Rudy Giuliani shook Mayor Zohran Mamdani's hand at the 25th anniversary 9/11 memorial service just days after publicly calling on the mayor to stay away, and a lip reader says Giuliani told him, "I prayed for you."
The exchange at the National September 11 Memorial on Friday was brief, civil, and loaded with tension. Giuliani, 82, the former New York City mayor who became known as "America's Mayor" for his leadership after the 2001 attacks, had spent the days before the ceremony openly questioning whether Mamdani belonged there at all. Then the two men came face to face at Ground Zero, clasped hands, and traded a few words that only a professional lip reader could decode.
UK-based expert lip reader Jeremy Freeman reviewed footage of the moment and told the New York Post that Giuliani said: "I prayed for you. Good job. OK." Three short sentences, part olive branch, part stiff courtesy, from a man who days earlier had said Mamdani's presence at the memorial offended him.
Body language expert and behavior analyst Traci Brown, who also reviewed the footage, told the Post that the visual cues told a more complicated story than the words alone. She described Giuliani's initial expression as open but increasingly unhappy:
"Giuliani's eyebrows [are] up in recognition and acknowledgment. But his frown grows the longer they shake hands. So he's not happy about the connection."
Brown read Mamdani's body language differently. She said the mayor leaned in, eager to engage, but that his confidence faltered once the moment passed.
"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."
So Giuliani showed up grim and stayed grim. Mamdani showed up eager and walked away unsettled. A handshake that satisfied neither man, which may be the most honest summary of where the two stand.
The friction did not start at Ground Zero. On Sunday, Giuliani gave an interview to Newsmax in which he claimed Mamdani "doesn't agree that September 11 was an Islamic terrorist attack on the United States of America." Asked whether Mamdani's attendance at 9/11 memorials offended him, Giuliani replied: "No question."
Giuliani had joined growing calls for Mamdani to skip the memorial services entirely. He was not alone. Families of 9/11 victims had petitioned to bar Mamdani from the 25th anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero, a sign of how deep the distrust runs between the mayor and the people most directly scarred by the attacks.
Mamdani attended anyway.
The mayor's own moves in the days before the ceremony added another layer. On Tuesday, City Hall released 170,000 long-hidden documents on air quality risks that followed the September 11 attacks, records that previous administrations had kept from public view. Mamdani used the release to deliver a pointed statement, though he did not name anyone directly.
"People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air."
Giuliani was mayor on September 11, 2001, and in the months that followed, when city and federal officials assured rescue workers and Lower Manhattan residents that the air was safe. Thousands of first responders and residents later developed serious illnesses linked to toxic dust from the collapsed towers. Mamdani's words, delivered without naming his predecessor, carried an unmistakable direction.
The 9/11 memorial confrontation is only the latest flashpoint for a mayor who has repeatedly drawn fire for decisions that strike critics as tone-deaf or worse. Mamdani sparked outrage at City Hall after giving a 9/11 memorial pen to an ex-al-Qaeda lawyer, a gesture that stunned even some of his allies.
His administration has also faced scrutiny over how it manages its public image. Progressive influencers admitted parroting City Hall talking points through a secret Signal network, raising questions about whether the mayor's office was quietly coordinating favorable coverage rather than earning it through transparent governance.
And the backlash has not been limited to September 11 controversies. Mamdani drew sharp criticism for publicly mourning a Rikers inmate charged in a meat-cleaver killing, a move that left victims' advocates and law-enforcement supporters questioning whose side the mayor was on.
What Friday's exchange at Ground Zero revealed is that both men understood the stakes of the moment well enough to keep it civil, but not well enough to make it warm. Giuliani, a devout Roman Catholic by his own description, chose prayer as his opening line. Mamdani leaned in. Neither man left the interaction looking comfortable.
Freeman's lip-reading and Brown's body-language analysis are interpretations drawn from footage, not confirmed accounts from either participant. Neither Giuliani nor Mamdani has publicly described what was said during the handshake. But the footage, the experts' readings, and the days of public tension that preceded the encounter all point in the same direction: a relationship defined by deep mutual wariness, papered over for the cameras on a day that demanded something better.
Twenty-five years after the towers fell, the ceremony at Ground Zero should belong to the families, the first responders, and the city that endured the worst attack on American soil. When the politics of who gets to stand at the memorial become the story, the people who lost the most are the ones pushed to the margins, again.