Jimmy Carter’s Funeral Again Showcases The Divide Between Trump And All The Rest

WASHINGTON ― The current and former living U.S. presidents said goodbye to Jimmy Carter on Thursday, and in the process once again highlighted the contrast between former and soon-to-be President Donald Trump and all the others.

At the 39th president’s funeral at National Cathedral, Trump was seated in the second row in a pew shared with Barack Obama, whom he repeatedly claimed was born abroad and ineligible to be president, and Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent whom he unsuccessfully tried to prosecute once he was in office.

Ahead of Trump was President Joe Biden, whom he tried to coerce a foreign leader into smearing ahead of the 2020 election, and behind him was his former vice president, Mike Pence, against whom Trump incited a mob of his followers during his last-gasp attempt to overturn that election on Jan. 6, 2021.

The scene was a replay of the funeral for Republican President George H.W. Bush in 2018. Bush had said he voted for Clinton in the 2016 election, and Trump, the sitting president at the time, was largely ignored by the others.

Trump has, over the years, insulted in personal terms both Carter and all the remaining living presidents individually as well as collectively, calling them “stupid people” who struck trade agreements and treaties that Trump opposes.

During the 2024 campaign, as Carter lived in hospice care, Trump said that Carter should be pleased with Biden. “I thought to myself, Jimmy Carter is happy now because he will go down as being a brilliant president by comparison to Joe Biden,” Trump said.

On Thursday, Trump sat with Obama on one side and wife Melania Trump on the other. He had no role in the program, which included testimonials from a former aide and from the son of Carter’s former vice president, Walter Mondale, who died in 2021. The service also included the reading of a eulogy written by former President Gerald Ford, whom Carter defeated in the 1976 election.

“Jimmy. I’m looking forward to our reunion. We have much to catch up on,” Steven Ford said, reading from words his father wrote before his death in 2006.

Stuart Eizenstat, Carter’s domestic affairs adviser, said the late president deserves far more credit than he has received over the years, rather than scorn for having lost after a single term to Republican Ronald Reagan. Carter was the one who appointed Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve, knowing that he would dramatically raise interest rates in order to strangle inflation, which in turn would hurt Carter’s reelection campaign. Carter began a push for renewable and clean energy, and his administration was the first to warn of climate change. And while Reagan gets the credit for the big military buildup that bankrupted the Soviet Union, it was Carter who pushed the research and development of the new weapons systems that made it possible.

“Today, many think he was from a bygone era, but in reality, he saw well into the future,” Biden said in his eulogy. “A Southern Baptist who led on civil rights. A decorated Navy veteran who brokered peace. A brilliant nuclear engineer who led on nuclear nonproliferation. A hardworking farmer who championed conservation and clean energy.”

Carter, though, has generally been viewed as having had a far more successful post-presidency than presidency, with work to advance democracy around the world through the Carter Center as well as building homes for poor people in the U.S. through Habitat for Humanity.

“As we all know, Jimmy Carter also established a model post-presidency by making a powerful difference as a private citizen in America and, you all know, around the world,” Biden said. “Through it all, he showed us how character and faith start with ourselves and then flows to others.”

At the end of the service, Carter’s flag-draped casket was taken by motorcade to Joint Base Andrews for the return flight aboard the modified Boeing 747 that serves as Air Force 1 back to Georgia for burial in his hometown, Plains.