President Donald Trump and government and military leaders past and present paid tribute to the victims, survivors, and heroes of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, marking 25 years since a hijacked plane flew into the building, killing 184 victims.
As rain poured down and the sun rose in the East, a massive American flag was unfurled atop the Pentagon wall, its stars and stripes flooding down the concrete facade, reenacting what first responders did on Sept. 12, 2001—and as they have done on every 9/11 anniversary since.
Hours later, Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took turns at the lectern, each vowing to “never forget” the 2,977 American lives that day in New York, Washington, and Shanksville, Pa. In a coordinated attack, four U.S. airliners were hijacked that day. The first two struck the twin World Trade Center towers in New York City, the third slammed into the Pentagon, and the fourth, brought down after passengers stormed the cockpit, crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
“A Navy airman had just gotten off the phone with his 10-year-old son,” Trump said. “A secretary was celebrating her 46th birthday. … A sergeant major was chatting with some colleagues he had hosted for a dinner party over the weekend. At 9:37 a.m., every single one of those people and every person at that sergeant major’s party was murdered by terrorists who flew Flight 77 straight into this legendary building.”
Rice, who was President Bush’s National Security Advisory in 2001, recounted her experience on 9/11, “the horror and the shock that I felt” as a TV in the White House bunker displayed images of smoke rising from the Pentagon.
Yet in the midst of disaster, she added, military personnel and civilians alike responded with courage. “It is fitting that here at the Pentagon, we reflect not just on what happened here, but what in that moment of crisis, people did here,” she said. “They summoned a will and a spirit, a sense of obligation that our military lives by every day—I will stand between danger and my fellow citizens, I will leave no comrade behind, I will go, I will serve, I will do my duty.”
Caine, who as a young major scrambled in an F-16 to protect Washington D.C. on 9/11, called the anniversary not just a “story of loss” but one of “great American courage, selfless service, and those who’ve made the choice to carry those memories forward.”
More than 40 federal, state, and local agencies responded to the attack on the Pentagon. Rice described how then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pulled people to safety “as his security detail begged him to flee the danger.” Trump described how, on Sept. 12, Army Maj. Gen. James Jackson ordered the American flag to be hung from the side of the Pentagon.
“First responders climbed to top the walls and hung it next to the gaping holes in this building as a symbol of American defiance,” Trump said. “This morning, that same flag is here to my right for the first time since 2001, along with three firefighters who raised it, Joseph Morabito, Scott Morgan, and Carl Solberg.”
Hegseth, who joined the U.S. Army in the years after 9/11, said the attacks “inspired millions to step forward instead and say, ‘send me.’” Now, 25 years later, he acknowledged that many service members “do not remember 9/11; many were not even born yet. And that leaves it to us on this day and others like it to pass down that memory to our kids, to my kids, to yours, to my grandkids, to yours.”
Both Trump and Hegseth made reference to the ongoing conflict with Iran, calling the Iranian government “the world’s number one sponsor of terror” and connecting the response to 9/11 to the ongoing hostilities.
For the most part, though, leaders focused their remarks on the lives lost in the attacks, the bravery of the survivors and first responders, and the national unity forged in the response.
“September 11th reminded us of the terrible power of hate,” Trump said. “The 25 years since have shown us the even greater power of the American spirit to endure and prevail and to win.”
