Trump Absent As Three US Presidents Bid Colin Powell Farewell

Three US presidents, past and present, in a rare outing, came together in honour of former secretary of state Colin Powell at his funeral. With the notable exception of President Jimmy Carter who is gripped with old age, President Donald Trump was the only living US president that was absent at the funeral service of Mr. Powell.

The 84-year-old died of Covid complications last month.

President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden sat alongside Barack Obama and George W Bush, and former first ladies Michelle Obama and Laura Bush, inside the Washington National Cathedral.

Trump was not mentioned at the service.

The funeral for Colin L. Powell, former secretary of state, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and national security adviser, brought out a Washington that barely exists anymore: Republicans and Democrats, including President Biden and two of his predecessors, uniformed military and diplomats, and people on all sides of the Iraq war.

No one would have been more amused by the turnout than Mr. Powell himself, who often ran a smiling, half-whispered, commentary on the city’s temporary loyalties and back room machinations.  Yet on Friday, the Washington National Cathedral was filled with them all — former officials who were at Mr. Powell’s side in the Persian Gulf War and on the seventh floor of the State Department, where he often waged a behind-the-scenes battle for influence in the Bush White House.

“He said I almost gave him an aneurysm,” the Democrat, Madeleine Albright, who served as secretary of state in the Clinton administration, told the mourners, recalling Mr. Powell’s reaction after she famously asked him, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

They argued and argued, and the argument delayed the American intervention in Bosnia.

But over time they also became the close friends, which became critical after the disputed 2000 election. When Mr. Colin Powell was named her successor, she said, he drove over to her house in Georgetown, walked in the door and together they began planning a succession — something that did not happen twenty years later, when, paralyzed by President Donald J. Trump’s refusal to admit his defeat, the Trump administration resisted a cooperative handover of power. (Mr. Trump, who denounced Mr. Powell a day after he died, was not present at the ceremony, and not mentioned.)

“He made pragmatism charismatic,” Ms. Albright said of Mr. Colin Powell.

Throughout the ceremony, there were many such stories from a seemingly lost Washington, as participants told the story of how a son of Jamaican parents grew up in the Bronx, had his life given meaning in the Army, and rose through the ranks serving presidents of both parties. It was what his son, Michael K. Powell, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, called a true “American journey,’’ a phrase drawn from the title of Mr. Powell’s autobiography.

With additional reports from New York Times

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