NEW YORK: President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris stood alongside former President Donald Trump and his 2024 running mate JD Vance on Wednesday to mark the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the New York City site where hijacked planes crashed, killing nearly 3,000 people.
No speeches were scheduled for the ceremony at ground zero where planes brought down the World Trade Center's twin towers. Relatives began reading out the names of the dead.
Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, and Trump, her Republican rival, appeared together the morning after their contentious debate in Philadelphia, just eight weeks before the November 5 presidential election.
Harris and Trump shook hands and spoke just before lining up for the commemoration.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg also attended, standing between Biden and Trump.
After New York, Biden and Harris planned to fly to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where passengers on United Flight 93 managed to overpower hijackers and the plane crashed in a field, preventing another target from being hit. They will then return to the Washington area to visit a memorial at the Pentagon, which was also hit in the attacks.
“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 hours, we found light. And in the face of fear, we came together to defend our country and help each other,” Biden said in an early morning statement.
Trump, who also plans to visit the Pennsylvania monument, said Fox News Wednesday: “It was a very, very sad and horrible day. Nothing like it had ever happened before.”
Biden previously issued a proclamation honoring those who died as a result of the attacks, as well as the hundreds of thousands of Americans who volunteered for military service in their aftermath.
“We owe these patriots of the 9/11 generation a debt of gratitude we can never fully repay,” Biden said, citing deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq and other war zones, as well as the capture and killing of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and his deputy.
US congressional leaders on Tuesday posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to 13 of the military personnel killed in the August 26, 2021, suicide bombing at Kabul airport during the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
