Joe Biden says Jimmy Carter has asked him to deliver his eulogy
The Guardian – By Ramon Antonio Vargas – Tue Mar 14, 2023
Joe Biden says Jimmy Carter has asked him to deliver his eulogy.
President reveals he visited his Democratic predecessor, who is receiving hospice care at home in Plains, Georgia.
Jimmy Carter – who entered home hospice care in February – has asked fellow Democratic president Joe Biden to eulogize him after he dies, Biden has revealed.
Biden told people at a fundraiser in Rancho Santa Fe, California, on Monday that he had recently visited Carter after the 98-year-old former president’s health had “finally caught up with him”, according to multiple reports on the remarks.
“He asked me to do his eulogy,” the president also said of Carter. Biden then suggested he might have provided that information unintentionally, telling those who were listening to him: “Excuse me, I shouldn’t say that.”
Without elaborating, Biden added that Carter’s medical team had “found a way to keep him going for a lot longer than they anticipated because they found a breakthrough” after an 18 February announcement that he had chosen to receive hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia, following a series of hospital visits.
People often die within a relatively short time of opting for hospice care, but that is not always the case.
Carter made the decision to be in home hospice care after his health had been in decline for years. He was diagnosed in 2015 with skin cancer that had spread to his liver and brain. He underwent treatment, and his cancer was declared to be in remission by the end of that year.
Then, after a series of falls in 2019, Carter had surgery to relieve pressure created by bleeding in his brain.
Carter’s reported request for Biden, 80, to deliver his eulogy came after the two politicians have spent decades fostering a personal relationship. Biden, as one of Delaware’s US senators, endorsed Carter when the former governor of Georgia ran for president in 1976 and defeated the incumbent Gerald Ford.
Posted by Teri Perticone
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