By Nathan Layne
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump said he would attend next week’s state funeral for Jimmy Carter, the former U.S. president who died on Sunday at the age of 100, and predicted that only House Speaker Mike Johnson could win the vote for the House’s top job.
As Trump entered a New Year’s Eve Party at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida on Tuesday, he was asked by a reporter whether he planned to be on hand for Carter’s funeral at the National Cathedral on Jan. 9 in Washington, D.C..
“I do. I’ll be there. We were invited,” Trump said, declining to say whether he had spoken with any of Carter’s family members since his death.
At the black tie gala attended by billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, Senator Ted Cruz and other supporters, Trump was also asked what message he had for Republicans who have not followed his lead and backed House Speaker Johnson’s re-election bid.
The House is scheduled to elect a speaker on Friday following the swearing-in of the new Congress. Trump’s endorsement of Johnson on Monday was seen as key to Johnson’s hopes of maintaining the post he assumed in October 2023.
But the move by thirty-four Republicans to vote against Johnson’s stopgap funding bill in December raised questions over whether Johnson might struggle to garner enough support for re-election.
“I think they’ll support Speaker Johnson,” Trump told reporters. “He’s the one that can win right now. Almost everybody likes him. Others are very good, too, but they have 30 or 40 people that don’t like them.”
(Reporting by Nathan Layne and Marco Bellow in West Palm Beach, Florida; Editing by Kim Coghill and Neil Fullick)
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