‘The View’ Hosts Share Personal Memories of 9/11 Experiences

Though the show’s official broadcast was preempted on Friday (September 11), The View still filmed a new episode and its official social media handles has now shared key clips from it.

In the clip, the cohosts paid tribute to the victims and heroes of 9/11 and shared their own personal memories of their experiences from that day.

Alyssa Farah Griffin, who was admittedly very emotional about the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, remembered her own fear that her mother might have been harmed in New York.

“I was in junior high, and I lived in California at the time, but my mom took an annual trip to New Jersey to see lifelong girlfriends. But the morning of September 11th, she was supposed to go to the opening of the New York Stock Exchange,” Griffin remembered. “My mom, however, is habitually late, so she was actually still in Hoboken when the Twin Towers were hit. But, as you guys will remember, cell phones were not going through. You couldn’t get in touch with loved ones, and I didn’t know for hours if my momo was alive…. I remember my older sister came to my middle school, and when I saw her, I thought, ‘She’s going to tell me Mom’s dead.’ Thank God she was fine.”

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Griffin then noted that her mother, a journalist, proceeded to cover the aftermath before reflecting upon reports that members of Gen Z are disconnected from the gravity of the tragedy. “To see some Gen Z-ers and people younger than me that almost have kind of memefied it, they don’t really understand the depth of it. We literally watched nearly 3,000 Americans die on live television. But I also want to remind people, there was a true moment of unity in this country that I don’t recognize today. I remember George Bush throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium, how that made everyone feel, regardless of how they felt about him. I remember him going to a mosque and saying, ‘Islam is a religion of peace,’ because he wanted to stop this rising Islamophobia. That is our nation at its best, and I hope we can get back to that.”

Sunny Hostin then shared that she was a federal prosecutor at the time and was trying a case in from a grand jury when she and others were rushed out of the room into a bunker. “I didn’t even know that existed,” she said. Once she found out what happened, she worried about her relatives in various places.

“My cousin Jeff worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, and I knew that he worked there, but he had taken the day off, so that was a miss. That was a blessing. Then my father — my whole family is in New York, and Lower Manhattan — and I was trying to call my family, and I couldn’t get through to anyone. Then we find out there’s a plane that has hit in Pennsylvania, and my husband was doing a fellowship at UPenn in Pennsylvania. And for all that time, I couldn’t find out if anyone was OK. I’ll never forget because they thought it was going to hit the Federal Triangle, which is where I was, and one of the planes did hit the Pentagon, and I could smell in the air, sort of just the fumes, and I could see the fire, and it was so tragic.”

Sara Haines was the next to share her story, remembering that she was a page at 30 Rock, the NBC building, and was in the process of bringing in a live audience when tragedy struck. “At first, they told us — because we were an iconic building and they didn’t know yet what was happening — they first said, ‘Stay in the building, don’t go anywhere.’ Then, they said, “Get out of the building! You have to leave.’ And there were no subways or taxis, so the streets, for anyone that was in New York, knows it was just this mass migration of people trying to get down to loved ones to go up to home.”

She then remembered that she had a landline at her apartment and invited other coworkers to her place to make calls to their loved ones before offering another anecdote: “I also remember for months and maybe years afterwards feeling like I could have walked up to anyone in New York City and hugged them. It was like that. Being from Iowa, that’s kind of seen as strange to talk and touch people, but it was this connection that you’ll forever feel, and I think the importance of passing these memories on — we all have visceral connections probably in this room to that moment. We need to pass on the pain, to pass on the history and the explanation and the heroism of the people that ran toward a place we all ran out — the sacrifice, the continued sacrifice of these families.”

Joy Behar then remembered that she was actually preparing for The View in the makeup room when the coverage came on. “We thought it was a plane that had just gone awry,” she explained. “Then, the second one went, and then you knew this was bad.” From there, she immediately made contact with her daughter, who was on board a plane for takeoff in Canada, and demanded she leave it. “I was able to get through on the phone, and I said to her, ‘Get off the plane.’ She said, ‘Well, they just locked the door, they won’t let me off the plane.’ I said, ‘You tell the flight attendant your mother said get off the plane.'”

Ana Navarro was the last to speak about it and remembered how her husband, Al Cárdenas, was actually with George W. Bush in Florida at the time when he received the news of the attacks.

HELPING YOUNGER GENERATIONS REMEMBER 9/11: On the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, ‘The View’ co-hosts discuss how Americans who lived through that day can help younger generations remember its impact on the country and honor the heroes who helped the nation heal. pic.twitter.com/f2J8pLQkhN

— The View (@TheView) September 11, 2026