Families of 9/11 victims are pushing to bar New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani from the 25th anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero, citing a resurfaced social media post and his ties to a commentator who said America deserved the attacks.
Giovanni Galante lost his wife Grace when terrorists struck on September 11, 2001. Now he and other victims' families have organized a Change.org petition asking ceremony organizers to reconsider whether Mamdani should participate in this September's commemoration. The petition points to what families describe as the mayor's public record of minimizing the attacks, a record that drew fresh scrutiny when a 2023 post on X resurfaced in recent days.
In that post, Mamdani wrote: "Nearly 3,000 New Yorkers died on 9/11; 22 years later, the death hasn't stopped. We mourn our neighbors who died that day. The hundreds of thousands who died in the wars that followed. The unknown millions injured & displaced. In their memory, we work toward a better world." The post drew immediate backlash from critics who said it treated the murder of nearly 3,000 Americans as just one item on a longer list of grievances, lumping the victims of a terrorist attack together with the broader consequences of the wars that followed, as if the two carried equal moral weight.
Fox News Digital reported that the outlet reached out to Mamdani's office for comment. No response was noted. Mamdani has said he plans to attend the ceremony to honor victims, survivors, families, and first responders.
The petition's language is restrained but pointed. It asks organizers to weigh whether Mamdani's attendance "would align with the intention of the ceremony and the expectations of the families most directly affected by the tragedy." That careful phrasing masks real anger, the anger of people who buried loved ones and now face a mayor they believe has treated that loss as a footnote in a broader political argument.
The controversy does not stop at the 2023 post. Mamdani also drew fire for interviewing Hasan Piker, a streamer and commentator who said in 2019, "America deserved 9/11." Mamdani initially declined to condemn Piker's remarks. He later reversed course and called them "objectionable and reprehensible," but the delay left a mark. For families who lost husbands, wives, sons, and daughters, the mayor's hesitation spoke louder than his eventual condemnation.
The petition effort has drawn growing attention as the anniversary approaches, and the backlash now extends well beyond the families themselves.
Michael La Rosa, who served as spokesperson for former First Lady Jill Biden, reacted to the resurfaced post with two words: "Is this real?" The reaction captured a bipartisan sense of disbelief that a sitting New York City mayor would frame the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil as one entry in a catalog of global suffering.
Marc Thiessen, who has said he was inside the Pentagon when the planes hit, posted a sharper rebuke on X:
"As someone who was in the Pentagon when the planes hit, this is absolutely disgraceful. You have no business ever setting foot at Ground Zero, much less on 9/11. If you dare show up, I hope you are greeted with such a Bronx cheer that you slink away in shame."
New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov zeroed in on Mamdani's word choice, the passive construction that 3,000 people simply "died," as though the towers collapsed by accident. "I guess they all just 'died' in an accident?" Vernikov wrote. "And then you wonder why the families of 9/11 victims don't want you at the ceremony. Stay home, Mamdani."
That criticism cuts to the core of the dispute. Mamdani's post said New Yorkers "died on 9/11." They did not just die. They were murdered, by terrorists who hijacked commercial airliners and flew them into buildings full of civilians. The passive framing erases the perpetrators and flattens a deliberate act of mass murder into a natural disaster.
Rep. Nancy Mace made the point bluntly: "Americans were MURDERED by TERRORISTS in the most horrific way." Joey Jones, co-host of the "Big Weekend Show," called Mamdani a coward and added that he and "thousands of my brothers did our part to even the f-----g score." Paul Mauro, a Fox News contributor and former NYPD officer, told Mamdani not to show up "this year, or any year," accusing him of trafficking in moral equivalency.
The growing chorus of public figures joining the families' demand has turned what began as a petition into a broader indictment of Mamdani's fitness to stand at Ground Zero and speak for a grieving city.
Florida Rep. Randy Fine accused Mamdani of refusing "to call out evil for what it is." Fine's post was among the most combative of the responses, but the underlying charge, that Mamdani has repeatedly softened or deflected when confronted with the plain reality of what happened on September 11, runs through nearly every criticism.
The sequence matters. Mamdani posted a message in 2023 that folded the 9/11 dead into a broader anti-war statement. He then sat for an interview with a commentator who said America deserved the attacks. When pressed, he initially would not condemn those remarks. He eventually did, but only after the political cost of silence became clear.
That is not a one-time misstep. It is a pattern, one that has surfaced in other controversies involving Mamdani's handling of victims and public grief. Each incident on its own might be explained away. Together, they paint a picture of a mayor whose instinct, when faced with American suffering caused by political violence, is to redirect the conversation toward a broader ideological framework rather than name the evil plainly.
The 25th anniversary ceremony is expected to draw Vice President JD Vance, former President Joe Biden, and former President George W. Bush. Mamdani would stand alongside them, the host city's mayor, a man whose own public statements suggest he views the day less as a memorial to murdered Americans than as an occasion for geopolitical reflection.
The families who organized the petition did not ask for much. They asked ceremony organizers to "carefully consider" whether Mamdani's presence fits the purpose of the event. That is a measured request from people who earned the right to make it in the worst way imaginable.
Meanwhile, separate legal developments in the case against the attacks' alleged mastermind have added another layer of frustration for families still seeking justice and accountability nearly a quarter century later.
Fox News Digital reported that Mamdani's office did not respond to its request for comment. The mayor has said only that he plans to attend. Whether ceremony organizers will act on the families' petition remains unclear.
The earlier calls from families to exclude Mamdani have only grown louder as September draws near. The question is no longer whether the mayor's post was poorly worded. The question is whether a man who cannot bring himself to name what happened on September 11, who instinctively reaches for moral equivalence when the moment demands moral clarity, belongs at the place where it happened, on the day it happened, standing beside the people it happened to.
Nearly 3,000 Americans did not simply die on September 11, 2001. They were killed. A mayor who cannot say that clearly has no business reading their names.
