He has asked President Biden to deliver a eulogy upon Carter’s death, Biden said Monday.
During a fundraising event for the Democratic National Committee in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., Biden discussed progress in cancer research.
“He asked me to do his eulogy,” Biden said, before catching himself and saying, “excuse me, I shouldn’t have said that.”
During my time with Jimmy Carter, I noticed that he was finally showing signs of aging. However, they found a breakthrough that allowed them to keep him going for a much longer period than they anticipated.
There have been several health issues for Carter over the years, including a bout with cancer. In 2015, he announced that he had been diagnosed with liver and brain cancer and began radiation treatment. As a result of a series of bad falls, he had health issues in 2019 and underwent surgery. He announced he was cancer-free later that year.
In February, the Carter Center announced that the former president had decided to begin hospice care at his Plains, Ga, home. “After a series of short hospital stays, former President Jimmy Carter today decided to spend the remainder of his time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention,” the center said.
In 1976, when Biden was a senator and Carter was running for president, he was the first elected official outside Georgia to endorse Carter’s campaign. Carter is the longest-living American president, the White House said.
During the turbulent late 1970s, Carter was elected president and lost reelection to Ronald Reagan in 1980. In the decades that followed, Carter worked to advance democracy and health initiatives around the world — work for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
In 1994, Clinton gave a speech at the funeral of Republican Richard Nixon. Thirteen years later, Carter honored Republican Gerald Ford at his funeral, despite having defeated him in an election. The two presidents had formed a bond after leaving office and pledged to speak at each other’s funerals. In 2018, Donald Trump attended George H.W. Bush’s memorial as the current president but it was George W. Bush who delivered a eulogy at Washington National Cathedral for his late father and former president.
