CRAWFORD, Texas – President Bush, facing criticism for using images of the destroyed World Trade Center in campaign ads, will visit a Sept. 11 memorial in New York next week.
Bush plans to tour the memorial on Thursday in Eisenhower Park on Long Island prior to attending a re-election fund-raiser that night in East Meadow, the White House announced yesterday.
The visit comes as Bush’s campaign ads with images of the skeletal remains of the trade center and firefighters carrying a flag-draped stretcher have been criticized by some Democrats, family members of victims and a firefighters union.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan rejected calls to stop airing the commercials.
“It’s just something we respectfully disagree with,” McClellan told reporters yesterday in Crawford, where Bush is spending a long weekend. “I think most Americans think it’s important to talk about how we lead in a post-Sept. 11 world.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer yesterday declined to comment on the Bush commercials, while Sen. Hillary Clinton said she hopes that the Bush campaign “will be more sensitive going forward.”
“I understand the [families’] concern and the president has said in the past that he would do nothing that could politicize this terrible tragedy,” Clinton said yesterday in Manhattan.