New York City has grown and changed in the years after the world was stunned by the 9/11 attacks brought down the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, Rudy Giuliani, mayor at the time of the 2001 attacks, said Tuesday.
"It's actually a wonderful story if you think about it," Giuliani, who became nicknamed "America's Mayor" after the attacks, told Fox News' "Fox and Friends."
"I struggled for about three months, four months trying to bring people back; Mike Bloomberg did for about a year.
Now, there are "more than twice as many people" in the section of Manhattan that was hit than there was on the day of the 9-11 attacks, said Giuliani, and more than four times as many businesses.
He recalled on the day of the attacks, he was finishing breakfast at a local hotel and a police officer walked in and told his counsel that a twin engine plane had hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and there was a bad fire.
"I thought it was another New York City tragedy," he said. He noted that he was almost at the scene when he got a call from then-Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who told him the second plane had hit.
The fight against terrorism will have to go on for a long time, said Giuliani, but he does think President Donald Trump has done a "really excellent job" of keeping it contained. The former mayor is now Trump's personal attorney.
Trump praised the former mayor on Twitter Tuesday, calling him a "real warrior."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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