Trump says he will attend Jimmy Carter’s funeral By Reuters

By Nathan Layne

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump said he would attend the state funeral next week for Jimmy Carter, the former U.S. president who died on Sunday at the age of 100, predicting that only House Speaker Mike Johnson could win the vote for the top House post.

As Trump attended a New Year’s Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida on Tuesday, he was asked by a reporter if he planned to attend Carter’s (NYSE:) funeral at the National Cathedral on January 9 in Washington , DC

“I do. I’ll be there. We were invited,” Trump said, declining to say whether he had spoken to any of Carter’s family members since his death.

At the black-tie gala, attended by billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, Senator Ted Cruz and other supporters, Trump was also asked what message he had for Republicans who did not follow his lead and the speaker’s re-election of the House of Representatives did not support Johnson.

The House of Representatives is scheduled to elect a speaker on Friday after the new Congress is sworn in. Trump’s support of Johnson on Monday was seen as key to Johnson’s hopes of retaining the office he assumed in October 2023.

But the move by 34 Republicans to vote against Johnson’s emergency funding bill in December raised questions about whether Johnson might struggle to win enough support for re-election.

“I think they will support Speaker Johnson,” Trump told reporters. “He is the one who can win now. Almost everyone likes him. Others are very good too, but there are 30 or 40 people who don’t like them.”

Trump was also asked about his apparent change of heart on using the H-1B visa to recruit foreign workers after a public row over the program in recent days. Some Trump supporters believe the visa allocations disadvantage American workers and run counter to his “America First” agenda.

Trump has criticized the H-1B visa in the past, but sided with Musk in a social media post on Saturday, defending it as a talent importation tool. Musk, the CEO of Tesla (NASDAQ:.O) and SpaceX, had vowed to go to “war” to preserve the program, sparking backlash online.

“I haven’t changed my mind. “I’ve always felt that we have to have the most competent people in our country,” Trump said of the program. “We need smart people to come to our country and we need a lot of people. We’re going to have jobs like we’ve never had before.”