Ron and Casey DeSantis visit 9/11 Memorial site at Ground Zero
NEW YORK – Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis marked the 22nd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by visiting the 9/11 memorial site in New York City Monday morning.
“Twenty-two years ago, nineteen terrorists took 2,977 innocent lives in the deadliest attack against America in our history,” DeSantis said. “We will never forget.”
The governor and the first lady paid their respects at Ground Zero, where two planes deliberately struck the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of all the innocent men and women who lost their lives on 9/11,” Casey DeSantis said. “We will never forget.”
The attack sparked a decades long war on terror, including U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The war in Afghanistan culminated with a botched withdrawal by many critics, including by DeSantis and other Florida lawmakers.
President Joe Biden announced a full troop withdrawal by the 20-year anniversary of 9/11 in April of that year. The outcome resulted in the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and pushed Afghanistan government control back in the hands of the Taliban.
“Thirteen brave service members were killed. Intelligence warnings that the Taliban would quickly take over were ignored,” DeSantis said about the 2-year anniversary of the pullout. “Billions of dollars in U.S. military equipment were gifted to the Taliban.”
On the home front, DeSantis expressed concern about terrorist activity along the southern border in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
“I think that there is a good bet that somebody that’s come across that [southern] border will commit an act of terrorism,” DeSantis said. “9/11 was in part an immigration issue. A lot of these guys should not have been in the country — had overstayed visas and whatnot.”
Along with the attacks on the World Trade Center, the al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists used one commercial airplane to attack the Pentagon while another plane crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The attacks resulted in the deaths of 2,977 people, marking the largest loss of life on American soil from a foreign attack in U.S. history.
