Rep. Wesley Hunt said it in one line, and it should be carved somewhere: September 11 is not a photo op. It is not a networking event. Ground Zero is sacred ground.
That such a thing has to be explained — out loud, in 2026, to the mayor of New York City and a congresswoman from Queens — tells you everything about what the American left has become in twenty-five years.
Mamdani and AOC are spotted laughing with each other as people cry while the names of those who died are read during the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. pic.twitter.com/Ib5lm57fmV
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 11, 2026
President Trump was asked about the video of Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grinning at one another while the names of the murdered were read aloud. He called it terrible, and said the timing of it was inappropriate. He’s right, and he was being polite about it.
? NOW: Donald Trump is FURIOUS after Ugandan Mayor Mamdani and AOC laughed while 9/11 victims names were read
“It’s TERRIBLE — the fact they laughed together in a VERY important part of the ceremony was inappropriate!”
I think Mamdani should resign. But we all know he will…
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 13, 2026
But let’s not pretend the clip is the offense. The clip is the punctuation. The offense is everything this mayor did in the month leading up to it, none of which requires a camera angle or a frame-by-frame analysis, because he did all of it in the open and dared anyone to say something.
He signed an executive order honoring the victims of al-Qaeda — and then handed the ceremonial pen to Ramzi Kassem, his chief counsel, a man whose client list includes a convicted al-Qaeda war criminal related by marriage to one of the hijackers. In front of cameras. On purpose. Nobody does that by accident, and nobody who respects the families does it at all.
The families understood the message perfectly. They asked him to stay away from the 25th anniversary. More than 100,000 Americans signed a petition backing them. These are widows, orphans, and siblings whose entire claim on public life is one morning a year at the hole where their people died. He went anyway. Announced he’d stay for every name, as if his endurance were the story.
And this is a man with a documented habit on this subject. His previous anniversary posts spared the murdered a sentence before pivoting to America’s wars and America’s guilt. He has publicly framed the legacy of September 11 around his family’s discomfort — the suspicion, the airport questions — rather than around three thousand corpses and the ideology that made them. A New Yorker who cannot get through a 9/11 statement without making himself the injured party is not qualified to run a parking authority, much less that city.
As for Ocasio-Cortez: she has spent her entire career mistaking a solemn occasion for a content opportunity, and Friday was not the day the habit finally failed her. It was just the day the lens was pointed the right way.
Ecclesiastes had it long before the Byrds: there is a time to laugh and a time to weep. Mamdani had a month to figure out which one that morning called for. He chose the pen, he chose to overrule the families, and he chose to be in the frame. New York gets to render the verdict. It should be a loud one.
