Along with their primary purpose of honoring American leaders, state funerals provide the irresistible opportunity to watch some of the country’s most powerful people mingle in public. Jimmy Carter’s pomp-filled funeral on Thursday was no different. All five living presidents showed up — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. Along with some of their spouses, they all settled into the second row at Washington National Cathedral to hear a procession of paeans to Carter.
As fate would have it, Obama and Trump were seated next to each other. This could have been awkward, given the pair’s extremely tortured history (to be fair, Trump has a tortured history with every ex-president). Yet it looked anything but; the two chatted amiably, as if they were old friends catching up for the first time in years.
We can’t afford any lip-readers here at New York, so we’re forced to speculate about the nature of their interaction. Here, five brief theories:
1. They were simply shooting the shit.
This is the most likely possibility — some combination of backslapping and jokey banter, with perhaps some commentary on the lonely challenges of being president. Both Obama and Trump are known to be charming one-on-one, which is one of the few things they have in common. Perhaps the 44th president managed to slip in a few lighthearted arguments for Trump to preserve Obamacare or mentioned, lightheartedly, that invading Panama is probably a bad idea.
2. They were commiserating about Joe Biden.
Trump is obviously no fan of Biden, but Obama and his veep also have a famously complex relationship, only made more so after Obama helped nudge Biden to quit the presidential race last summer. Surely Obama feels some frustration that Biden fumbled a possibly winnable race; maybe he couldn’t help spill to his sworn enemy?
3. They were commiserating about the weather.
It’s very cold and windy in Washington, D.C., at the moment. Perhaps this classic small-talk subject was enough to bridge the gap between adversaries for a few minutes.
4. They were insulting each other through their smiles.
Again, we don’t have lip-readers. It’s impossible to rule out the admittedly unlikely possibility that Obama and Trump were going after each other viciously while keeping up appearances for the camera. After all, Trump carried the mantle of the birther conspiracy theory, repeatedly accused Obama of “treason,” and launched all manner of other berserk attacks against him over the years. And Obama has repeatedly warned about Trump’s threats to American democracy, not-so-subtly mocked his penis size, and perhaps unwittingly fueled Trump’s rise to the presidency by insulting him at a dinner 14 years ago. There’s a lot of beef here.
5. They were discussing the ins and outs of actual policy.
Nah, Trump would have fallen asleep after 30 seconds of that.
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