Giridharadas: ‘Strange’ Seeing Multiple Leaders Interacting with Trump at Jimmy Carter’s Funeral

EXCERPT:

GIRIDHARADAS: "The notion, even, of how the Carter’s lived after the presidency, it is now normal that all of our presidents sort of become multi-gazillionaires doing deals around the world, and they have the right to do that, but this was a very different life, a kind of life we don't really see people living anymore, we don’t see these videos of President Carter going down the aisle and back to his seat 39E of a back of an airplane and shaking everybody’s hand. It just was this — it was watching this Washington power establishment in the room and this person who is completely different from that power establishment, who in many ways lived a life on very different values. And I will say also just the fear of the former presidents with President Trump, I mean, as always, comedy gets at something very true. There was something strange. I’m with Mika, I think civility and kindness is important, and there was something strange about seeing multiple leaders who have warned that this guy is dictatorship on the horizon, this guy is fascism on the horizon, this guy is the end of the American experiment, and now, just because of the rituals of a funeral, it is normalized by default. We are just sitting there, well, I guess we are just sitting and making small talk with the guy who we have said is going to end everything. It’s very strange. I’m not sure what the alternative is, but it was a surreal moment for that and other reasons."