Biden to visit memorial where John McCain got shot down in Hanoi

 President Joe Biden will spend September 11th meeting with Vietnamese officials, visiting a memorial to an old friend, and marking the anniversary of the attacks at an air base in Alaska.

The White House released details of his public schedule for the 22nd anniversary of the attacks following Biden’s Thursday departure to India, where Biden will attend the G20 summit with foreign leaders.

Details of his second stop, in Vietnam, are only just emerging. It is a part of the trip that Biden first revealed during a fundraiser last month.

Biden and McCain were friends in the Senate who spent years serving together, although Biden was on Barack Obama‘s ticket that defeated the late Arizonan.

McCain was shot down over Hanoi in 1967, then spent five and a half years in a Vietnamese P.O.W. camp. 

The White House has already faced questions about Biden’s Sept. 11th schedule back in the U.S. He will not attend any of the memorial services at the three attack sites – the first time a U.S. president has not done so. Biden himself has attended multiple Sept. 11th services in the past.

Instead, he will ‘deliver remarks to service members, first responders, and their families on the anniversary of 9/11’ in Anchorage, where he has a refueling stop, according to the White House.

Due to travel time and a full day of activities, that event is expected to be hours after the first plane struck the South Tower in Manhattan.

Earlier, Biden will meet with CEOs along with Vietnamese Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính. He also meets with President Võ Văn Thưởng of Vietnam, and attends a luncheon. 

That comes after he meets the country’s top leader, General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng of the Communist Party of Vietnam on Saturday.