Biden says Jimmy Carter has asked him to deliver his eulogy

President Joe Biden says he plans to deliver the eulogy at the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter, who remains in hospice care at his home in the southern state of Georgia.

Biden made that comment to donors at a fundraiser in California Monday night while discussing his “recent” visit to see the 39th president, whom he has known since he was a junior senator from Delaware who supported the presidential campaign. Carter in 1976.

“He asked me to do his eulogy,” Biden said, before refraining from saying more. “Sorry, I shouldn’t say that.”

Carter, who at 98 is the longest-serving US president, announced on February 18 that he would spend the remaining days of his life at home receiving care, forgoing further medical interventions after a series of brief hospital stays. The Carter Center in Atlanta and the former president’s relatives have not released details of his condition, although Biden alluded to Carter’s cancer diagnosis in 2015 and his subsequent recovery.

“I spent some time with Jimmy Carter and we eventually got back together, but they found a way to keep it going much longer than they expected because they found a breakthrough,” Biden said in Rancho Santa Fe, California.

Biden, 80, and first lady Jill Biden visited Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, now 95, at their home in Plains, Georgia, a few months after Biden took office in 2021. Biden was the first US senator to endorse Carter’s presidential bid in 1976, breaking with the Washington establishment that Carter, then a former governor of Georgia, surprised by winning the Democratic nomination.

Biden’s presidency represents something of a sea change for Carter’s political position. 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.

Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did not have a close relationship with Carter. And the long-range presidential candidates who sometimes ventured to the Plains over the years usually did so in private.

But as the Carters’ global humanitarian work and advocacy for democracy through the Carter Center garnered new respect, Democratic politicians began publicly circling back to South Georgia ahead of the 2020 election cycle. Biden’s election, Carter once again found a true friend and ally in the Oval Office.

[Con información de The Associated Press]

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