President-elect Donald Trump, who alternately praised, criticized and mocked Jimmy Carter, came to the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday to pay his respects to Carter as the 39th president lay in state in the nation’s capital before his funeral on Thursday.

Carter was often the target of Trump’s ridicule during his 2024 campaign, and the president-elect this week renewed his criticism of the Georgia Democrat for ceding control of the Panama Canal to his home country when he was president more than four decades ago was.

Trump, who plans to attend Carter’s funeral at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday, played it right on Capitol Hill, walking somberly into the Rotunda with his wife Melania and standing in front of Carter’s flag-draped coffin resting on the Lincoln Catafalque rests and stands surrounded by a military guard of honor.

During his successful 2024 campaign, Trump jointly mocked President Joe Biden and Carter and played up Republican caricatures of Carter.

“Jimmy Carter is lucky because he had a brilliant presidency compared to Biden,” Trump would say, even using a version of the attack when former first lady Rosalynn Carter was on her deathbed in 2023 and on Carter’s 100th birthday on January 1 October 2024 On Tuesday, the day Carter’s remains arrived in Washington, Trump added of Carter: “I liked him as a man. I didn’t agree with his politics. He thought it would be a good thing to give away the Panama Canal.”

Members of Congress, Capitol Hill staff and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy also joined the long line of mourners. Lynda Robb and Luci Baines Johnson, daughters of President Lyndon Johnson, also paid their respects. Luci Baines Johnson blew a kiss to the coffin as she walked away.

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

A graduate of the US Naval Academy, a submarine officer and peanut farmer before entering politics, Carter won the White House in 1976 as an outsider in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate. He endured four difficult years of economic unrest and international crises, which ended in his defeat by Republican Ronald Reagan. But he also lived long enough to see historians view his presidency more charitably than voters did in 1980, and the national rites of a state funeral provide him with a striking counterpoint to the often strained relationship he had with Washington during his four years in the Oval Office had .

“President Carter was the governor of the great state of Georgia when I was born,” said Lyn Leverett, one of the people waiting in the freezing weather Wednesday. “So he was around me, you know, my whole being. And I just want to pay my respects to a decent person.”

Some visitors fondly recalled personal connections to Carter’s 1976 campaign, when his family, close friends and other Georgia supporters formed the “Peanut Brigade” to expand into Iowa, New Hampshire and other key primary states and help Carter win the election Washington establishment to surprise with a victory the Democratic nomination.

As the nation mourns the death of former President Jimmy Carter, the United States Postal Service will suspend operations for the national holiday.

“I’m originally from Nashua, New Hampshire, and when I was a child, Jimmy Carter slept at my house,” said Susan Prolman. “He had just won the Iowa caucuses and was campaigning in New Hampshire for the nation’s first presidential primary in New Hampshire. And I made this little poster for him and he kindly signed it.”

Margaret Fitzpatrick of Kensington, Maryland, recalled a family friend who attended the Naval Academy with Carter in the 1940s and later accepted him as a presidential candidate. But she and others said what drew them most to the Capitol was the memory of Carter as he left office — and the differences they saw between Carter and Trump.

“The contrast is astonishing,” Fitzpatrick said, noting the juxtaposition of Carter’s funeral with the apparent preparations in Washington for Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. “I am here to respect someone who has built a reputation through honesty, character and integrity. President Carter was a decent, kind, sincere and gentle man.”

Kim James, also a Maryland resident, said that she had not yet started primary school when Carter was elected and that she sees him more as the white-haired former president who fought disease, championed democracy in the developing world and Homes for Habitat for Humanity built in the United States and abroad.

“He cared about other people,” she said, adding that political leaders today should work harder to repeat that example. “That selflessness — it always stood out.”

Official ceremonies this week have also commemorated Carter’s religious beliefs, his long public service and his decades of humanitarian work that go beyond his political achievements. Vice President Kamala Harris, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune eulogized Carter at the Capitol a day earlier when his remains first arrived in the Rotunda.

Carter will remain at the Capitol until Thursday morning, when he will be taken to Washington National Cathedral for a state funeral that begins at 10 a.m. Eastern time. Biden, a longtime Carter ally, will deliver a eulogy. Other living former presidents, including Trump, are expected to attend.

After the funeral, the Boeing 747, called Air Force One when a sitting president is on board, will take Carter and his family back to Georgia. An invitation-only funeral will be held at Maranatha Baptist Church in tiny Plains, Georgia, where Carter taught Sunday school for decades after leaving office.

Carter will be buried next to his wife in a plot near the house they built before his first Senate campaign in 1962 and where they lived their entire lives, with the exception of four years in the Georgia governor’s mansion and four years in the Georgia Governor’s Mansion White House.

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Associated Press journalist Jack Auresto contributed.