President Donald Trump is set to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks at the Pentagon, while the White House says administration officials will also be present at the other memorial sites tied to that day. The trip comes after a report claimed he was skipping Ground Zero, a claim the White House quickly pushed back on as the president and his team defended the plan.
Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews that the Pentagon was where he would be on the anniversary. That answer came after a question about why he would not be in New York for the ceremony in Lower Manhattan, where the World Trade Center once stood and where families gather each year to remember the victims.
The reporting that sparked the back-and-forth suggested Trump would avoid Ground Zero because he would not be allowed to speak there. Since 2012, politicians have not been given speaking roles at the annual ceremony, which keeps the focus on the families and the lives lost rather than on public officeholders.
White House officials framed the president’s plans differently, saying he remains deeply tied to New York and still intends to honor the day with the appropriate respect. Anna Kelly said Trump would remember those killed, pay tribute to first responders, and recognize the families who have carried the weight of that morning for 25 years.
The White House also said Vice President JD Vance will travel to New York City for the anniversary, and that all three major sites connected to the attacks will be represented by administration officials. Those sites are Ground Zero, the Pentagon, and the Flight 93 Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where passengers fought back before the plane went down.
The push and pull over Trump’s schedule spilled onto social media when a post described him as “snubbing” the Ground Zero event. White House communications director Steven Cheung shot that down with a blunt response, saying, “FAKE NEWS,” a line that fit the administration’s familiar habit of answering criticism without much softening.
Trump also fired back personally, saying the story was made up and insisting he was not treating the anniversary lightly. He wrote that the day should be about the victims and their families, adding that he would actually prefer not to speak because the moment is supposed to remain solemn.
This is not new territory for Trump. Last year, he marked the 24th anniversary at the Pentagon and later went to New York, and in 2024 he attended the Ground Zero ceremony as the Republican nominee alongside Biden and Harris.
During his first term, he did not go to the Ground Zero ceremony, but he did speak at the Pentagon in 2017 and later split later commemorations between the Pentagon and Pennsylvania. That pattern has kept attention on where he appears each year, even though the broader meaning of the date has always been much bigger than the travel schedule of one president.
The attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 killed nearly 3,000 people when al-Qaeda hijackers struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, while passengers on Flight 93 resisted the hijackers before that plane crashed in Pennsylvania. The day still carries the same brutal weight it did in 2001, and every anniversary brings the same names, the same grief, and the same reminders of how fast ordinary life can be shattered.
The aftermath changed the country in a huge way. The attacks pushed the United States into the war in Afghanistan and helped launch the wider War on Terror, which later expanded into Iraq and reshaped American security and foreign policy for years to come.
That history is part of why every 9/11 anniversary draws so much attention, especially when presidents and vice presidents decide where to stand and what to say. At the Pentagon, the ceremony usually carries a different tone than the one at Ground Zero, but both places still carry the same pain, the same pride, and the same heavy silence that settles in when the country pauses together.
