New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were captured smiling and laughing during Friday’s solemn 9/11 anniversary ceremony while relatives were reading aloud the names of those killed in the attacks.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were captured laughing during Friday morning’s 25th-anniversary commemoration of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks at Ground Zero as victims’ relatives continued the traditional reading of the names of those killed.
Video from the ceremony showed Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez smiling and briefly laughing together while the name-reading portion of the memorial was underway. The footage does not establish what the two were discussing or what prompted their laughter. The moment nevertheless drew criticism online because it occurred during one of the ceremony’s most solemn traditions.
The ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial began at 8:46 a.m., the moment American Airlines Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center’s North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001. Family members then began reading aloud the names of the 2,977 people killed in the attacks, along with the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The reading lasted approximately four hours.
Relatives held photographs of loved ones, delivered personal remembrances and observed moments of silence marking the plane crashes and collapse of the Twin Towers. This year’s observance also added a seventh moment of silence honoring people who later died from illnesses linked to toxic exposure following the attacks.
The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people after al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial aircraft, striking the World Trade Center and Pentagon while a fourth plane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew fought the hijackers.
Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez attended the Lower Manhattan ceremony alongside political leaders from both parties. Vice President JD Vance and former Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were also present. President Donald Trump attended a separate 9/11 observance at the Pentagon.
Mamdani had already faced controversy ahead of his first Sept. 11 anniversary ceremony as New York City mayor. Some 9/11 family members and Republican political figures criticized his attendance, while Mamdani said earlier in the week that he wanted the anniversary centered on victims’ relatives, first responders and New Yorkers who supported one another following what he called a “horrific act of terror.”
The Associated Press reported that Mamdani, who was an elementary school student in New York at the time of the attacks, attended despite those objections and encountered former Mayor Rudy Giuliani at the memorial, where the two shook hands.
Friday’s ceremony was intentionally structured without political speeches at Ground Zero, maintaining the longstanding focus on victims and their families. Relatives instead took turns reading the names and sharing memories of parents, spouses, children, siblings and friends lost a quarter-century ago.
Against that backdrop, footage of Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez laughing attracted attention because it was captured while those names were being read.
The video itself does not show that either official was laughing at the victims, their relatives or the name-reading. It shows them sharing a light moment during the ceremony while the solemn recitation continued, leaving the subject of their exchange unknown.
Twenty-five years after the attacks, the annual Ground Zero observance remains centered on the victims, with their names again read one by one as families gathered at the footprints of the Twin Towers to remember those who never returned home on Sept. 11, 2001.
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