President Joe Biden revealed Monday that former President Jimmy Carter, who last month entered hospice care at home after several hospital stays, asked him to deliver his eulogy.
During a fundraiser on Monday evening in Rancho Santa Fe, California, Biden said he spent time with Carter recently and the former president’s health “finally caught up with him.”
Biden said, “They asked me to do my eulogy – sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” “I hung out with Jimmy Carter and it finally caught on with him. But he found a way to keep it going longer than he expected because he found a breakthrough.
Biden also spoke about his “Cancer Moonshot” initiative which aims to reduce the death rate by at least 50% over the next 25 years.
The Carter Center did not provide details of the former president’s recent hospitalization when he entered hospice at his home in Georgia last month.
Biden sent well wishes to Carter and his wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, last month.
During his first term in the Senate, Biden supported Carter’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976.
Carter and his wife filmed a video of their endorsement of Biden that aired during the 2020 Democratic National Convention. In the video, Carter said he had “known and liked Joe and Jill for many years” and described Biden as “his first and most effective supporter in the Senate.”
Carter, 98, is the oldest living former US president and the first to be born in a hospital. He was diagnosed with cancer in August 2015 – melanoma that had spread to his liver and brain – but was later declared cancer-free. In 2019, he suffered a black eye and received stitches after a fall and was later hospitalized with a fractured pelvis in a separate fall.
Alice Perlmutter-Gumbiner And Caroline Kenny Contribution,
