25 Years On, and He Still Couldn't Show Up in His Own City

This week marks the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and it's not something I was excited to sit down and talk about, but it's something I needed to.

I was 23, at my cubicle in New Jersey, when the woman across from me looked up with fear on her face and said a plane had just hit the Twin Towers. I still remember sitting at a red light, facing north, watching smoke rise from a skyline I'd known my whole life.

It's a small story next to what the first responders and the families went through, but every September 11th I think about it, and this year, watching from England, it hit differently.

And then I watched him skip it

Here's what actually happened Friday, the 25th anniversary: Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Joe Biden all stood together at Ground Zero. Four former presidents, in the same place, on the same morning, for this. Trump was at the Pentagon instead — the second year running he's chosen that ceremony over the one in his own city, sending Vance to Ground Zero in his place.

He's a New Yorker. That's not a technicality, it's the whole point. This is the city that watched its skyline change that morning, the city that buried its own firefighters and cops by the hundreds, the city that heard the names of the dead read out loud again this morning at Ground Zero while he was somewhere else.

Twenty-five years. Not five, not ten — twenty-five. The one round-number anniversary that was ever going to get four former presidents in the same place at the same time, and he wasn't one of them.

I'm not questioning whether he marked the day at all — he didn't skip 9/11, he chose a different room. But that's exactly what makes it land the way it does. On the one morning when the moment actually called for him to be standing in Lower Manhattan with everyone else who carries this day, he picked somewhere else to be. That's a choice, not an accident, and the fact that it was avoidable is what makes it sting.

I don't know how this looked from where you're sitting, whether you're in the US or the UK or anywhere else that's lived through its own version of a day like this. But I know how it looked from here: like the one morning that was supposed to be above politics — a room with four former presidents in it, regardless of party — and the sitting one still managed to be somewhere else.

If you're ever in Manhattan, go to the 9/11 Memorial. It's done with more respect than I can put into words, and it's worth the visit regardless of where you stand on any of this. The people it's for deserve that much, even when the people meant to represent them can't be bothered to show up.