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President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama chatted about golf during a viral moment of bipartisanship during former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral in January, just days before Trump’s return to the Oval Office, a new book detailing the unprecedented 2024 election cycle reported.
Trump and Obama were seen smiling and quietly chatting with one another in the pews of the Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 9, 2025, in a moment that spread like wildfire on social media as Americans sounded off with speculation over what the pair of presidents who had long traded political barbs were talking about.
“2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” which was released Tuesday, said that Trump arrived in Washington for Carter’s funeral as a “conqueror” following the November 2024 election and sat next to Obama for the funeral service.
“He’d attended Jimmy Carter’s funeral, walking into Washington not as a scourge but as a conqueror,” the book reported of Trump. “He could ignore the speech on character by the outgoing president, and the cold shoulder from the vice president he’d defeated.”
“Instead he sat next to Barack Obama and invited him to play golf, enticing him with descriptions of Trump’s courses around the world,” the book continued of the pair’s conversation. “He was no longer an anomaly. He was being treated like an American president. He wanted to be remembered as a great one.”
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Trump and Obama were seated near other high-profile former U.S. leaders, including former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Mike Pence, former President Bill Clinton, former first lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as then-President Joe Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
Social media commenters at the time remarked that footage and video clips of the pair were unexpected, and others joked that Obama may have voted for Trump despite years of the pair trading political barbs.
“Trump and Obama sitting next to each other was not on the 2025 bingo card,” one social media user posted to X in January.
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“Did Obama vote for Trump too?!” Clay Travis, founder of sports and politics commentary platform OutKick, joked at the time.
“We need lip readers to see what Trump said to make Obama laugh,” another person posted to X in January.
Trump was asked about the viral moment ahead of his inauguration, remarking that he “didn’t realize how friendly it looked.”
“I said, ‘Boy, they look like two people that like each other.’ And we probably do,” Trump added at the time. “We have a little different philosophies, right? But we probably do. I don’t know. We just got along. But I got along with just about everybody.”
Fox News Digital’s Kristine Parks contributed to this report.
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