New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani showed up at the 25th anniversary 9/11 remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero on Friday, and the families who lost loved ones in the Twin Towers made clear he was not welcome.
More than 110,000 people had signed a petition urging Mamdani to stay away from the Lower Manhattan memorial. Former Republican Gov. George Pataki and former FDNY Commissioner Thomas von Essen both called on the mayor to skip the event. He came anyway.
Walter Matuza, whose father died on September 11, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the north tower above the 92nd-floor offices of Carr Futures brokerage, told Fox News Digital at the ceremony what he thought of the mayor’s decision.
“He showed up anyway. It does bother us.”
Matuza was among the victims’ families who helped launch the petition. His father, Walter Matuza Sr., was one of dozens of Carr Futures employees killed that morning. The brokerage’s offices sat on the 92nd floor of the north tower, directly in the path of the hijacked aircraft.
The opposition was not abstract. Mourners pointed to specific decisions by the mayor that they said disqualified him from standing on hallowed ground.
Mamdani appointed Ramzi Kassem as his administration’s chief counsel. Kassem previously represented a Guantánamo detainee linked, according to Fox News Digital’s reporting, to an al Qaeda terrorist plot. The mayor has also faced criticism over his association with online streamer Hasan Piker, who once said America “deserved 9/11.”
Steven, an attendee who traveled from Hobe Sound, Florida, called Kassem’s appointment “hideous” and labeled Mamdani’s presence “disrespectful” and “offensive.” He told Fox News Digital:
“I’ve been following that over the past couple weeks and I saw that I think they had upwards of 700,000 New Yorkers requesting him not to be here. I mean, as the mayor, I would assume he has the right to be here…. But who he represents and the people he’s affiliated with… I feel that he should stay away. I don’t feel that his presence here is wanted, and I think he should honor that as a human being.”
Steven’s figure of 700,000 does not match the petition’s stated tally of more than 110,000 signatures. The source of his higher number is unclear.
Mamdani is no stranger to public backlash. He previously drew sharp criticism for urging sweltering New Yorkers to keep their thermostats at 78 degrees, advice that landed about as well as his appearance at Ground Zero.
Mike, a former New Jersey police officer who gave only his first name, watched the Twin Towers burn from across the Hudson River on the morning of September 11, 2001. He then crossed into Manhattan to help relieve exhausted NYPD officers stuck at their posts.
Twenty-five years later, standing at the same memorial site, Mike offered a blunt assessment of the mayor’s attendance:
“Based on the rhetoric that he’s used in the past. Yeah, he probably should have skipped it. But, he did it and unfortunately people aren’t going to forget it.”
Not every mourner was hostile. John, an attendee who lost friends at Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm that suffered more than 650 deaths on 9/11, the most of any company in the Twin Towers, told Fox News Digital he was “fine” with Mamdani attending as long as the mayor was respectful to the fallen.
The petition by 9/11 families to block Mamdani from the ceremony had become a national story in the weeks leading up to Friday. Pataki, von Essen, and others made their opposition public. The mayor pressed ahead regardless.
Footage captured at the ceremony showed Mamdani approaching and greeting former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who led New York City through the aftermath of the attacks. Giuliani appeared to exchange brief pleasantries before turning and sitting down. An aide then began speaking to Mamdani.
The optics grew worse. A separate TV feed captured Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appearing to laugh and smile while a mourner was shown sobbing during the reading of victims’ names. New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov responded: “After thousands of families of victims of terror beg Mamdani not to show up, he stands there and laughs while families weep. This is NYC’s Mayor.” Rep. Randy Fine added: “They do not mourn this country, they mock it. Have some d*** respect.”
Michael Ragusa, reportedly head of Giuliani’s security, claimed the video was taken out of context, stating that multiple politicians from both parties were laughing and joking nearby. But for families still reading their loved ones’ names into the September air, context is a hard sell.
Mamdani’s administration has created a steady stream of controversy beyond the 9/11 dispute. His pied-à-terre tax fight has wound through the courts, and his decision to appoint Kassem as chief counsel drew objections long before the memorial ceremony put the issue back in the spotlight.
In a statement issued before the ceremony, Mamdani tried to redirect attention away from the controversy:
“[W]hat I want this week to be a focus on is on the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terror of September 11, and a focus also on the first responders who gave everything they could to this city and to the people who came together to try and help their fellow New Yorkers.”
He also said he is proud of New York and “love[s] this city [and] country.” Fox News Digital reached out to the mayor for further comment. No additional response was reported.
Two days before the ceremony, on September 9, 2026, Mamdani and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced a new memorial honoring 9/11 victims at 1 Police Plaza. The timing appeared calibrated to soften the backlash. The families were not persuaded.
Meanwhile, Mamdani’s City Hall has continued making decisions that test public patience. His administration made a cash-for-syringes program permanent, spending $3 million in opioid settlement funds, another policy that drew sharp criticism from New Yorkers who expect their government to prioritize accountability over ideology.
President Trump attended the Pentagon’s separate remembrance before departing Andrews Air Force Base for County Clare, Ireland. All living former presidents reportedly attended the Ground Zero ceremony. Mamdani stood among them, the host city’s mayor, surrounded by people who did not want him there.
The petition, the public statements from Pataki and von Essen, the 110,000-plus signatures, none of it mattered. Mamdani came to Ground Zero because he could. The families of the dead asked one thing of the man who runs their city: stay home. He refused.
A mayor who appoints a lawyer who defended a Guantánamo detainee, who keeps company with a figure who said America deserved 9/11, and who then insists on standing at the site where nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered, that mayor has a right to show up. But rights and judgment are not the same thing. The families who buried their parents, children, and friends at that site already knew the difference.
When more than a hundred thousand people sign a petition asking you to stay away from a grave, and you show up smiling, the problem is not the petition.
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