A single word at a Republican rally in Sterling Heights, Mich., has buried Vice President JD Vance in online ridicule. Speaking Monday, August 31, 2026, he told the crowd that Americans were about to “celebrate” the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. He offered the alternative in the same breath, but by then the clip had already escaped the room.
The line came inside an attack on Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, and the syntax collapsed under it. “He campaigns with a guy who says that 9/11, we’re about to celebrate the 25th year or commemorate the 25th year of those terrible terrorist attacks and celebrate all the brave heroes who made it frankly as terrible as it was, it could have been so much worse,” Vance told the crowd. “We’re about to celebrate those heroes and commemorate those that we lost.” He then accused El-Sayed of having a campaign surrogate who suggested America deserved the attacks.
Macomb County drew Vance, 42, because two candidates carrying President Donald Trump’s endorsement were on the ballot there. Rep. John James is the party’s nominee for governor and Mike Rogers is its Senate nominee. Somebody clipped video of the line within minutes and pushed it out on X, where mocking commentary poured in.
A Single Word Sets Off the Backlash
The pile-on came fast, and it broke largely along partisan lines. One user joked about the dress code for a 9/11 anniversary party. Others found no humor in it at all, insisting that Americans do not celebrate the attacks — they honor the dead.
The obvious counterfactual came up repeatedly: how would conservative media have reacted had a Democratic politician used the same phrasing? Other posts read the slip as a verdict on Vance’s political future. Plenty of commenters conceded only that celebrate had been a poor word choice in an otherwise unremarkable stretch of stump speech.
Al-Qaida-linked terrorists hijacked four passenger jets on September 11, 2001. The hijackers crashed two into the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York City, one into the Pentagon and one into a Pennsylvania field, killing 2,977 people, among them 343 firefighters and 72 law enforcement officers. Thousands more suffered injuries, and long-term health problems still afflict survivors and responders a quarter-century later.
This is not the first Vance ad-lib to travel for unwelcome reasons. At a manufacturing plant in Brewer, Maine, on August 24, in the middle of the trade dispute, he said: “We have to remember, Canada is a state — sorry, Freudian slip. That was actually an accident.”
Trump at the Pentagon, Vance at Ground Zero
A separate flap over how the administration would observe the anniversary was already under way when the gaffe landed. Reporting on August 28 revealed that Trump, 80, would not attend the ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in Lower Manhattan. The memorial has barred politicians from speaking at its annual commemoration since 2012, to keep the observance nonpartisan. Trump wanted to speak, so he marked the day at the Pentagon instead, and Vance went to the World Trade Center ceremony in his place.
“As a proud New Yorker, President Trump has spoken about his own experiences watching the horrific events of September 11, 2001,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said. The president will remember those killed by the terrorists, she added, and will honor their families and pay tribute to the first responders who risked their lives to rescue fellow Americans.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman and three colleagues made the arrangement public. Trump answered on Truth Social by calling her “Maggot Hagerman,” a mangling he has used before, and adding that she is “an unattractive person both inside and out.” That same reporting also said the president planned to travel to his Doonbeg resort in Ireland for the Irish Open the following weekend, which he did.
What Happened on the Day
On the anniversary itself, Trump spoke at the Pentagon alongside Melania Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Condoleezza Rice, tying the day to the war with Iran. Vance attended the Lower Manhattan ceremony and, under the memorial’s rule, did not speak. He stood beside Matthew Palazzo, a Coast Guard machinery technician whose father, Jeffrey, was killed on 9/11 before he was born. All four living former presidents attended with their wives.
Vance did not escape the day quietly. Terry Strada, national chair of 9/11 Families United, used her turn reading names to address him directly over Saudi Arabia’s alleged role in the attacks. “Stand with the families, stand with the survivors, stand with Americans,” she said. “As my husband Tom would have said, that is always the right thing to do.” The remarks drew applause at a ceremony that is traditionally silent.
Trump returned to the memorial dispute that day, telling a radio interviewer he was “99 percent sure” he would have been allowed to speak had he asked — a claim the memorial’s 14-year-old policy does not support.
Poll Numbers Loom Over November
For the administration, the timing is unforgiving. CNN displayed its own polling on August 31 showing Trump’s net approval rating at minus 32 percentage points and the Republican Party at minus 21. “There is no polling where this president is popular,” Haberman said on air. “And there is no polling where he is not in trouble on the issue of affordability.” Some Republicans oppose Trump’s plan for an unusual midterm convention because it drags them off the campaign trail, CNN host Kaitlan Collins noted; Haberman countered that it would also hand Democrats fresh material for ads.
Vance’s Michigan appearance was built to work against exactly that backdrop. Organizers had assembled a battleground-state rally, two Trump-endorsed candidates and a patriotic set piece ahead of the anniversary. Instead, a garbled sentence became the clearest takeaway from the event, and critics have used it to argue the vice president is careless with language on subjects that demand precision.