Presidential participation in memorial ceremonies commemorating the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 has been the standard each year since the first anniversary — until this year.
Whether at the White House, Pentagon, World Trade Center, or the field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 crashed as heroic Americans prevented al-Qaeda terrorists from using their plane as a missile to attack a target in Washington, D.C., presidents have always joined Americans at one of these locations in remembering the lives lost and pledging to "Never Forget."
That is, until Joe Biden couldn't be bothered to be at any such memorial in 2023 to mark the 22nd anniversary of the attacks. Instead, Biden dispatched his VP Kamala Harris to Ground Zero in New York to represent the administration, or something.
Biden, who is returning to the U.S. from a trip in Asia on Monday, is only even making remarks about 9/11 today because Air Force One has to make a refueling stop in Alaska. Those remarks, scheduled for around 4:45pm E.T. on Monday, are hours removed from the moments of silence observed earlier on Monday by millions of Americans to mark the moments that turned a beautiful September morning into a tragic world-changing event.
So, other than Biden being a sorry excuse for a leader, what is the official White House explanation for Biden's absence from this somber day's remembrances?
Well, Fox News Channel's Peter Doocy asked a Biden staffer and received quite the answer.
"When I asked a White House official why it is that President Biden was here [in Vietnam] and missing the 9/11 commemorations at the attack sites," Doocy explained, "the analogy that I was given is, 22 years after Pearl Harbor, presidents were not still going to visit Hawaii."
Yikes. The White House tells Fox News that Biden not commemorating 9/11 at an attack site like other presidents is fine because presidents weren’t still visiting Pearl Harbor after 22 years. pic.twitter.com/XxvNlTf2rL
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) September 11, 2023
That is definitely a "yikes" as my RedState colleague Bonchie noted, and just the latest sorry excuse for failure from a sorry excuse of a president who continues to fail at leading Americans.
Sadly, there's little reason to expect better from the president who explained breaking his promise to visit the site of the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, for months on end was due to him not being able to get a "break," despite spending some 40 percent of his presidency so far away from the White House on personal trips.