Rudy Giuliani shakes Zohran Mamdani’s hand at NYC 9/11 memorial ceremony after calling on mayor to skip

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani were spotted sharing an awkward handshake at Ground Zero ahead of the 9/11 25th anniversary remembrance ceremony Friday.

Read more Lipreader reveals what Giuliani said to Zohran Mamdani in awkward exchange at 9/11 ceremony

The pair’s eyebrow-raising greeting after Giuliani — who led the Big Apple during Sept. 11, 2001, earning the title of “America’s mayor” — called on Mamdani to skip memorial services marking 25 years since the terror attacks.

Giuliani’s spokesman separately lambasted Mamdani for saying this week that the city’s “leaders” lied about air quality after 9/11.

But Giuliani’s vehemence against the mayor apparently dissolved when he came face-to-face with Mamdani during the annual commemoration on the National September 11 Memorial plaza in Lower Manhattan.

According to UK-based certified lip reader Jeremy Freeman, the former mayor told the current Hizzoner: “I prayed for you. Good job. OK.”

Asked about the interaction later, Mamdani told The Post: “We exchanged pleasantries.” 

Traci Brown, a body language expert and behavior analyst, said the interaction was less than comfortable.

“Giuliani’s eyebrows (go) up in recognition and acknowledgment. But his frown grows the longer they shake hands,” she said. “So, he’s not happy about the connection.

“Mamdani is leaning in and wants to connect.  After he’s not feeling so good about it.  And works to counteract that feeling by making himself confident.  That’s what the hand on his hip is.”

The handshake between Mamdani and Giuliani was a testament to the solemnity of the memorial itself, Gov. Kathy Hochul contended.

She recounted on CNN that she was “literally standing right there” as the pair seemed to bridge their divide.

“All the animosity seems to melt away,” she said. “It’s really hard to harbor hard feeling towards someone, even despite what you may have said days earlier when you’re surrounded by an environment – a reflecting pool, the names inscribed in the stone, and the families that are looking so sad, and so distraught.

“You can’t harbor those hard feelings for each other. This is a moment of common humanity. And that’s what I saw on display with people who may say things in the moment, but at that moment, we were united.”

Slightly undercutting Hochul’s sunny words about the exchange, her own husband Bill Hochul was captured in the video sighing heavily and puffing out his cheeks in apparent discomfort at the awkward handshake right next to him.

Neither Giuliani nor Mamdani returned requests for comment.

Giuliani, 82, claimed Sunday that Mamdani “doesn’t agree that September 11 was an Islamic terrorist attack on the United States of America” before launching on an anti-Muslim conspiracy-laced rant.

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“No question,” he said during an interview with Newsmax, contending that the notion of Mamdani attending the memorials “offends me.

More coverage on the 25th Anniversary of 9/11:

• Condoleezza Rice apologizes to families for failing to prevent 9/11
• 9/11 25th anniversary live updates: JD Vance unites with Clinton, Obama, Biden, Bush at Ground Zero ceremony
• Rudy Giuliani shakes Zohran Mamdani’s hand at NYC 9/11 memorial ceremony after calling on mayor to skip
• Sept. 11 widow blasts Saudis: ‘How can it be 25 years and still we have no justice?’

“The reality is this ceremony is for the families and for America to remember historically.”

When asked directly Tuesday about Giuliani’s call for him to skip the memorial ceremonies, the mayor said day wasn’t about him.

“I think that the focus of memorial services should be on the New Yorkers who were killed that day, their families, the survivors, the first responders – I don’t think it should be on politicians,” he said.

Hizzoner that same day released 170,000 long-hidden documents on air quality risks after the attacks, and slammed his predecessors in city and state government for misleading the public.

“People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” Mamdani said, without outright naming anyone.

“And then, when they began to contend with the symptoms of the illnesses that followed, the government that had not hesitated to send them into harm’s way was nowhere to be found.” 

Those comments drew a rebuke from Ted Goodman, Giuliani’s spokesman.

“I’d like to remind Mayor Mamdani that cowardly terrorists acting in the name of radical Islam are 100 percent responsible for all of the death and destruction on September 11, 2001, and for all of the suffering and illness that have continued since that day,” he said in a statement.

“The EPA, a federal agency, issued press releases and public statements declaring that air samples showed the air quality near Ground Zero was safe in September 2001. The agency later apologized for those statements, saying it did the best it could with the knowledge available at the time.”

The brief exchange between Giuliani and Mamdani wasn’t the only interaction between dignitaries during the memorial.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke with Mamdani for a very long time, doing most of the talking.

Mamdani later spoke at the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine’s interfaith 9/11 memorial service.

“Those who attacked our city, 
they did so because they thought they could break us at the fractures. They thought, they could frighten us, they could make us feel alone, they can leave us on our knees. How wrong they were. How quick we were to stand back up,” he said in his address.

“When we remember September 11 today, we remember the horrific terror attacks, we remember all those killed, remember the enormous devastation of that day.”

— Additional reporting by Georgett Roberts and Vaughn Golden

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