But the detente also comes after Trump’s long history of insulting and taunting the Bush family — calling his 2016 primary opponent “low-energy” Jeb Bush, saying the 9/11 attacks were partly due to President George W. Bush’s failure to keep the nation safe, and mocking George H.W. Bush’s signature “thousand points of light” volunteerism program. And it comes as Trump has fully taken control of the Republican Party, leading a bare-knuckle rejection of the traditional GOP establishment that the Bush family represented and helped build.
One person close to the funeral planning said the Bush family’s overtures to Trump were at least partly pragmatic. Trump has the final say over important funeral details, this person said, including providing Air Force One to carry the former president’s remains from Texas to Washington on Monday for the funeral and back to Texas on Thursday for another service and burial.
While Trump will not deliver a eulogy, he will be seated in the front row alongside former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Bush’s son, former president George W. Bush, will deliver a eulogy.
Neither he nor the other eulogists — former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, former senator Alan K. Simpson, and presidential historian and Bush biographer Jon Meacham — are expected to focus on the stark differences between the genteel and patrician Bush and the bombastic Trump.