Rudy Giuliani shook hands with Mayor Zohran Mamdani at the 25th anniversary 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero, days after publicly calling on the mayor to stay away, and a lip reader now says Giuliani told Mamdani, "I prayed for you."
The former mayor, 82, who led New York City through the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, approached Mamdani at the National September 11 Memorial on Friday and clasped his hand. UK-based expert lip reader Jeremy Freeman reviewed footage of the exchange and concluded that Giuliani said three short phrases to the current mayor: "I prayed for you. Good job. OK."
The words themselves sound cordial enough. But the buildup to that moment, and what a body language expert saw in the footage, tells a different story about two men who clearly do not see eye to eye on the meaning of the day.
Just days before the memorial, Giuliani sat for a Newsmax interview in which he urged Mamdani not to attend. He claimed the mayor "doesn't agree that September 11 was an Islamic terrorist attack on the United States of America." Asked whether Mamdani's presence at 9/11 memorials offended him, Giuliani told Newsmax, "No question."
Giuliani, a devout Roman Catholic, had been vocal in his opposition. His remarks on Newsmax came as 9/11 families demanded Mamdani be barred from the Ground Zero anniversary altogether.
Mamdani attended anyway. And Giuliani, rather than avoiding the mayor, walked up and extended his hand.
Behavior analyst Traci Brown reviewed the footage for the New York Post and offered a frame-by-frame read that suggests the greeting was far from warm beneath the surface.
Brown described Giuliani's initial expression as open, eyebrows raised in recognition, but said his displeasure surfaced quickly:
"Giuliani's eyebrows [are] up in recognition and acknowledgment. But his frown grows the longer they shake hands. So he's not happy about the connection."
Mamdani, by contrast, appeared eager to engage. Brown said the mayor leaned in during the handshake, signaling a desire to connect. But that confidence didn't last.
"Mamdani is leaning in and wants to connect. After he's not feeling so good about it. And works to counteract that feeling by making himself confident. That's what the hand on his hip is."
So both men walked away from the exchange looking uncomfortable, Giuliani growing visibly displeased during the grip, and Mamdani compensating afterward with a self-assuring posture. Neither man appeared to enjoy the moment, despite the polite words Freeman's lip reading attributed to Giuliani.
The mayor did not publicly address the handshake or Giuliani by name. But on Tuesday, Mamdani made a statement that carried an unmistakable implication about the leaders who governed New York in the aftermath of the attacks. The controversy around Mamdani's attendance had been building for weeks before the ceremony.
"People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air."
Mamdani did not name Giuliani or any other former official. But the timing, days after shaking hands with the man who ran the city on September 11, 2001, made the target of the remark hard to miss. Giuliani's administration has faced longstanding criticism over air quality assurances given to Lower Manhattan residents and first responders in the weeks after the Twin Towers fell.
That same week, City Hall released 170,000 previously undisclosed documents related to air quality risks following the 9/11 attacks. The release added weight to Mamdani's words, even as he avoided a direct confrontation with Giuliani by name.
The document release, which the city had long withheld, covered air quality dangers faced by rescue workers, residents, and others in the vicinity of Ground Zero after the attacks. Mamdani had already drawn Giuliani's ire simply by planning to attend the ceremony, but the document dump shifted the public conversation toward what city leaders knew, and when, about the toxic conditions downtown.
For families of first responders who developed cancers, lung disease, and other illnesses linked to Ground Zero exposure, those 170,000 pages represent something more than a policy debate. They represent answers that were kept from the people who needed them most.
Giuliani has not publicly responded to the document release or to Mamdani's Tuesday remarks, based on available reporting. Nor has he confirmed or denied the words the lip reader attributed to him at the memorial.
On its face, the exchange was brief and unremarkable, a handshake between two mayors, past and present, at a solemn anniversary. But the context surrounding it made every second of the interaction a subject of public scrutiny. Public figures and 9/11 families alike had weighed in on whether Mamdani belonged at the ceremony at all.
Giuliani spent the days before the memorial arguing that Mamdani should not be there. Then he shook the mayor's hand, told him "I prayed for you" and "Good job," and walked away frowning. Mamdani leaned in, tried to connect, and then stood with his hand on his hip, a man, according to the body language expert, working to convince himself he felt confident about what just happened.
Neither man came away looking comfortable. And neither man addressed the other directly in public remarks afterward.
Twenty-five years after the towers fell, the memorial at Ground Zero is supposed to be about the people who died, the responders who rushed in, and the city that endured. When the ceremony becomes a stage for political friction between the man who led the city that day and the man who leads it now, the people who lost the most, the families, the survivors, the first responders still fighting for their health, deserve better from both of them.
