Jimmy Carter funeral: Obama and Trump laugh, Harris watches

US President Joe Biden and his predecessors Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all took their seats in the National Cathedral in the capital Washington to pay their respects to Jimmy Carter. A first since the funeral of another former president, George HW Bush, in 2018.

Found sitting next to each other, Donald Trump and Barack Obama were filmed conversing “all smiles”. The Republican billionaire has often been accused of racism towards his predecessor, notably when he refused to recognize that he was born in the United States, a condition of eligibility for the presidency.

It is also the first time since the November 5 election that the president-elect has been in the same room as his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris. Behind them, former vice presidents Mike Pence, Al Gore and Dan Quayle were also seen chatting. Donald Trump and Mike Pence exchanged an outstretched handshake in the cathedral. Justin Trudeau, seated a few meters away.

Since his victory, the stars have aligned for Donald Trump. But two weeks before his inauguration, the president-elect will first have to close ranks, with a narrow Republican majority that is not so united. Facing a Democratic camp, the Republicans seem to be doing better but internal dissensions threaten to frustrate the great ambitions of the future president, from the intransigent anti-immigration policy to drastic tax cuts.

If the tech barons are increasingly lining up behind Donald Trump, his own political camp is beginning to seethe with differences. The party’s elected officials are “ready to get to work,” Mike Johnson, the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, assured this week. “We got off to a flying start, as promised,” he told the press.

It is with the senators that the debate is the most tense on the legislative strategy: should we adopt Donald Trump’s program in a single block of laws or divide it into a series of separate measures?

Donald Trump gave his preference for “a big, beautiful bill.” “It’s what I always preferred and always will prefer,” he said. Before qualifying: “But if it is safer to have two, it goes a little faster, because we can take care of immigration sooner.”

And the Trump team must hurry, because the midterm elections, the famous “midterms”, will be held in less than two years, with the risk of losing control of Congress or one of the two chambers. Especially since the list of battles to be fought is long, from the cancellation of the restrictions imposed by current President Joe Biden on offshore drilling to the ambitions to seize foreign territories: Greenland and the canal from Panama.

Since his election, Donald Trump has played referee by calling undisciplined elected officials to order and conducting all kinds of internal negotiations from Mar-a-Lago, his residence in Florida or, as he calls it, his “White House winter’. This is also where he has largely succeeded in uniting around him the tech giants, most of whom were very critical during his first term but who have largely been sympathetic to him since the last presidential campaign.