that should Harris become president, “Israel will not exist within two years from now.” And on the Biden-ordered chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, Trump told Fox of the Biden administration: “These clowns had no idea what to do. They had [then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark] Milley, who’s incompetent. They had Biden, who’s incompetent.
“All of the people are incompetent, nobody ever gets fired,” he added. “They don’t fire anybody. They let them just stay on, retire, no problem. … They left billions of dollars’ worth of equipment behind. You had 13 dead [American] soldiers.”
A YouGov snap poll of 2,166 registered voters who watched at least some of the debate released Wednesday found 54 percent thought Harris won, compared with 31 percent who thought Trump won.
About two hours after Trump spoke to Fox, the general election foes, for the second time in 24 hours, shook hands at Ground Zero in New York City. Harris made the first handshake happen Tuesday night at the start of their lone planned debate. On Wednesday morning, Trump patted her right hand with his left as they shook, in a warmer scene than their testy showdown hours earlier.
Biden and Harris were scheduled to visit all three sites where al-Qaida operatives used passenger airliners to kill nearly 3,000 Americans on U.S. soil. Trump was also scheduled to visit Shanksville, Pa., where one of the hijacked planes crashed on Sept. 11. Only Biden and Harris participated in a late afternoon ceremony at the Pentagon.
But neither was scheduled to deliver spoken remarks at any of the three ceremonies, a sign of how somber and nonpartisan the White House wanted the day’s official remembrances to be — especially during the homestretch of a divisive election cycle, and following the fiery debate.
The official Sept. 11 death toll was set at 2,977 people. That included 2,753 people in New York, 184 at the Pentagon and 40 in Shanksville, where the 9/11 Commission concluded the al-Qaida operatives at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93 had crashed the plane after a passenger revolt.
The commission concluded after months of investigation that the lead hijacker intended to “crash his airliner into symbols of American democracy, the Capitol or the White House.”
“He was defeated by alerted, unarmed passengers of Flight 93,” the commission said in its final report, referring to information about the other attacks via a series of GTA airphone and cellphone calls that passengers and crew members made in the hijacking’s early moments. There were no survivors.
Trump used the prime-time debate and Wednesday morning Fox News appearance to appeal almost exclusively to his conservative base. Harris, on the other hand, often appeared to be speaking to independent voters and Trump-fatigued Republicans on Tuesday night. She continued that call for unity on the Sept. 11 anniversary.
“Today, I will travel to the hallowed ground of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania to honor the victims and their families,” Harris said in her statement. “As I do so, I will also reflect on the incredible selflessness and courage of the American people. And as we commemorate this day, we should all reflect on what binds us together as one: the greatest privilege on Earth, the pride and privilege of being an American.”
As Trump criticized the debate moderators during his Wednesday morning cable news appearance, GOP strategist Scott Jennings said Trump should be spending more time talking about still-high prices and illegal immigration.
“You can’t complain about the refs,” he told CNN, using a basketball metaphor, “if you’re missing your jump shots.”
Just after 12:30 p.m. EDT in Shanksville, Biden and Harris were led to a white wreath and they both bowed their heads for a few moments, according to reporters traveling with them. The duo was then led to a sandstone boulder that marks the United flight’s point of impact in the Pennsylvania field.
Trump later participated in a separate wreath-laying ceremony in Pennsylvania. Media cameras caught him talking to an escort and others near the boulder memorial — but were too far away to capture the conversations. He appeared to flash his signature thumbs-up while taking a picture with a small group. Meanwhile, Biden and Harris spent time behind closed doors at a volunteer fire department, where the president had pizza and beers brought to first-responders and family members.
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