New York City got a moment nobody predicted.

Rudy Giuliani had spent days unloading on Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Then they came face to face at Ground Zero.

And what Giuliani said when they shook hands left everyone talking.

What Giuliani Actually Said at the Memorial

Giuliani, 82, the man who led New York through the smoke and ash of September 11, 2001, told Mamdani something quiet and personal when the two came face to face at the National September 11 Memorial plaza in Lower Manhattan. “I pray for you all the time,” Giuliani told him, according to his own account to The New York Post. Mamdani responded, “Thank you.”

That was it. No confrontation. No scene.

Giuliani explained his thinking afterward in a livestream with his former chief of staff, Tony Carbonetti. “So we shook hands and I said to him, ‘I pray for you,’ and he said ‘thank you,’ and we just went our ways,” Giuliani said. He added: “I think both of us knew, both of us had ended up facing each other, so we knew we could create a distraction, and either one of us could’ve turned around and said ‘go to hell,’ and that becomes the whole story, instead of these poor people.” He was referring to the 2,753 people killed at the World Trade Center.

And then Giuliani did something surprising. “I commend him also for shaking hands with me,” he said.

But the grace at Ground Zero did not erase Giuliani’s very real and very documented concerns about who Mamdani is and who he surrounds himself with. “I’m concerned about him hanging around with guys saying 9/11 was our fault,” Giuliani told The Post.

Why the Concerns About Mamdani Are Legitimate

The controversy that preceded the handshake did not materialize out of thin air. It built over months and came to a head in the days before the ceremony.

Mamdani appointed Ramzi Kassem as the city’s chief legal counsel. Kassem previously represented Ahmed al-Darbi, an al-Qaeda operative who pleaded guilty to war-crimes charges. Kassem’s sister was married to Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the September 11 hijackers who was aboard the aircraft that crashed into the Pentagon. That appointment alone triggered a petition from relatives of 9/11 victims that gathered roughly 110,000 signatures asking Mamdani to stay away from the ceremony.

The controversy deepened further when Mamdani signed an executive order designating September 11 as a Day of Remembrance and then handed the ceremonial pen to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who passed it to Kassem. He was seen smiling as he accepted it.

September 11, 2001, was carried out by Islamic terrorists under Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. That is settled history. It is not open to reinterpretation. And the legitimate question surrounding Mamdani is not about his faith — it is about the specific individuals he has chosen to elevate and associate with as the mayor of the city that bore the full weight of that attack.

Mamdani’s association with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker is part of that record. Piker said in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11.” Mamdani initially declined to condemn those remarks during his mayoral campaign and later called them “objectionable and reprehensible” only when pressed in a debate. That timeline matters.

Former New York Governor George Pataki and 9/11-era FDNY Commissioner Thomas von Essen also called on Mamdani to skip the ceremony. These are not fringe voices. These are men who lived through that day in positions of responsibility.

Giuliani told Newsmax before the ceremony: “Frankly, whatever he’d like to say, he doesn’t agree that Sept. 11 was an Islamic terrorist attack on the United States of America.” He also said: “Having lost friends there, and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he’s coming.”

Those are serious concerns, and they deserve to be taken seriously rather than waved away as political noise.

The Deeper Problem With Who Mamdani Is

Mamdani is a self-described democratic socialist, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and New York City’s first Muslim mayor. He ran on a platform of frozen rents, free buses, government-run grocery stores, and higher taxes on the wealthy. He has described President Trump as a “fascist” and a “despot.” He won his primary by defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo, then won the general election as well.

The DSA’s own platform calls for abolishing the Senate, replacing the presidency and Supreme Court with bodies subordinate to Congress, abolishing ICE, and pursuing open borders as a long-term goal. These are not fringe footnotes. They are the stated objectives of the organization whose membership Mamdani proudly claims. On a recent New York Times podcast, he said: “my party is the Democratic Party, and my organization is DSA.”

That is the full picture of who runs New York City now. A man who won’t forcefully distance himself from someone who said America deserved the worst attack on its soil in history. A man who handed a ceremonial pen tied to 9/11 remembrance to a lawyer who represented an al-Qaeda operative. A man whose political organization wants to dismantle the constitutional structures that define American self-governance.

Mamdani stayed at the ceremony until the end, which took roughly four hours. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg stayed as well. Giuliani stayed. Most other elected officials left while the names of the more than 2,000 victims were still being read. Journalist Steve Kastenbaum noted that Mamdani was the only senior elected official who remained throughout. That is worth acknowledging. Staying matters.

But staying at a ceremony and being worthy of leading the city that bore the greatest cost of September 11 are two separate things. The families who signed that petition understand the difference.

When asked whether Giuliani addressed his prior comments during the handshake, Mamdani said: “We just shook hands, and I think we were both here to ensure the focus remained on the families.”

That is a reasonable answer for a moment that called for restraint. Giuliani showed the same restraint. Both men deserve credit for not turning a day of mourning into a political spectacle.

But restraint at a memorial ceremony is not absolution. The questions about Mamdani’s associations, his appointments, and his political commitments do not disappear because he shook a hand and stayed until the names were finished. Those questions existed before September 11, 2026, and they will exist the day after.

The families who lost someone at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania were not asking for theater. They were asking for a mayor who had earned the right to stand among them. That is a harder standard to meet than showing up and behaving civilly for four hours.

Giuliani said he prays for Mamdani. Given what New York City is about to experience under a DSA mayor who surrounds himself with figures tied to al-Qaeda’s legal defense, a lot of Americans may find themselves doing the same.

Sources: Mediaite, “Rudy Giuliani’s Message to Zohran Mamdani During 9-11 Memorial Handshake Revealed”; The New York Post; Newsmax; Fox News; ABC News; The Hill; Israel National News