The death of a world leader is typically a portentous occasion, an opportunity for heads of state to pay solemn tribute to the recently deceased. Following the death of Pope Francis this week, though, Donald Trump, etiquette maverick, instead took the tone of a boastful septuagenarian announcing a favorite grandchild’s wedding in the annual Christmas card. “Melania and I will be going to the funeral of Pope Francis, in Rome,” he posted on Truth Social. “We look forward to being there!”
Whether pushing his way to the front of a group or bragging about sexual assault, the president has never been known for his tact. But the deaths of public figures offer him a particularly well-lit stage for strange behavior, from showing up at the funerals of people who seemed to loathe him to speaking ill (at times obsessively) of the dead.
Pope Francis, 88, Is DeadArrow
It’s been a lengthy history, one that dates back to the late ’80s, when Trump showed up at the memorial service for Roy Cohn, his former mentor, despite what Cohn’s friends saw as Trump’s abandonment of Cohn following his HIV/AIDS diagnosis. There, according to reporter and biographer Wayne Barrett, Trump “stood in the back of the room silently, not asked to be one of several designated speakers.”
Since then, he has taken a rather more active role following the deaths of his perceived adversaries. Whether Trump received an invitation or not, he didn’t attend either the 2016 funeral of Nancy Reagan (whom he once deemed “never very beautiful”) or the funeral of Barbara Bush in 2018 (“to avoid disruptions due to added security,” explained a White House spokesperson at the time).
He wasn’t welcome at the service for John McCain, whose widow, Cindy McCain, said that she had decided not to invite Trump to her late husband’s funeral because “it was important to me that we kept it respectful and calm and not politicize it.” Like a cartoon villain set adrift after the death of a foe, Trump discussed and disparaged McCain for months, initially choosing not to keep the White House flag at half-staff (though he later relented); spreading the claim that McCain had turned over the Steele dossier for “very evil purposes”; and taking credit for giving the Arizona senator “the kind of funeral that he wanted,” with Trump complaining to (perhaps confused) factory workers that he “didn’t get a thank-you” and describing McCain as “not my kind of guy.”
Trump made it through the cathedral doors at the 2018 funeral of George H.W. Bush (about whom he said, in 1990, “I disagree with him when he talks of a kinder, gentler America”) to little controversy. But just over six years later, Jimmy Carter’s funeral, held this past January, proved a day of snubs and small dramas worthy of a Jane Austen novel: Trump shook the hand of a stone-faced Mike Pence in their first public meeting since January 6, 2021, when Trump’s supporters called for the vice president’s death, and George W. Bush executed a balletic move on the way to his seat, giving Barack Obama a bro-y belly tap without a glance toward Trump, who was sitting beside Obama. After seeing a video of himself at the service chatting with Obama, whom he once called “the worst president maybe in the history of our country,” Trump said that anyone watching the clip might believe that the pair “like each other.” And he added, perhaps with some wistfulness, “We probably do.”
flags would be flying at half-staff for his inauguration in the wake of Carter’s death, with House Speaker Mike Johnson ultimately announcing that the customary half-staff order would be lifted for that specific day. Last week, in fact, Trump said that Carter “died a happy man” because Joe Biden had replaced him as the worst commander in chief.
What, pray tell, might Trump have in store for the pope? Thus far, the president has ordered that flags fly at half-staff. And he wrote an exclamatory Truth Social post: “Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him!” (JD Vance, nominal second-in-command, fumbler of football trophies, and last known public figure to see Pope Francis alive, used his own condolence message to make it extremely clear that the Holy Father had gotten sick before the vice president showed up. “I was happy to see him yesterday,” he posted on X, “though he was obviously very ill.”) But given that Trump’s earthside relationship with the head of the Holy See involved him calling comments by the pope “disgraceful” and lobbing a threat about ISIS attacking the Vatican, it’s hard to predict whether the president will continue lauding the pontiff, or if he’ll find it agreeable, at some future date, to dredge up old frustrations.
Indeed, one is hard-pressed to find an issue on which the president and the pope agreed. In response to Trump’s border-wall proposal, Francis said, “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.” His Holiness, who made frequent calls to a Catholic church in Gaza, called for a ceasefire and an end to the “dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation” in the Palestinian territory. The president, meanwhile, has shared his dream of possibly turning portions of the Gaza Strip into US-controlled luxury waterfront property.
What’s more, the pope decried IVF, calling it a “bad experiment,” while last month Trump named himself the “fertilization president,” having signed a February executive order aimed at expanding access to IVF. (The document is, at present, purely theoretical, and is “not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural.”) Pope Francis considered the Scriptures invaluable, making them central to his life; Trump famously sold “God Bless the USA” Bibles for $59.99, perceived by many as a way to help pay for his legal bills.
And come this Saturday, what might occur during Trump’s interactions with the living at St. Peter’s Basilica? A customary white-knuckle handshake with French president Emmanuel Macron? Another confounding of UK prime minister Keir Starmer? An additional awkward run-in with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy? Only time will tell. But nothing seems to get the president’s hackles up like a memento mori.
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