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The city fire commissioner during the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks urged Mayor Zohran Mamdani to skip Friday’s 25th anniversary memorial ceremony, claiming his presence will offend victims’ families.
“It’s a rough day. The families don’t need any more angst and Mamdani is going to bring angst,” ex-FDNY boss Tom Von Essen told The Post.
Von Essen, who saw 343 of his firefighters die trying to rescue people from the World Trade Center towers following the terror attacks, referred to a recent action by Mamdani as another slight against the families.
“Mamdani had the pen for his 9/11 executive order handed to his attorney [Ramzi Kassem]” — who once represented an al-Qaeda terrorist with links to the attack on the Pentagon, Von Essen noted.
Mamdani signed two 9/11-related executive orders last week and then gave the symbolic pen to Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and whispered “Can you pass this?”
Tisch then awkwardly handed the ceremonial pen to Mamdani’s chief counsel, Kassem.
Von Essen thought the pen hand-off was an intentional insult.
“He’s a very smart guy. He’s a genius at manipulating people,” he said of the social media-savvy Hizzoner.
More than 100,000 people have signed a change.org petition urging Mamdani not to go to the ceremony, which he repeatedly said he will attend to pay his respects.
“The families don’t want him there. One hundred thousand people signed a petition telling him to stay away. I signed the petition,” said Von Essen, who also helped oversee the national response to the COVID-19 outbreak as the NY-NJ regional head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“He’s not big enough to stay away knowing he will be a distraction.”
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and then-Gov. George Pataki also said Mamdani should stay away from the ceremony at the memorial site.
Giuliani — whose steady leadership in the aftermath of 9/11 earned him the nickname “America’s mayor” — said the notion of Mamdani attending the memorials this week “offends me.”
“Having lost friends there and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he’s coming,” he said of Mamdani on Newmax Sunday.
The 82-year-old ex-mayor claimed that Mamdani “doesn’t agree that September 11 was an Islamic terrorist attack on the United States Of America,” before going off on an anti-Muslim conspiracy-laced rant.
Pataki told City & State last week, “With respect to the mayor, I think anyone who doesn’t intentionally distance themselves from Hasan Piker, who has said that America deserved the attacks of September 11th, should not be there” — referencing the left-wing influencer and Mamdani booster.
Mamdani appeared on Piker’s podcast during his successful campaign for the mayoralty. Piker once said that “America deserved 9/11” during a livestream in 2019.
“Anyone who has refused to reject the phrase ‘globalize the intifada,’ which unequivocally calls for violence against Jews, not just in Israel but anywhere in the world, should not be at that site,” added Pataki.
Mamdani said Sunday he will attend a number of 9/11 ceremonies to honor the families of first responders and families of others whose lives were cut short during the terror attacks.
“I want this week to be a focus on the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terrorism on Sept. 11 and focus on the first responders who gave everything they could to this city and the people who came together for their fellow New Yorkers,” said the mayor, who was nine years old on 9/11.
“In the days to come my focus will be on attending events that memorialize that incredible courage and I will be there at the memorial just as I was last year.”
His office also noted that Mamdani handed the pen to Kassem during last week’s signing ceremony because as chief counsel, he drafts the executive orders for the mayor to sign.
“Chief Counsel Kassem attended the signing both to perform his official responsibilities and because he is personally invested in these executive orders as a longtime New Yorker who was in New York City on that terrifying day 25 years ago,” said City Hall spokesman Sam Raskin.
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