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President Joe Biden revealed on Monday that former President Jimmy Carter, who entered palliative care at home last month after a series of hospital stays, asked him to deliver his eulogy.
At a fundraiser in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., on Monday night, Biden said he had recently spent time with Carter and that the former president’s health had “finally caught up with him.”
“He asked me to give his eulogy — excuse me, I shouldn’t say that,” said Biden, who spoke without notes. “I hung out with Jimmy Carter and it finally caught up with him. But they found a way to make it last a lot longer than expected because they found a breakthrough.
Biden also spoke about his Cancer Moonshot Initiative which aims to reduce the mortality rate by at least 50% over the next 25 years.
The Carter Center did not provide details of the former president’s recent hospitalizations when he entered hospice care at his home in Georgia last month.
Biden expressed his best wishes to Carter and his wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, last month.
During his first term in the Senate, Biden endorsed Carter’s 1976 candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Carter and his wife filmed a video of their endorsement of Biden aired during the 2020 Democratic National Convention. In the video, Carter said they “have known and admired 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 president born in a hospital. It was diagnosed with cancer in August 2015 – a melanoma that had spread to his liver and brain – but he was later declared cancer-free. In 2019, he suffered a black eye and received stitches after a fall and was then hospitalized with a fractured pelvis sustained in a separate fall.
Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner And Caroline Keny contributed.