Giuliani reveals what he said to Mamdani during viral handshake moment at 9/11 ceremony
Por Brendan Rascius — – World RSS Feed
Giuliani reveals what he said to Mamdani during viral handshake moment at 9/11 ceremony
‘Both of us had ended up facing each other, so we knew we could create a distraction,’ Rudy Giuliani said
Brendan Rascius in New York Saturday 12 September 2026 22:18 BST
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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani disclosed what he told Mayor Zohran Mamdani during their viral face-to-face exchange at Friday’s ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The two men shook hands and briefly exchanged words at the Manhattan ceremony, which drew scores of political figures, including all living former presidents.
Before the event, Giuliani had publicly opposed Mamdani’s attendance and claimed that the city’s first-ever Muslim mayor wants his religion “to dominate us.”
In a livestream afterward, Giuliani, a Republican who was in office during the 2001 terrorist attacks, recounted his interaction with Mamdani, a democratic socialist elected last year.
“Now, I shook hands with Mamdani,” Giuliani told Tony Carbonetti, his former chief of staff.
open image in gallery“Did you wash them afterward?” Carbonetti replied.
“No,” Giuliani said. “I am not, at a ceremony like this…I am not gonna cause any ridiculous anything.”
Giuliani said he believed he had extended his hand first, though he acknowledged Mamdani may have initiated the handshake.
“So we shook hands and I said to him, ‘I pray for you,’ and he said ‘thank you,’ and we just went our ways,” he said.
“I think both of us knew, both of us had ended up facing each other, so we knew we could create a distraction, and either one of us could’ve turned around and said ‘go to hell,’ and that becomes the whole story, instead of these poor people,” Giuliani continued, referring to the 2,753 people who died at the World Trade Center. “And I commend him also for shaking hands with me.”
open image in galleryLess than one week earlier, Giuliani told Newsmax that he opposed Mamdani attending the downtown event. “It offends me that he’s coming,” he said before making broader anti-Muslim claims.
“They have every desire to take us over,” he said. “This is not, ‘they want to be just another religion.’ They want to dominate us…Mamdani is a clear — a clear — supporter of that. All of the Muslims he supports are murderers.”
Other Republicans, including former New York Governor George Pataki, also urged Mamdani to skip the event. Some cited his association with far-left streamer Hasan Piker, who once said that “America deserved 9/11.”
Mamdani, who has called the 2001 attacks “horrific,” confirmed before Friday that he would attend the ceremony, as previous mayors have.
“I will proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack by standing alongside them at this year’s 9/11 commemoration, reaffirming that we will never forget the solemn day felt by all of us who call this city home and, frankly, by all of us who call this country home,” he told City & State.
Last week, Mamdani also appeared to take a veiled swipe at Giuliani when he released more than 170,000 pages of internal records indicating that officials misled the public about the safety of the air around Ground Zero after the September 11 attacks.
“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” Mamdani said during a news conference.
The Independent has contacted the mayor’s office for comment.
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Rudy GiulianiZohran Mamdani9/11New York
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