PALM BEACH, Florida –
US President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that he plans to attend former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral.
Asked about it as he entered a New Year’s Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, Trump responded: “I’ll be there.” Asked if he had spoken to members of Carter’s family, Trump said he would prefer not to say.
Funeral services for Carter, who died Sunday at age 100, will be held in Georgia and Washington, beginning Jan. 4 and concluding Jan. 9.
Trump was a frequent and fierce critic of Carter in the election campaign leading up to the November election, using the rising inflation rates of the 1970s to compare President Joe Biden unfavorably to Carter and his administration.
But the president-elect was kind to the former president in posts on his social media site after Carter’s death on Sunday, writing that the nation “owed him a debt of gratitude.”
“While I disagreed with him philosophically and politically, I also realized that he truly loved and respected our country and all it stands for,” Trump wrote of Carter. “He worked hard to make America a better place and for that I give him my utmost respect.”
Wearing a tuxedo as he entered the festivities, Trump answered reporters’ questions on a variety of topics for a few minutes. He was asked about the possibility of a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, but he only said: “Let’s see what happens.”
The president-elect added of the hostages captured more than a year ago by Hamas: “I’ll put it this way: you better let the hostages come back soon.”
Trump also said he thought 2025 would be a “great year” and that “we will do fantastically well as a country.”
“There is a light in the whole world, not just in our country. “They are a lot of happy people,” Trump said of the past few weeks.
When asked about his resolutions for the new year, Trump said: “I just want everyone to be happy, healthy and well.”
Trump later 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.”
Biden, for his part, spent New Year’s Eve celebrating his niece Missy Owens’ wedding in Greenville, Delaware. Biden and first lady Jill Biden cut short their traditional vacation trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands to attend the ceremony.
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Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in Greenville, Delaware, contributed.
