Biden will be the first president in 22 years not to mark the 9/11 memorial at one of the sites of the attack: Joe will visit a military base in Alaska to mourn the 2,977 dead
- Biden will stop in Alaska as he flies home from Vietnam
- He has previously visited locations at Ground Zero, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania
- Vice President Kamala Harris will attend the ceremony in Manhattan
Former President Joe Biden will celebrate the 22nd anniversary of the September 11 attacks with military personnel in Alaska — the first time a US president will celebrate the ceremonial birthday in a place other than New York, Virginia or Pennsylvania.
The White House announced the unusual location on Monday, the same day it revealed the president would add another country to his itinerary: adversary partnered Vietnam.
Biden will stop in Alaska on his return trip to India for the G20 summit, which will be followed by a stop in Hanoi, a visit likely to send a signal about countering the threat from China.
Biden marked the 21st anniversary of the Pentagon attacks. The year before, he visited Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 crashed.
He has also participated in ceremonies at Ground Zero. Nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11 attacks, and US presidents have repeatedly flown to places where they marked the tragic human toll of the terror attacks.
President Joe Biden will celebrate the 22nd anniversary of September 11 with military personnel and their families in Alaska. He returns from a trip to India and Vietnam
This will be the first time he does not celebrate the anniversary at one of the three attack locations.
“Twenty-one years ago – twenty-one years, and yet we kept our promise: never forget. We will preserve the memory of all those precious lives stolen from – from us: 2,977 – at Ground Zero in New York; in Shanksville, where my wife speaks now–in Pennsylvania; 184 of them here in the Pentagon,” he said last year at the Pentagon, across the Potomac River from the Capitol where Biden served as a senator on Sept. 11.
Vice President Kamala Harris will join Second Mr. Doug Emhoff to commemorate the anniversary of the New York attacks, the White House announced.
First lady Jill Biden will lay a wreath at the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial in honor of those lost that day. All 64 people on board American Airlines Flight 77 died that day, along with 125 people in the Pentagon.
The White House has not announced plans for Pennsylvania.
The White House only confirmed on Monday that Biden would visit Hanoi, where he plans to meet Secretary General Nguyen Phu Trong. They will discuss technology and innovation, “connections between people,” climate change and ways to promote “peace, prosperity and stability in the region,” the White House said.
He will allegedly signing an agreement designating Vietnam as a ‘strategic partner’, establishing further cooperation in high-tech areas, among others.
Vice President Kamala Harris (l) will attend the ceremony in Manhattan. Here Biden speaks at a meeting with organizers of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington in the Roosevelt Room of the White House
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dodged a question about whether Biden would raise human rights issues while in Hanoi. The US and Vietnam have grown closer over several successive administrations, despite the lingering history of the Vietnam heat.
Vietnam and China are historic opponents.
His visit comes at the end of a trip that Biden was expected to leave on September 10 before the additional layover was added.
In Alaska, Biden’participate in a memorial ceremony with members of the military and their families,” the White House said in a brief statement.
The event takes place at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, where presidents often refuel on their way to Asia.
There do not seem to be any major events on Biden’s agenda before the summit.