Vice President JD Vance was working a Republican rally in Sterling Heights, Mich., on Monday, August 31, 2026, when he told the crowd Americans were about to “celebrate” the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. He swapped the word out mid-sentence — too late, because the clip had already left the room, and the ridicule online has not stopped since.

“We’re about to celebrate the 25th year,” Vance said, then caught himself and substituted the word commemorate. The country, he continued, would celebrate the brave heroes who made it, and he said that as terrible as the attacks were, they could have been far worse.

Vance, 42, had come to Macomb County to campaign for Rep. John James, the party’s nominee for governor, and Mike Rogers, its Senate nominee, both endorsed by President Donald Trump. Someone clipped the video and posted it to X, where the mocking commentary poured in.

The Sterling Heights event on August 31 doubled as the first rally staged by MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, and drew over 300 people.

Backlash Over a Single Word

Reaction came fast, and it broke largely along partisan lines. One user riffed on what a person might wear to a 9/11 anniversary party. Others took it more seriously, arguing Americans do not celebrate the attacks — they honor the dead, and that people in positions of authority have to choose their words carefully on a day set aside for mourning.

The obvious counterfactual surfaced too, with critics asking how conservative media would have reacted had a Democratic politician used the same phrasing. Some treated the slip as a career forecast, and one user predicted flatly that Vance would never win the presidency. Others allowed only that celebrate was a poor word choice in an otherwise unremarkable stretch of stump speech.

The stumble came less than two weeks before the anniversary itself, marked on Friday, September 11. Terrorists linked to al-Qaida hijacked four passenger jets on September 11, 2001, flying two into the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York City, a third into the Pentagon and a fourth into a Pennsylvania field. The death toll reached 2,977, among them 343 firefighters and 72 law enforcement personnel. Thousands more were injured, and a quarter-century later, responders and survivors are still contending with long-term health problems.

Earlier ad-libs from the vice president have traveled for the wrong reasons as well. The trade dispute with Canada supplied one on August 24, when he described Canada as a state and then labeled the wording a Freudian slip.

Trump Marked the Day at the Pentagon

A separate flap over how the administration will observe the anniversary was already under way when the remark landed. Trump, 80, did not attend the ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in Lower Manhattan; the site sits on the footprint of the destroyed twin towers. Since 2012, the memorial has prohibited political speeches on its grounds to keep the observance nonpartisan, and Trump wanted to speak — so the Pentagon hosted him for the day instead, and Vance attended the World Trade Center ceremony in his place. There, the vice president stood with all four living former presidents: Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said, “As a proud New Yorker, President Trump has spoken about his own experiences watching the horrific events of September 11, 2001.” Those killed by the terrorists would be in the president’s remembrance, she said, along with honor for their families and tribute to the first responders who risked their lives to rescue fellow Americans.

Vance Takes Questions at the Briefing

Vance ran the White House press briefing on Thursday, September 3 — his first since press secretary Karoline Leavitt stepped down — and reporters asked why he, not Trump, would attend the Ground Zero ceremony.

He explained the split at the same briefing: “We just decided as a team that I would go to New York for 9/11, and the president would stay here in D.C. to commemorate what happened at the Pentagon.”

Vance also joked about Biden, 83, who is undergoing prostate cancer treatment and went on to attend the New York ceremony. “I’m also, as you guys can probably guess, I’m really looking forward to hanging out with Joe Biden,” he said. He added, “I’m sure that we’ll have many, many intense intellectual conversations and, um, you know, it’ll be great. We’ll have a great time with Joe Biden and the other presidents.”

Fred Guttenberg, an author and gun-safety advocate whose brother died of pancreatic cancer after serving as a 9/11 first responder, said of the joke: “The more I watch this, the more p—ed I get.”

Tommy Vietor, a former Obama national security staffer, wrote on X on September 3: “Vance is such a ****. Biden is undergoing cancer treatment, but glad JD could use the anniversary of 9/11 to take a cheap shot at him.”

The Michigan appearance was built to do a specific job: a battleground-state rally, two Trump-endorsed candidates and a patriotic set piece heading into the anniversary. Instead, a seven-word slip was carried out of the room — one critics are using to argue the vice president is careless with language on subjects that demand precision.