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CNN’s morning crew covered dark territory as they talked about President Joe Biden giving a eulogy at the late President Jimmy Carter’s funeral — and thinking ahead to his own funeral.

Biden will deliver a long-planned speech at President Carter’s funeral Thursday, a day after Carter’s body lay in state at the Capitol.

On Thursday’s edition of CNN This Morning, CNN correspondent Edward-Isaac Dovere opened a discussion about the service by observing “this is a weird situation because Joe Biden is going to, today, attend a funeral that will look a lot like his own funeral”:

KASIE HUNT: Isaac, tell us a little bit more about the – the sort of imagery or the symmetry here perhaps is the word, is pretty striking.EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE: Yes, and as I wrote in the story that’s up on our site, this is a weird situation because Joe Biden is going to, today, attend a funeral that will look a lot like his own funeral, whenever that day comes. Every president makes a plan for his funeral. That’s part of what happens. And it – this is getting to see what it will be like. And he’ll be delivering the eulogy at it, at a moment when he is coming to the close of his presidency.But not just the close of the presidency. He’s been in politics his entire life, 55-year career, that is about to

end. And Joe Biden, I think, I’ve spent more time with him over the years than maybe some others, but I think most people can see that he is a reflective person. He thinks about things in a deep way. Death has been a constant in his life. And as he thinks about this ending here, that’s coming on January 20th, an ending that he did not want to his political career or to his presidency, not just because he didn’t get re-elected to another term, but that Donald Trump is coming back, this is all coming on him pretty heavy.HUNT: Meghan Hays, you, obviously, worked in the Biden White House for quite some time. And you know President Biden.This also comes as he, you know, he reflected in an interview with Susan Page that he’s not sure what’s next for him, how he’ll be at 86 years old. A pretty striking admission for a lot of reasons. But, of course, when you set it in the context of a eulogy and his own potential future presidential funeral, it’s – it’s quite a lot.MEGHAN HAYS: Absolutely. And also the Biden family just welcomed his first great grandchild yesterday. So, the circle of life is continuing here. So, it is a pretty reflective time for him.I do think, you know, he always would say, when my dad retired is when he passed away. And so I think that the
president’s going to focus really quickly on what he’s going to do, you know, to continue and what his legacy will be post-presidency. It probably will not be as long as Jimmy Carter’s, as we see. But, you know, I do think that he’ll want to do something. He’ll want to still be involved.You know, he had the Biden moonshot, the Cancer Moonshot, excuse me, before, and I’m sure he’ll be pretty active in that as well and some other things that he’s pretty passionate about. But I do think he – this is a reflective time and you can’t help but reflect on this time.ELI STOKOLS: I was talking to some people in the White House about why the president has planned to spend some of his final days in office visiting with the pope, and they acknowledged that this is a real – this was going to be a really personal trip for the president, a person who wears his catholic faith on his sleeve. And it was, they admitted, largely about his need to feel at peace with not just his four years in office, but 50 years in public life. And there is an acute awareness of an ending here, a threshold, where you’re ceding power to Donald Trump. This has to be a difficult moment for, as Meghan and Isaac said, a reflective person, and a difficult moment at the end of a long
career. And I think part of why he wanted to meet with Pope Francis was to just be able to feel a little bit more at peace with his career, what he did, and, obviously, the responsibilities of being president are going to deny him that meeting, at least in the short term.DOVERE: And the specifics of it being Jimmy Carter, who was the first presidential candidate that Joe Biden endorsed as a senator, who was also a one term president, left in circumstances that Jimmy Carter didn’t want, that they stayed friendly over the years. It’s not just any presidential funeral or any former president that’s died here, but it’s – it’s all of that that’s coming into this, too.

Watch above via CNN This Morning.

Tags: CNN, CNN This Morning, Edward-Isaac Dovere, Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden