President Joe Biden says he plans to deliver the eulogy at the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter, who remains under hospice care at his home in south Georgia.
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While on his brief trip to California on Monday evening, Biden told donors at a fundraiser in San Diego County about his “recent” visit to see the 39th president, whom he has known since he was a young Delaware senator supporting Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign. Biden was scheduled to appear in Monterey Park on Tuesday.
“He asked me to do his eulogy,” Biden said, before stopping himself from saying more. “Excuse me, I shouldn’t say that.”
FILE- In this Oct. 12, 2010 file photo, former President Jimmy Carter speaks at a ceremony at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter has some advice for Barack Obama as he gears up for the 2012 election: Don’t alienate voters with controversial positions. The Georgia Democrat told The Associated Press on Tuesday that just about everything he did alienated voters, from sealing a treaty to hand over the Panama Canal to establishing diplomatic ties with China. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)
Carter, who at 98 is the longest-lived U.S. president, announced Feb. 18 that he would spend his remaining days at home receiving end-of-life care, forgoing further medical intervention after a series of short hospital stays. The Carter Center in Atlanta and the former president’s family members have not disclosed details of his condition, though Biden alluded to Carter’s 2015 cancer diagnosis and subsequent recovery.
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“I spent time with Jimmy Carter and it’s finally caught up with him, but they found a way to keep him going for a lot longer than they anticipated because they found a breakthrough,” Biden said in Rancho Sante Fe in San Diego County.
Biden, 80, and first lady Jill Biden visited Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, who is now 95, at their home in Plains, Georgia, a few months after Biden took office in 2021. Biden was the first U.S. senator to endorse Carter’s 1976 presidential bid, breaking from the Washington establishment that Carter — then a former one-time Georgia governor — shocked by winning the Democratic nomination.
Biden’s presidency represents a turnabout, of sorts, for Carter’s political standing. He served just one term and lost in a landslide to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980, prompting top Democrats to keep their distance, at least publicly, for decades after he left the White House.
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 13:US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (not shown) participate in a bilateral meeting during the AUKUS summit on March 13, 2023 in San Diego, California. President Biden hosts British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in San Diego for an AUKUS meeting to discuss the procurement of nuclear-powered submarines under a pact between the three nations. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did not have close relationships with Carter. And the longshot presidential candidates who sometimes ventured to Plains over the years typically did so privately.
But as the Carters’ global humanitarian work and advocacy of democracy via The Carter Center garnered new respect, Democratic politicians began publicly circulating back to south Georgia ahead of the 2020 election cycle. And with Biden’s election, Carter again found a genuine friend and ally in the Oval Office.
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Some Carter family members have confirmed that the former president will have a state funeral in Washington, D.C., along with a private funeral and burial in Plains. Former and sitting presidents often speak at the state funerals of their predecessors, sometimes even crossing the political aisle. Clinton spoke at Republican Richard Nixon’s funeral in 1994. Carter eulogized Republican Gerald Ford, the man he defeated to win the presidency, in 2007.
The two men had become close friends after their presidencies and had agreed that the surviving president would pay tribute at the other’s funeral. When George H.W. Bush died in 2018, fellow Republican Donald Trump attended as sitting president but the only former president to speak at Washington National Cathedral was the elder Bush’s son, George W. Bush.