President Joe Biden spent the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks traveling from Vietnam to Alaska, opting not to visit one of the attack sites on Monday.
The White House justified Biden’s absence by telling Fox News that 22 years after Pearl Harbor, presidents were not still visiting Hawaii. As it turns out, this was a factual error.
President John F. Kennedy visited the USS Arizona Memorial on the 22nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor in 1963, laying a wreath to commemorate those who perished on that infamous day.
Biden’s decision not to visit New York, or another site, was out of the norm for him. The president gave remarks from the Pentagon last year on 9/11, a site devastated by the impact of hijacked Flight 77 on Sept. 11, 2001.
In 2021, just a year earlier, the president and first lady visited all three attack sites: Manhattan; Shanksville, Pennsylvania; and Arlington, Virginia.
Every year after 9/11, the commander in chief has visited at least one of the attack sites to participate in a memorial — the only exceptions being when George W. Bush and Barack Obama each spent one anniversary delivering remarks from the White House.
Biden instead gave his remarks when he got to Alaska, where he claimed that he was at ground zero “the next day” following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
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“Ground zero in New York — I remember standing there the next day and looking at the building,” Biden said. “And I felt like I was looking through the gates of hell. It looked so devastating because of the way — from where you could stand.”
This was also a factual error on the part of the president, who records show was actually in Washington, D.C., giving a speech, and did not visit ground zero until Sept. 20, 2001, nine days after the attack.
