BEST FRENEMIES: Didn’t see this one coming. At Friday’s ceremony commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani — he of the recent anti-Muslim tirade — shook hands with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the subject of that rant.
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Told to stay home from 9/11 memorial, Mamdani shows up, shakes Giuliani's hand, gets accused of laughing anyway.
“They spent five days telling him not to come, then hired a lipreader to grade the handshake he gave the man who told him to stay home. That's not journalism, that's forensic accounting on a man's face. The demand was about making sure he lost no matter which way he walked in, not about the memorial at all.”
“Look, hardly anyone's saying the mayor can't attend — well, some people are saying exactly that, but that's not the point. The point is optics, and if a lipreader looks at a grainy clip and says the word "pleasantries" seemed tense, maybe it was tense — that's just good journalism, catching what the eye misses. Did I just call reading lips off a phone video "good journalism"? Forget I said that.”
The receipts
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Mayor Mamdani had a tense – but civil – exchange at the 9/11 memorial service Friday, with an expert revealing the message “America’s Mayor” passed on to Hizzoner.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are under fire from Republicans after the two socialists were captured on video apparently sharing a laugh as the names of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack were being read off.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were seen grinning at the 9/11 Memorial as a mourner sobbed nearby on camera.
· Rudy Giuliani calls for Mamdani to skip 9/11 memorial ceremonies: ‘It offends me’ from the morgue, 7 Sep 2026
· Families of 9/11 victims' message to Mamdani: 'Please do not come' to memorial ceremony from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· Hochul voices support for Mamdani after Giuliani tells him to skip 9/11 ceremony from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· 9/11 families plan to ignore ‘spiteful’ Mamdani if he shows up at 25th memorial ceremony from the morgue, 5 Sep 2026
· 9/11 memorial service should be about remembrance, not politics, Mamdani says from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
· ‘Mamdani views himself as an executor of a pan-Islamist movement’: Tiana Lowe Doescher from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.