Rudy Giuliani accused Kamala Harris of "cackling" during the 9/11 commemoration ceremony in New York City on Monday after abruptly walking out of Ground Zero because the vice president was there.
Monday marked the 22nd anniversary of the deadly terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. The former New York City mayor who led the city in the aftermath of the attack was attending the ceremony with a bipartisan group of high-profile politicians, including Harris, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
But Giuliani walked out of the Manhattan ceremony, saying that Harris disgraced the victims because of former comments made by the vice president where he claimed she compared the terrorist attack to the January 6 insurrection.
During a speech on January 6, 2022, Harris listed both September 11, 2001 and January 6, 2021, as some of the dates forever burnt into the American collective memory. She also included the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor in the list of infamous dates.
Talking on right-wing TV channel Real America's Voice, Giuliani added that he had to leave Ground Zero on Monday after allegedly hearing Harris "giggle."
"Bernie [Kerik] and I looked at each other and I said, 'we gotta get out of here. I can't stand at this sacred ground'[...]to my right was not a single person I ever saw on September 11," he said.
He then lifted a newspaper photo from the ceremony showing a group of politicians, including Harris and Adams, at the ceremony, calling them "traitors."
"These traitors know nothing about it and they're standing there and you know two minutes before that they were laughing their heads off, including cacklers, I could hear cacklers," he said.
The former mayor said that he has "a big claim on September 11, I almost died there."
Newsweek contacted the White House for comment by email on Wednesday.
Giuliani was once praised for his response to the 9/11 attack, to the point that he became known as "America's Mayor." His popularity and reputation has since taken a plunge because of his role in supporting Donald Trump's claims of a "stolen election" in 2020.
Trump's former personal attorney, is one of 19 defendants in Georgia—including the former president—accused of allegedly conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state.
Neither Trump, a former New Yorker, nor President Joe Biden joined Monday's ceremony, but they both marked the anniversary with statements. While Biden's statement called for "national unity" over the memory of the tragedy, Trump recalled "the horror" of the day and said, "we will never forget."
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek Reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. and European politics, global affairs ... Read more
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