A somber ceremony to remember the victims of 9/11 was punctured by whoops and cheers from a New York crowd excited to praise former President Donald Trump and needle Vice President Kamala Harris as the two stood just feet apart hours after their first debate.

The annual tradition, attended by President Joe Biden, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and others, served as a poignant reminder of how New Yorkers feel about the man who made his name, fame, and notoriety in the bright lights of their city. That passion was on display during memorial coverage by C-SPAN: fans waving and snapping photographs who forced Trump to smile and acknowledge them during a moment of silence. One after another, women and men were heard shouting “We love you!”, “Donald!”, and “You won!” while Harris made a few meek attempts to wave at the crowd as if they had shown up to support her.

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Despite the testy debate Tuesday night, both Harris and Trump warmly shook hands on the twenty-third anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers. Trump and Biden even posed for a photograph together with Bloomberg in the middle, the New York Post reported. Biden and Harris will continue the day by paying their respects at the Pentagon in Virginia and the field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, both sites of other aircraft taken over and crashed on that fateful day. President Trump will also be visiting the latter site, the final resting place of Flight 93 passengers who fought back against the hijackers and disabled the plane before it struck an intended target.

The politics around 9/11 remain entangled in its memory nearly a quarter century later. Just last year, President Biden drew flak from reporters who called out false statements that he visited Ground Zero just one day after the attacks. “Never forget, never forget, we never forget. Each of us, each of those precious lives stolen too soon, when evil attacked,” Biden said during a 2023 ceremony. “Ground zero in New York – I remember standing there the next day, looking at the building, and I felt like I was looking through the gates of hell. It looked so devastating because of the way you – from where you could stand.” Biden — who was serving in the U.S. Senate at the time — was not in New York on September 12, 2001, as the Senate met in Washington D.C. to condemn the attacks.

More recently, the Biden administration was forced to withdraw a plea deal with the masterminds behind the 2001 attacks after intense public outcry at the prospect that all the men would be spared the death penalty. The deal represented a tacit acknowledgment that the U.S. would never be able to prove its case in court due to acts of torture committed on mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others. A nixing by Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III now sends the deceased deal before a federal judge for reconsideration.

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