Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor who shepherded New York City through the Sept. 11 attacks, said on Sunday that he did not think Mayor Zohran Mamdani should attend memorial ceremonies this week to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks. Giuliani called it "offensive" and compared Mamdani to the Sept. 11 hijackers, who he said had hostility to America.

Giuliani also repeated a right-wing conspiracy theory that Mamdani is part of a Muslim plot aimed at "taking over certain parts of America and certain parts of Europe." Giuliani, who was widely praised after the attacks, has politically drifted far to the right, serving as a high profile surrogate and personal lawyer for President Donald J. Trump. He was involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, for which Trump pardoned him last year.

Mamdani's office declined to directly address Giuliani's comments, directing reporters to his earlier response to an online petition demanding he skip the ceremonies. Mamdani said he will "proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders" impacted by the attack. Mamdani, who was 9 years old during the attacks and in class at his Upper West Side elementary school, has spoken about Islamophobic backlash making anti-Muslim prejudice "a fact of life" for Muslim Americans.

Mamdani has already attended or plans to attend roughly a dozen Sept. 11 memorial events at firehouses across the city. Giuliani is expected to attend the ceremonies. Earlier this year, Giuliani was hospitalized with pneumonia, saying he believed his health problems stemmed in part from exposure to airborne toxins after the World Trade Center collapse.

Giuliani was two blocks away from the first tower when it collapsed, his head and shoulders dusted with ash as he fled Lower Manhattan.