The first and second couple were visibly icy toward each other at late President Jimmy Carter’s funeral on Thursday.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden entered after Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff. No exchanges were made between the foursome as they took their seats beside each other.
There was visible love loss between the Bidens and Harris and Emhoff after a tense 2024 election cycle that saw the VP replace her boss atop the Democrat’s presidential ticket, and still lost in historic fashion to President-elect Donald Trump.
A senior administration official insisted to DailyMail.com that the couples did spend 30 minutes together chatting before they were seated at the funeral.
‘It was very warm, it was very loving,’ the official noted, claiming Dr. Jill Biden and Harris also ‘hugged and kissed’ after the ceremony concluded.
But not even CNN’s host Jake Tapper could ignore the growing resentment and tension.
‘You didn’t see a particularly warm greeting between the First Couple and the Second Couple,’ he noted as live-streamed video played of the Bidens’ entrance to the National Cathedral on Thursday morning.
Joe and Jill did not exchange words, shake hands or otherwise acknowledge that Harris and Emhoff were seated beside them in the front row. Similarly, the second couple did not stand to welcome their cohorts to the front row.A body language expert downplayed the terse exchanges, claiming Harris ‘seemed to ignore everyone’ at the funeral.
Judi James, however, did acknowledge how Harris and Dr. Biden ‘seemed to create as much virtual space between them as possible.’
The two women, she noted, ‘sat staring ahead grimly while others around them chatted.’
There were a few other awkward encounters at the funeral of Carter, who died last month at the age of 100.
Former Second Lady Karen Pence did not stand when Trump and former and future First Lady Melania Trump made their way to the second row to take their seats for the funeral.
Melania extended her hand to Karen as her husband shook hands and conversed shortly with his former VP Mike Pence and former Vice President Al Gore, who both stood for the arrival of the incoming president.
Karen Pence stayed seated and did not extend her arm to return Melania’s offered hand.
Ever since Harris’ took over for Biden – and especially since her loss in November – there is an obvious rift between the current first and second couple.
Specifically, First Lady Jill Biden appears to hold a lot of ire towards Harris – and that is spilling over into public sight more and more in the final days.
A report from the Wall Street Journal last month noted that the rift has existed long before this election cycle.
Sources to the Journal that Dr. Biden’s disdain for Harris dates back to her ravaging her husband on stage in June 2019 during the first Democratic debate of the 2020 cycle.And just six days after the Democrats handed the White House back to Trump in November, Dr. Biden sat stone-faced next to Harris and Emhoff at a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.
Then at the Kennedy Center Honors on December 8, Joe and Jill Biden ignored Harris and Emhoff as they entered the theater to take their seats beside the country’s No. 2 couple. The Bidens didn’t even look in their direction as they greeted the crowd.
The Journal’s report last month chronicles how the final moments of the Biden presidency are mired with a general ‘depressing’ and ‘draining’ vibe, according to White House aides.