Trump complains that US flags will be half-mast on his inauguration day

Washington: President-elect Donald Trump has complained that American flags will still be lowered to half-mast in honour of the late president Jimmy Carter during Trump’s January 20 inauguration.

President Joe Biden ordered flags be lowered to half-mast for 30 days from the day of Carter’s death on December 29, as is custom when a US president dies.

The custom when a US president dies is to lower the flag above the White House to half-mast.Credit: Bloomberg

Trump, who has announced plans to attend Carter’s memorial service in Washington on January 9, took issue in a Truth Social post on Friday (Saturday AEDT) that the flags would remain in the mourning position during his swearing-in ceremony.

The complaint came the day before Carter’s extended public farewell began on Saturday in Georgia. The 39th US president’s flag-draped coffin traced his long arc from the Depression-era South and family farming business to the pinnacle of US political power and decades as a global humanitarian.

Military personnel carry the coffin of former president Jimmy Carter for the start of a six-day state funeral.Credit: AP

Those chapters shone throughout the opening stanza of a six-day state funeral intended to blend personalised memorials with the ceremonial pomp afforded to former presidents.

The longest-lived US executive, Carter died on December 29 at the age of 100.

Trump said that due to Carter’s death last week, the American flag would “for the first time ever during an inauguration of a future president, be at half-mast”.

“The Democrats are all ‘giddy’ about our magnificent American Flag potentially being at ‘half mast’ during my inauguration,” Trump wrote in the Truth Social post.

“They think it’s so great, and are so happy about it because, in actuality, they don’t love our Country, they only think about themselves.

“Nobody wants to see this, and no American can be happy about it. Let’s see how it plays out.”

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said the White House had no plans to reconsider the decision.

Pallbearers on Saturday came from the Secret Service that protected the Carter family for almost 50 years and a military honour guard that included navy service members for the only US Naval Academy graduate to reach the Oval Office. A military band played Hail to the Chief and the hymn Be Thou My Vision for the former commander in chief, who was a devout Baptist.

People watch the hearse carrying the flag-draped coffin of Jimmy Carter.Credit: AP

Carter’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren accompanied their patriarch as his hearse rode first through his hometown of Plains, which has a population of about 700 and is not much bigger than when Carter was born there on October 1, 1924.

The procession stopped at the farm where the future president had toiled alongside the black sharecroppers who worked for his father. The motorcade continued to Atlanta, stopping in front of the Georgia Capitol, where Carter served as a state senator and a reformist governor.

James “Chip” Carter and wife Becky after the service for his father at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta on Saturday.Credit: AP

Chip Carter recalled “the boss” for whom he had to make an appointment to see in the Oval Office, but also the father who spent an entire Christmas break learning Latin and teaching his eighth grade son who had failed a test. When he took that test again, the younger Carter said, he aced it: “I owed it to my father, who spent that kind of time with me.”

Jimmy Carter’s sons, Chip (left) and Jack (second from right), their family and others escort the former president’s coffin in Atlanta.Credit: AP

Carter will lie in repose at the Carter Presidential Centre until 6am on Tuesday (10pm Wednesday AEDT). The public will be able to pay respects around the clock.

National rites will continue in Washington and conclude on Thursday with a funeral at Washington National Cathedral, followed by a return to Plains. There, the former president will be buried next to Rosalynn, his wife of 77 years near the home they built before his first state Senate campaign in 1962.

Reuters, AP

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