Kamala Harris ignored Donald Trump at Jimmy Carter’s state funeral on Thursday, as five presidents gathered to mourn their predecessor.
The vice president sat in the row in front of Mr Trump at Washington National Cathedral with her husband Doug Emhoff, ignoring her election rival as she entered.
Mr Trump, who had been talking and laughing with Barack Obama, stared at the back of her head, and Ms Harris looked uncomfortable as the cameras were trained on her reaction.
The five current living presidents are gathered together for the first time since George HW Bush’s funeral in 2018, when Joe Biden was Mr Obama’s vice president.
Mr Trump, who is sitting in the row behind Ms Harris, looked directly at the back of her head for several seconds as she ignored him and stared ahead at the cathedral’s altar.
The row of former presidents also featured Melania Trump, George W Bush and his wife Laura, and Bill and Hillary Clinton. Michelle Obama was not sitting with her husband.
Kamala Harris ignored Trump at the service – Samuel Corum/Sipa
Joe Biden and his predecessors sat with each other at the funeral – Mandel Ngan/AFP
Earlier this week Ms Harris was forced to certify her own election defeat in Congress.
Mr Carter’s funeral is the first time the pair have met since the election.
Mr Biden delivered a moving eulogy for his fellow Democrat at the Episcopal church that has been a traditional venue for send-offs of US presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan to George HW Bush.
He opened by noting he may have been the first senator to endorse Mr Carter’s candidacy for president in 1976, and praised his friendship with the late president for teaching him “that strength of character is more than title or the power we hold”.
Mr Biden, visibly stirred, added: “Do we show grace to keep the faith when it’s most tested? For keeping the faith with the best of humankind and the best of America is a story, in my view, from my perspective, Jimmy Carter’s life.”
Joe Biden and Jill Biden take their seats – MANDEL NGAN
The service caps a week of mourning that has seen Americans quietly filing past the flag-draped coffin in the US Capitol to pay their respects to Mr Carter, who died on December 29 at the age of 100 in his home state of Georgia.
Mr Biden revealed in an interview with USA Today that Mr Carter had asked him to do the honours when the pair – longstanding friends – met for the last time four years ago.
“Carter was a decent man. I think Carter looked at the world not from here but from here, where everybody else lives,” Mr Biden said as he gestured from above his head towards his heart.
President Joe Biden and former president Jimmy Carter, pictured at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008, were longstanding friends – AP
The casket is carried at the US Capitol in Washington – Jeenah Moon
Thursday has been designated a national day of mourning, with federal offices closed.
The first president to reach 100, Mr Carter had been in hospice care since February 2023 in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, where he died and will be buried next to his late wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter.
This week, long lines of mourners waited several hours in freezing temperatures to file past his flag-draped casket in the Capitol Rotunda, as tributes focused as much on Mr Carter’s humanitarian work after leaving the White House as what he did as president from 1977 to 1981.
Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, left, talks with the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau – Jacquelyn Martin/AP
After the morning service in Washington, his four children and extended family will return with his remains to Georgia on a Boeing 747 that serves as Air Force One when the sitting president is aboard.
The outspoken Baptist evangelical, who campaigned as a born-again Christian, will then be remembered in an afternoon funeral at Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School for decades after leaving the White House and where his casket will sit beneath a wooden cross he fashioned in his own workshop.
Jimmy Carter’s remains have been taken from the US Capitol to the Washington National Cathedral – AFP
Following a final ride through his hometown, past the old train depot that served as his 1976 presidential campaign headquarters, he will be buried on family land in a plot next to his late wife, who died in 2023 after more than 77 years of marriage.
Mr Carter, who won the presidency promising good government and honest talk for an electorate disillusioned by the Vietnam War and Watergate, signed significant legislation and negotiated a landmark peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.
Jimmy Carter’s state funeral service got under way on Thursday – Susan Walsh/AP
But he also presided over inflation, rising interest rates and international crises and lost a landslide to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Two years later he and his wife established The Carter Centre in Atlanta as a non-governmental organisation that took them across the world fighting disease, mediating conflict, monitoring elections and advocating for racial and gender equality.
He was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work.
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