Ground Zero Is Hallowed Ground. Every Four Years, It’s Also a Political Stage

Mourners will descend on Lower Manhattan Wednesday morning — as they have every Sept. 11 for 23 years — for the annual commemoration and reading of the names of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the 9/11 terror attacks.
For the sixth time since that day, the solemn ceremony will come in the midst of a high-stakes U.S. presidential election.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, as well as President Joe Biden, will attend the ceremony at Ground Zero, according to the White House. Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, is also expected to make an appearance at the 9/11 Memorial and a Manhattan fire house, though his schedule has not been confirmed.
Should the candidates cross paths in New York, it will be the second time in two days, coming after Tuesday night’s presidential debate in Philadelphia. But if anyone is expecting the political fireworks from the debate stage to bleed into the 9/11 commemoration, past election-year Ground Zero ceremonies suggest the event will be relatively free of drama given the implied — and mostly followed — rule that the memorial is not the place to campaign.
Still, this year’s ceremony is taking place against the backdrop of a highly competitive and heated presidential race that has seen Harris and Trump spar over issues of national security.
Attending the 9/11 commemoration when it falls during an election year provides opportunities for presidential candidates to show themselves as “visible and statesman like in showing their respect” to those killed during the attack, Robert Y. Shapiro, a professor of political science at Columbia University, told Newsweek.
It also places them “front and center” on issues of national security and terrorism, he said.
While polls show terrorism is not top of voters’ minds this year in an election largely focused on the economy and immigration, Republicans have been working to keep national security matters in focus.
Particularly, the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan — a war that started shortly after the 9/11 attacks — which the GOP sees as a potential weak spot for Harris, given that the chaotic exit happened while she was vice president. Democrats have noted that the withdrawal ordered by Biden followed a deal with the Taliban brokered by the Trump administration.
Wednesday’s ceremony also comes in the wake of backlash against Trump for holding a campaign event at Arlington National Ceremony to mark the anniversary of the suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport that killed 13 U.S. service members during the withdrawal. Trump said he was invited by the family of one of those service members. After the Harris campaign accused him of politicizing the military, a number of Gold Star families came out against Harris, criticizing her for ignoring their invitation.
Despite that, there is no indication that Wednesday’s ceremony in New York will allow an opportunity for either Trump or Harris to speak, much less campaign. Shapiro underscored how critical it is for candidates to avoid using the ceremony for political gains.
“It is very important in general given that this is hallowed ground. Further, given the run-in that Trump had at Arlington, avoiding politics would be wise, especially for Trump. Of course, politics will be in the air,” he said.
Both Harris and Trump have attended the 9/11 anniversary ceremony in past years, as have many politicians running for or holding office. Harris was in New York last year standing in for Biden, who was traveling overseas, as was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was running for the Republican nomination at the time.
The Associated Press reported that while the 2023 event drew a bipartisan coalition of politicians, they did not appear to interact much.
In one of the rare instances of the country’s caustic politics breaking through to the ceremony, Rudy Giuliani, who was the mayor of New York on 9/11, said he left last year’s event early due to comments Harris previously made comparing 9/11 to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
He also accused Harris of “cackling” at Ground Zero.
“This is the year where I couldn’t really stay. I almost felt like I wasn’t being true to the memory of the people who died on that day,” Giuliani told the right-wing pundit Benny Johnson.
President Biden, meanwhile, was there for the twentieth anniversary in 2021, which came nine months after Jan. 6, when Trump was in something of a political exile at Mar-a-Lago before announcing his intention to run in 2024.
For his part, Trump last attended the 9/11 ceremony when he was running for president in 2016, along with his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
She was sick with pneumonia at the time and left early, though her campaign did not divulge her illness to reporters until days later. Video footage that showed her appearing unsteady at the ceremony went viral, feeding into conspiracy theories about her health.
On the ten year anniversary in 2011, President Barack Obama stood shoulder-to-shoulder with former President George W. Bush at Ground Zero, three years after Obama ran a campaign largely focused as a repudiation of Bush’s post-9/11 presidency. Clinton, then Obama’s secretary of state, was at that ceremony as well.
Then, a year later, when Obama was running against Mitt Romney in 2012, victims’ families raised concerns that political disagreements were blocking progress on a 9/11 museum and banned politicians from speaking at the ceremony.
If Harris and Trump don’t cross paths at Ground Zero on Wednesday, they will have one more chance before the day is out: both campaigns say their candidates will make stops at the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania — a state that happens to be a must-win for both camps in November.