HEARTFELT CAPITOL FAREWELL FOR BUSH
Former President George W. Bush, with Laura Bush and other family members, watches as the flag-draped casket of former President George H.W. Bush is carried by a joint services military honor guard to lie in state
Monday in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. The remains of the 41st president took their place in the Rotunda for three days of mourning and praise by the political elite and everyday citizens alike. The late president will lie in state in the Capitol for public visitation through Wednesday. An invitation-only funeral service, which President Donald Trump will attend, is set for Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral.
President Donald Trump will attend but not speak at this week’s funeral service for former President George H.W. Bush, seemingly a compromise intended to respect tradition while avoiding an awkward moment given the animosity between the current president and the Bush family.
Instead, eulogies will be delivered by Bush’s son, former President George W. Bush, and two friends, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada and former Repblican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming. Rounding out the speakers will be Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer-winning historian and author of the definitive biography of the 41st president.
Trump, who has been sharply critical of the Bush family in the past, has offered nothing but praise for the former president since his death at age 94 on Friday and made no complaint about being left off the roster of funeral speakers.
“Looking forward to being with the Bush Family to pay my respects to President George H.W. Bush,” Trump wrote Monday on Twitter.
The lineup for the state funeral service at Washington National Cathedral on Wednesday emerged as Bush began his final trip to Washington, his coffin arriving at the Capitol on Monday evening. Despite the tension with the Bush family, Trump followed protocol by sending the blue-and-white presidential jet to pick up the coffin in Texas and bring it to Washington. Normally called Air Force One when the sitting president is onboard, it was given the call sign Special Air Mission 41 for the occasion.
During a simple but somber ceremony at Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base outside Houston, Bush’s coffin was loaded onto the plane. The younger Bush; his wife, Laura; his brother Neil; and other members of the family stood at attention during a 21-gun salute and the playing of “Hail to the Chief.”
Friends and relatives then boarded the plane to join the Bush family patriarch for his journey to Washington, where he will lie in state before his funeral. Joining the family for the trip was the former president’s service dog, Sully, who was shown earlier lying by his coffin at the funeral home in a photograph released by the elder Bush’s spokesman.
The Bush family has been estranged from the incumbent president since the 2016 presidential election when Trump defeated former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida for the Republican nomination in a bruising primary battle that turned increasingly nasty. Trump has also denigrated George W. Bush’s leadership, and on the campaign trail this fall, mocked the elder Bush’s slogan, “a thousand points of light,” referring to volunteerism.
George H.W. Bush told the author Mark K. Updegrove that he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and the younger Bush said he voted for none of the above. The 43rd president has at times issued barely veiled criticism of Trump’s nationalist “America First” approach to foreign policy and immigration.
Bush’s coffin was flown Monday to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington and was taken to the U.S. Capitol, where he served four years as a member of the House in the 1960s. Congressional leaders held a ceremony in the Capitol, and he will then lie in state there until Wednesday morning before being brought to the cathedral.
After the service there, Bush’s body will be flown back to Houston for a service at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, where he was a longtime member. Former Secretary of State James Baker, the president’s longtime friend, will speak at the church.
The former president will then be taken by a special train named Locomotive 4141 and painted the same blue shade used on Air Force One to College Station, Texas, an echo of the funeral trains used for presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower.