Trump will be marking 25th anniversary of 9/11 at Pentagon instead of New York. Here’s why - fox34.com

The switch comes down to one thing: Trump wants to deliver remarks, and politicians have not been allowed to speak at the Ground Zero ceremony since 2012. That rule was put in place to keep the memorial and museum non-partisan. Trump's team had originally discussed sending him to New York before the plans shifted to the Pentagon.

For people who remember watching those towers fall on a Tuesday morning in 2001, the ceremony still carries real weight regardless of which official shows up where. The split arrangement means the country's two highest-ranking elected officials will be at two different memorials on the same day, a divide that has no recent precedent for a sitting president and vice president on this particular anniversary.

The 25th marks a full quarter-century since the attacks killed nearly 3,000 people across New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Trump attending the Pentagon honors those killed at that site, where a hijacked plane struck the building's west side. Whether splitting the ticket across two memorials sits well with families of victims is a question that does not yet have a public answer.