Add The New York Post on Google Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani — who led the Big Apple through Sept. 11, 2001 — said there was “no question” that Mayor Zohran Mamdani should skip the memorial ceremonies marking the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks.
Giuliani — whose steady leadership in the aftermath of the attacks earned him the nickname “America’s mayor” — said the notion of Mamdani attending the memorials this week “offends me” during an interview on Newsmax Sunday.
“The reality is this ceremony is for the families and for America to remember historically,” Giuliani said.
“Having lost friends there and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he’s coming,” he said of Mamdani.
The 82-year-old ex-mayor also claimed that Mamdani “doesn’t agree that September 11 was an Islamic terrorist attack on the United States Of America,” before going off on an anti-Muslim conspiracy-laced rant.
He spewed baseless claims that Mamdani, who is a practicing Muslim, was part of a global Islamic plot to “dominate” the western world.
“Too many Americans fall for that Islamic propaganda, which is the reason they’re taking over certain parts of America and certain parts of Europe,” he raved.
Giuliani even suggested Mamdani was worse than the 9/11 hijackers — saying terror mastermind Osama Bin Laden was open about his hatred of the US, but that the mayor “is trying to hide it.”
The Republican former mayor’s diatribe made him one of the most prominent voice so far to call for Mamdani to stay away from memorial ceremonies this week, a demand which several 9/11 victim’s families have voiced and an online petition has endorsed with nearly 100,000 signatures.
Those demands largely stemmed from Mamdani’s associations with various controversial figures who have condemned America, laid the blame of 9/11 on US foreign policy or associated with known terrorists.
Former New York Gov. George Pataki — in office during the attacks that killed more than 2,700 people in the city — also called on Mamdani to stay home, telling City and State the mayor was too close to people like far-left influencer Hasan Piker who have blamed America for the terror plots.
“With respect to the mayor, I think anyone who doesn’t intentionally distance themselves from Hasan Piker — who has said that America deserved the attacks of September 11th — should not be there,” Pataki told the outlet Thursday.
“Anyone who has refused to reject the phrase ‘globalize the intifada,’ which unequivocally calls for violence against Jews, not just in Israel but anywhere in the world, should not be at that site,” he added.
Mamdani has rejected the Twitch streamer’s infamous past comment that “America deserved 9/11” — as has Piker himself — but Hizzoner nonetheless continued to associate with him.
“I think [Mamdani] has two choices: reject those extremist views against America and calling for violence against Jews, or voluntarily decide it’s not in the families’ and the victims’ interest for him to be there,” Pataki said.
New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman has also joined the calls against Mamdani’s attendance on similar grounds.
But Blakeman’s Democratic opponent this fall, Gov. Kathy Hochul, disagreed wholesale — arguing Mamdani failing to show would be an enormous slap in the face to the victim families who aren’t opposed to his attendance.
“He absolutely should be there. He is the mayor of New York City and I have utmost respect for the small number of families that have expressed that, but I think it would be more insulting to the vast majority if he did not come,” Hochul said Monday, when asked about Giuliani’s comments at Brooklyn’s West Indian Day parade.
“It’s important that he show that we are reunited in our opposition to terrorism. We stand out with our law enforcement, our first responders and the families that have lost loved ones,” she told reporters. “This is a communal event. It should not be a decisive one the way the Republicans are trying to make it be.”
Mamdani has given no indication that he would give in to demands and change his schedule this week — repeating a statement from July that he would attend the memorial.
“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,” his office said.
— Additional reporting by Georgett Roberts
