The support of Queen Elizabeth II after the September 11th jihadist terrorist attacks on the United States was “invaluable”, according to former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Speaking to GB News on the 21st anniversary of 9/11 on Sunday, the 78-year-old Republican said that “to know that the Queen of England was thinking about us, concerned about us, on our side, supporting us — oh my goodness, it had a spiritual dimension to it that cannot be exaggerated,” he said.
Famously, the late monarch broke with hundreds of years of tradition to have The Star-Spangled Banner played outside Buckingham Palace during the Changing of the Guard in the wake of the attacks — and had it played again at Windsor Castle just last year, on their 20th anniversary.
“When you get attacked like we did, or like Britain did, let’s say, in the Second World War, you feel alone. You feel like you’re handling it all by yourself,” Giuliani explained.
“And the minute people empathise with you and understand it, particularly the brilliance with which she did it, it’s invaluable. You cannot emphasise enough how important that is to the morale and how important it was to bringing the morale of the people of New York back,” he said.
Giuliani said that the Queen was “a very special figure in America” — joking that this was “complicated by the fact that we were once a colony — but that’s a long time ago!”
“But her dignity, her grace — I mean, she’s someone I can’t imagine many Americans not having great respect and admiration for her,” he said.
One of the Queen’s other gestures of solidarity with New York City after 9/11 was to confer an honourary knighthood on the then-mayor, which he said he felt unworthy of and could only accept on behalf of all New Yorkers.
“I told the Queen when she gave it to me that I felt unworthy, that I felt I should accept it on behalf of all New Yorkers, because I stood on the shoulders of giants,” he recalled.
“And she told me that that’s the way every great leader feels. I thought that was beautiful,” he said of the late monarch, whose own first prime minister in the 1950s was wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill.
Giuliani also told his British interviewer not to be overly worried about left-wing figures and media outlets in the United States “trashing” the Queen’s legacy and the former British Empire in the wake of her death, observing that “they’re the same people that trash America.”
“Don’t feel singled out, they say even worse things about my country,” he said.
Ceremony at The Queen Elizabeth II September 11th Garden near ground zero on the 11th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 9/11. (Photo by James Leynse/Corbis via Getty Images)