Saturday 21 / December / 2024
Washington DC: US President Joe Biden, while commemorating the 23rd anniversary of 9/11 terror attacks at a fire station, donned a red hat that read 'TRUMP 2024', a gesture the White House has termed a show of bipartisan unity.
A White House spokesperson said the president was talking about how the country was united in the aftermath of the attacks and said it needed to return to that. He handed a hat to a man wearing a Trump cap as a gesture, and that man gave Biden his hat to briefly wear, the spokesperson said, as reported by CNN.
President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump and Senator and Republican vice presidential candidate, JD Vance were at a 9/11 commemoration event at Ground Zero in Manhattan, New York.
All four were in New York on Wednesday for a commemoration event at Ground Zero in Manhattan.
In a positive gesture, Trump and Harris, just hours after their fierce presidential debate Tuesday night, shook hands ahead of solemn commemorative ceremonies. However, Vance and Harris did not appear to interact.
Harris and Biden then travelled to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Flight 93 memorial.
At that ceremony, Biden placed his hand on the wreath as the small group he was with bowed their heads. The president and vice president also stopped by a local Shanksville volunteer fire station that served as a key gathering point for families in 2001.
Biden and Harris observed a display of a cross made of the plane's scraps. Biden made the sign of the cross before walking in to meet some of the families affected by that day.
Inside the fire station, Biden briefly donned a Trump hat as an apparent gesture of bipartisan unity.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the deadliest terror attack in US history, when two out of the four planes hijacked by Al Qaeda terrorists crashed into each of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. Another plane was crashed into the Pentagon, and the fourth crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania after passengers tried to thwart the hijacking.
Earlier in the day, President Biden reaffirmed the nation's resolve and vowed that the commitment to protect American lives and prevent future terrorist attacks will never fade away.
He said, "On this day 23 years ago, terrorists believed they could break our will and bring us to our knees. They were wrong... They failed. But we must remain vigilant. Today, our longest war is finally over. But our commitment to preventing another attack on our people never will be. We will continue to disrupt terrorist networks wherever we find them. And we will continue to deliver justice to terrorists who plot against America--just as we did with Osama bin Laden in 2011 and Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2022."
Vice President and 2024 presidential candidate, Kamala Harris also remembered the ones who lost their lives in the terrorist attack and said, "Today is a day of solemn remembrance as we mourn the souls we lost in a heinous terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. We stand in solidarity with their families and loved ones."
