President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday he plans to attend the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter.
Asked about it on his way to a New Year's Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, Donald Trump replied: “I'll be there.” Pressed on whether he had spoken to members of Carter's family, Donald Trump said he preferred not to say.
Funeral services for Mr. Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100, will be held in Georgia and Washington from January 4 to 9.
Donald Trump has been a frequent and fierce critic of Mr. Carter on the campaign trail ahead of the November election, using the rising inflation rates of the 1970s to compare President Joe Biden unfavorably to Jimmy Carter and his administration .
But the president-elect was gracious to the former president in posts on his social media site after Mr. Carter's death on Sunday, writing that the nation “owed him a debt of gratitude.”
“While I deeply disagreed with him philosophically and politically, I also realized that he truly loved and respected our country, and all that it stands for,” Donald Trump wrote of Jimmy Carter. “He worked hard to make America a better place, and for that I give him my utmost respect.”
Upon entering the festivities, Donald Trump answered questions from journalists for a few minutes on various subjects. He was asked if it was possible to achieve a ceasefire in Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, but he said only: “We'll see what happens.”
The president-elect added of the hostages captured more than a year ago by Hamas: “I'll put it this way: They better let the hostages come back soon.”
Donald Trump also said he thinks 2025 will be a “great year” and that “we're going to do fantastically well as a country.”
“There is a whole light on the whole world, not just on our country. It’s a lot of happy people,” Donald Trump said of the past few weeks.
Asked about his New Year's resolutions, Donald Trump said: “I just want everyone to be happy and healthy and healthy.”
Donald Trump then took the stage to briefly address the crowd celebrating the new year at Mar-a-Lago and promised “to do a great job as your president.”
Joe Biden, for his part, spent New Year's Eve celebrating the wedding of his niece Missy Owens in Greenville, Delaware. President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden cut short their traditional vacation trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands to attend the ceremony.
