Vice President JD Vance has been slammed for making insulting comments while justifying why he was attending the Sept. 11, 2001 memorial at Ground Zero instead of President Trump.
Trump, 80, was initially due to appear at the New York memorial to mark the 25th anniversary of the tragedy. However, he skipped the event after being told he would not be allowed to deliver one of his rambling speeches.
The solemn memorial is meant to honor the nearly 3,000 people killed on September 11, 2001.
The president will now mark the occasion at the Pentagon, while Vance will join all four living former U.S. presidents, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, at the World Trade Center, the New York Times reported.
Running the first White House media briefing since former press secretary Karoline Leavitt stepped down, Vance was asked on Thursday why he was attending the Ground Zero memorial rather than the president and whether it was due to a security concern, being the anniversary.
“I don’t think it’s a special security concern... that’s not what I’ve heard,” Vance said, adding he would follow up with Secret Service.
“You have a vice president and you have a president…we’d like to be three or four places on 9/11 but you can’t have one person be in multiple locations at the exact same time.“
Vance added, “We just decided as a team that I would go to New York for 9/11, and the president would stay here in D.C. to commemorate what happened at the Pentagon, because that was a critical part of of the tragedy of 9/11 as well.”
Adding that despite the “tragic” circumstances of the day, the 42-year-old said that his previous attendance at a Ground Zero memorial was “one of the most amazing experiences of my life,” before taking a swipe at Biden, 83, who is currently battling prostate cancer.
“I’m also, as you guys can probably guess, I’m really looking forward to hanging out with Joe Biden,” Vance told reporters. He added, “I’m sure that we’ll have many, many intense intellectual conversations and, um, you know, it’ll be great. We’ll have a great time with Joe Biden and the other presidents.” He let out a minor chuckle at his own words before moving onto the next question.
Vance’s comments, directed at Biden, were called out by author Fred Guttenberg. His brother, Dr. Michael Guttenberg, was an emergency medicine physician and 9/11 first responder who died from pancreatic cancer in October 2017, due to toxic exposure at Ground Zero.
“The more I watch this, the more p---ed I get,” Guttenberg said on X. “As someone whose brother died because of 9/11, I would expect that this a--hole who happens to be our VP would at least understand why this moment matters.”
Tagging Vance directly, he said the vice president was using the occasion “to mock” the former president, who he also tagged.
“JD, my brother didn’t die to enable sewer dwelling scum like you,” Guttenberg said. “I can only hope that every elected person who enables you is voted out in November.”
Guttenberg expanded on his thoughts in a response to the Daily Beast, adding, “As we approach the 25th anniversary, a moment that requires maturity and seriousness, these comments from Vance reinforce how incapable this administration is of delivering that.”
He added, “The idea that Vance would mock the former president, and politicize this moment in our history in such a vile way, should just give Americans another reason to get to the polls in November and vote his enablers in Congress out.”
In an earlier X post, Guttenberg reacted to Pod Save America host Tommy Vietor, who called Vance a “p---k,” noting “Biden is undergoing cancer treatment, but glad JD could use the anniversary of 9/11 to take a cheap shot at him.” Guttenberg added, “Absolutely correct,” and tagged Vance and also called him a “p---k.”
Vance’s team referred the Daily Beast to comments the vice president made in his briefing.
Seconds before his remarks about Biden, Vance said of the 9/11 anniversary, “As much as it’s tragic and it was a terrible day, I am looking forward to it because it’s such an amazing honor to be able to get to New York and to share in that moment... where the parents and the kids read the names of the people who lost their lives.”
Vance also encouraged every American “particularly the people who are young enough to not really remember that day, just to tune in for a couple of hours and see what it meant.”
He added that Americans should try to return to “that sense of commonality and common purpose that we all had on 9/11.”
Last month, Hunter Biden revealed his father’s prostate cancer has spread to other parts of his body.
“The cancer has spread, metastasized into his bones and further,” Biden said. “It’s very painful and it’s very debilitating in many respects.”
Michael Guttenberg suffered pancreatic cancer for almost five years after being exposed to toxic dust and chemicals, and passed away at age 50 in October 2017.
Tragically, four months after Michael’s death, Fred Guttenberg’s 14-year-old daughter, Jamie, was killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Guttenberg is now a gun safety advocate, author and public speaker.
