The viral moment he shared with Barack Obama yesterday, Thursday, at the funeral of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was commented on today by Donald Trump.
The president-elect was asked by a reporter about videos making the rounds on the internet in recent hours showing him and Obama, seated side by side at the funeral, smiling and chatting.
The particularly friendly tone of the conversation captured on camera – with the Democratic former president even bursting out laughing at something Trump said to him – caused a sensation yesterday, as relations between the two politicians have never been particularly warm, and they have occasionally made harsh statements about each other.
“I didn’t realize how friendly the conversation seemed,” Trump commented today from his residence in Mar A Lago, Florida. Responding to a reporter’s question about the videos of their conversation, he noted that he too was struck by them when he saw them. “I was thinking that we look like people who like each other. And that’s probably true. We have slightly different philosophies, but we probably like each other. I don’t know. We got along well. But anyway, I got along with almost everybody,” the 78-year-old said.
The Republican president-elect declined to disclose the content of his conversation with Obama, and the Democratic former president’s side has yet to respond to questions from reporters about it.
This, of course, has not deterred some US media outlets from trying to find out what the two men discussed at the funeral, enlisting methods such as… lip-reading.
According to an expert recruited by the New York Post, despite the friendly body language, smiles, and jokes, there was a serious aspect to the conversation between Trump and Obama, with the former asking the latter to find “a quiet place” to discuss an “important issue” later. “Call me later, in the foyer,” Trump initially said, with his interlocutor seemingly urging him to tell him what he wanted. “I can’t talk right now, we need to find a quiet place. It’s important, we need to talk outside,” the Republican continued, while Obama nodded in affirmation.
Although it remains unknown what the issue was, details revealed by hand-reading expert Jeremy Freeman “suggest” that it may have been an international affair.
At one point, Trump leaned to Obama’s side and said “I’m out of this. The problem is the terms. Can you imagine?”
As the New Yorker recalls, during his first term in office, Trump withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement, though it’s unclear whether the conversation with Obama was about either of those issues.
According to Freeman, Obama laughed when Trump told him “Then, I’ll do it,” and then the camera stopped recording them.
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