At the ceremony, however, he appeared subdued and sober as a Navy quintet played “America the Beautiful” and the national anthem. A bell tolled for each of the 40 victims and their names were read aloud, sometimes by emotional relatives. In one case, four children too young to have been alive on that day spoke the name of the grandfather they clearly never had the opportunity to meet.
Wearing a ribbon on his suit jacket, Mr. Trump was accompanied by Melania Trump as well as Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, and John R. Bolton, his national security adviser.
The ceremony was interrupted briefly by a staccato burst of pop-pop-pop, an unnerving moment that was quickly attributed to an electrical short in a sound mixer.
The event came just two days after the dedication of a 93-foot concrete-and-steel tower that will ring with wind chimes, the final phase of the memorial. Each of the chimes, one representing each of the 40 who died, generate different sounds, as unique as the individuals they are meant to honor.
Mr. Trump condemned “radical Islamic terrorism” and the “evil men bent on terror and conquest” who seized Flight 93 on that morning 17 years ago.
“We will remember that free people are never at the mercy of evil because our destiny is always in our hands,” Mr. Trump said, sticking close to the text of his remarks rather than extemporizing as he often does. “America’s future is not written by our enemies. America’s future is written by our heroes.”
Gordon Felt, president of Families of Flight 93 and a leading force behind commemorating the victims, praised the unity and diversity of the passengers on the plane that day. “They were able to come together in mere minutes not as 40 individuals but rather as one unified force,” said Mr. Felt, whose brother, Edward Felt, died on the plane. “They chose to stand together and fight as a single united group.”
He added that Americans today should “choose to rise up and be better as our loved ones did in their final moments.”