(VIDEO) Trump Says 'We Will Never, Ever Forget' 9/11 Victims as America Marks a Quarter Century Since Attacks

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump told a Pentagon ceremony on Friday that the United States would "never, ever forget" the dead of Sept. 11, 2001, as the country marked 25 years since hijackers flew four airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

"In 25 years, a generation has passed since the terror attacks," Trump said, reading from teleprompters at the Defense Department memorial for the 184 people killed when American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building. "Yet time has not dimmed the honour of that day our country came face-to-face with true evil."

Nearly 3,000 people died that morning. About 2,700 were killed in New York when two planes hit the Twin Towers. Forty passengers and crew died on United Airlines Flight 93 after they fought the hijackers and the jet crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Families, first responders and officials gathered at all three sites. In Lower Manhattan, bells and silences marked the times the South Tower fell (9:59 a.m.), Flight 93 went down (10:03 a.m.) and the North Tower collapsed (10:28 a.m.).

Trump tied remembrance to current fighting. "We were all New Yorkers that day," he said. "But we're also all Americans." He praised troops "working right now to ensure the world's number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never, ever have a nuclear weapon."

"Today we renew the sacred oath that we first swore in their names a quarter of a century ago," he said. "We will never, ever forget. That's why we fight today." On days like Sept. 11, he added, "we learn what a country is truly made of. We're learning right now what we're made of, and we have to be strong and we have to be smart."

He closed by saying the attacks "reminded us of the terrible power of hate" and also showed "the power of the American spirit." "No one can ever prepare for a day like 9/11. But we can always choose to be the kind of nation the world saw in those days after," he said. "We can raise our children to know that their country is good, that their fathers are brave, and that our flag is a symbol of justice and freedom."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was in ROTC at Princeton when the planes hit, spoke first at the Pentagon and made the same link more bluntly. "Twenty-five years later, America is stronger than ever before," he said in remarks previewed in ceremony coverage. He described post-2001 wars as "a generation of sacrifice, of valor, selfless and steadfast." "Even if imperfect, those conflicts were our retribution," he said.

"There are still enemies who hate us," Hegseth said. "Every day, enemies plot to curb our power and kill our citizens, including from Islamic terrorists abroad and at home. But we are ever vigilant, especially this place." Of the campaign against Iran he said: "Over the past six months, we have laid waste to the world's most prolific state sponsor of terrorism. Our warriors have fought an Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for nearly half a century."

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser on the day of the attacks, recalled the first report as a possible accident. "I was at my desk at the White House that day when my executive assistant, a young army officer, told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. What a strange accident, I thought." After the second impact she was moved to a bunker and could not reach Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after the Pentagon was hit.

"Behind every name that we recite, there is a story, a life that mattered, a future unfulfilled, a void, a vast empty space in the heart of a husband, a wife, a son, a daughter, a sibling, a colleague, or a friend," Rice said. "We come together today to say that they will never be forgotten, and to honour their memory."

In New York, former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris issued statements and Clinton attended the ceremony. Harris said a generation has grown up since the attacks "but our responsibility to remember has not changed." "We remember the people who went to work that morning and never came home, and we remember the families who have carried their memories every day since," she said. Clinton said the nightmare cannot be erased, "but we can support the people who have given and lost so much by treating one another with respect." He also noted those later sickened by toxic dust.

The names of the dead were read again at the National September 11 Memorial, a ritual now older than many of the Americans who watched it. BBC correspondent Nada Tawfik reported that nearly a third of the country is too young to remember the day itself. Clouds blocked the "Way of Light" inside the Oculus transit hall, where two ceiling slits are designed to throw twin beams onto the floor between the first impact and the second collapse. An inscription there reads: "Here the Sun stands at 10:28 am on September 11, completing a wedge of light."

John Ryan, a retired court officer who lost friends in the towers and the firehouses, sat across the street from the memorial and looked at empty sky. "It was the day that changed the world. The day that changed my life," he said. He remembered a Friday vigil that week: "That night, everybody stood still. All the cars stopped. Nobody moved. You know, Manhattan, they don't stop for anything."

Rich Baktis, who was in high school on Long Island in 2001, said the aftermath — not the morning — is what he wants younger people to know. "Everybody came together, and everybody helped everybody," he said. That togetherness, he added, was the "best part that came out of that terrible day."

Gunter Engels, visiting from Belgium, lost a former brother-in-law who worked in the towers and was never found. "The world has never been the same after 9/11," he said.

At Shanksville, a white marble wall of names faces the flight path of Flight 93, whose passengers are credited with stopping a strike on Washington. The three ceremonies ran on the same clock they have used for a quarter century: impact, collapse, crash, silence. The political overlay was new. The names were not.