Presidents club assembles for Bush funeral, Trump on fringes

The nation's most exclusive fraternity the presidents club assembled Wednesday to mourn George H.W. Bush, putting on public display its uneasy relationship with the current occupant of the Oval Office.

It was an uncomfortable, if necessary reunion, bringing President Donald Trump together in the same pew with past White House residents who have given him decidedly critical reviews.

The late Bush was the de facto chair of the modern incarnation of the president's club, transcending contentious campaigns and party lines to bring together fractious personalities who share that rarified experience.

But the staid group of Oval Office occupants has been disturbed since Donald Trump's election. And since his swearing-in, Trump has spurned most contact with his predecessors and they have snubbed him in return.

The ceremony's tributes often stood as a counterpoint to Trump's leadership, as historian Jon Meacham eulogized Bush by recounting his life's credo, "Tell the truth, don't blame people, be strong, do your best, try hard, forgive, stay the course. George W. Bush added of his father: "He could tease and needle, but not out of malice."
"Harry Truman leaned heavily on Herbert Hoover. It's endless." To be sure, Brinkley added, those ties vary from president to president and there have been chilly relationships as well, noting, for example, that "FDR would never talk to Herbert Hoover."
Last year, the younger Bush made a speech that confronted many of the themes of Trump's presidency without mentioning him by name, cautioning that "bigotry seems emboldened" and the nation's politics "seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication."
Over the summer, Carter told The Washington Post that Trump's presidency was a "disaster."
And Clinton stung by Trump's defeat of wife Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race told a weekly newspaper in New York state after her stunning loss that Trump "doesn't know much."
Even the late Bush's feelings about Trump were harsh at times. In Mark K. Updegrove's book "The Last Republicans," published last year, the elder Bush called Trump a "blowhard."