Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy revealed late Sunday the eyebrow-raising analogy a White House official used when asked why President Joe Biden is skipping traditional 9/11 memorial services.
As president, Biden has marked the 9/11 anniversary by visiting the sites hit by the hijacked planes in 2001. Last year, he spoke from the Pentagon. In 2021, he visited all three sites: Ground Zero in New York City, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
But this year, he will be speaking from a military base in Anchorage, Alaska, following a trip to Asia.
Reporting from Vietnam, Doocy explained that he contacted White House officials about the president’s unusual 9/11 plans. That official, whom Doocy did not name, offered a strange analogy in response.
“When I asked a White House official why it is that President Biden was here [in Vietnam] and missing the 9/11 commemorations at the attack sites, the analogy that I was given is: 22 years after Pearl Harbor, U.S. presidents were not still going to visit Hawaii,” Doocy said.
It is the first time a sitting president will not visit one of the three crash sites on the anniversary of the attacks, Newsweek noted.
Instead, Vice President Kamala Harris commemorated the 9/11 anniversary at the September 11th Memorial in New York City. First lady Jill Biden attended a ceremony at the Pentagon memorial, and second gentleman Doug Emhoff was sent to lay a wreath in Shanksville.
Funny enough, the White House tried to spin the deviation from presidential tradition, and MSNBC was happy to pass it along.
“The fact that the president is going to be speaking at a military base in Alaska in particular, I’m told, is meant to send this message: that so many people after 9/11 were inspired to join the Armed Forces and that that is a ripple that isn’t always talked about as much,” MSNBC reporter Monica Alba said on Monday. “So that’s something the White House wants to honor today.”
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