Trump and Biden avoid each other as they commemorate 9/11

Donald Trump and his election rival Joe Biden struck a temporary ceasefire but avoided crossing paths on Friday as they joined millions of Americans in commemorating the 19th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks that killed a total of almost 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

This year the rituals of remembrance were different and the tragedy was marked as another continues to unfold: the coronavirus pandemic has cost 191,000 American lives – the equivalent of a 9/11 for 64 consecutive days.

Along with persistent, undiminished grief, there was also wistfulness for the sense of national unity that 9/11 produced – unity that now seems distant and elusive in a bitterly divided country barreling towards a presidential election in less than two months.

Past 9/11 anniversaries in an election year have often brought presidential candidates to the same location but Trump and Biden stayed apart on Friday, even planning to pay their respects at the same memorial at different times. The president spoke at the official ceremony in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the hijacked Flight 93 crashed in a field en route to attack the nation’s capital.

Biden was expected to follow there in the afternoon, having traveled to the site of the World Trade Center in New York on Friday morning, where both he and the vice-president, Mike Pence, attended a ceremony marking the site two of the four hijacked passenger jets were flown into the twin towers of the commercial skyscraper complex, causing the bulk of the 9/11 casualties.

The third of the four hijacked planes was flown into the Pentagon just outside Washington DC, on that bright, sunny morning in 2001, killing all those on board and 125 people inside the building.

Biden was greeted by New York’s Democratic senator Chuck Schumer and Governor Andrew Cuomo after his arrival at what was known in the aftermath of the attacks as Ground Zero but is now the site of the new One World Trade tower and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Biden “tapped Pence’s shoulder and said ‘Hi’,” Bloomberg News reported, posting video of their interaction.

They appeared to exchange an amicable “elbow bump” as a mark of the ceremonies marked by efforts to avoid spreading the coronavirus.

In lower Manhattan, the traditional close gathering of relatives officially to read all the names of their lost loved ones, with a bell rung between names, did not happen in the same way as usual, with people keeping their distance and many wearing face masks.

Biden and Pence both wore face masks. Donald Trump gave a speech in Pennsylvania without a mask.

According to a pooled report, Biden comforted an elderly woman in a wheelchair who was holding a picture of her son, whom she told Biden had died at age 43. Biden took the image and looked it over, reflecting on losing his own son, Beau. “It never goes away,” he said. She repeated his words.

The 90-year-old woman, perhaps in jest, told Biden she was entering her “last year”, at which point her daughter interjected: “You don’t know that, mom!” Biden said: “You and I will be here next year.”

Meanwhile, in the memorial in a field in Pennsylvania, in a subdued speech to a physically distanced audience, Trump also sought to put politics on pause.

“To every 9/11 [family] member all across this nation: the first lady and I come to this hallowed ground deeply aware that we cannot fill the void in your heart or erase the terrible sorrow of this day,” he said. “We promise that unwavering love you so want and need, support, devotion and the very special devotion of all Americans.”

Recalling the 33 passengers and seven crew members who struggled for control of the plane, he added: “In their memory, we resolve to stand united as one American nation, to defend our freedoms, to uphold our values, to love our neighbours, to cherish our country, to care for our communities, to honour our heroes, and to never ever forget.”

Presidents are often expected to play the role of “consoler-in-chief”. Trump, however, has been widely condemned for seldom acknowledging the victims of the pandemic and offering few words of solace. Biden, whose life has been scarred by the loss of a wife and baby daughter in a car accident, and an adult son from brain cancer, is seen by supporters as more empathetic.

Things became more overtly political at the Pentagon commemoration, however, in a rare speech for the army general Mark Milley since he apologized for being part of the president’s photo op in Washington’s Lafayette Square when peaceful demonstrators were cleared by force in the summer.

Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs, spoke in defense of the free press when listing examples of what he cited as values that the US armed forces went to war for after the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaida.

“The idea of a free press, free speech, due process … the right to peacefully assemble, and demonstrate and protest,” he said.

He added that all Americans are created free and equal and should succeed based on their merit, regardless of their backgrounds.

“Those ideas were and still are hated by our enemies – by fascists, Nazis, communists, al-Qaida, Isis, authoritarians, dictators and tyrants of all kinds. They hate those ideas. They hate those values,” he said.