MOURNING HAS BROKEN

Mar-a-Lago Flies Flag at Full Staff During Carter’s Mourning Period

Flags were supposed to remain at half-staff through Jan. 29 to honor the late president.

Flags at Mar-a-Lago have returned to full staff with two weeks remaining in Jimmy Carter’s mourning period.

Donald Trump has shared his annoyance with the tradition of flying flags at half-staff for 30 days after the death of a former U.S. president, but his properties initially kept with the tradition after Carter died on Dec. 29.

That is no longer the case at the president-elect’s south Florida club, however. A massive U.S. flag could be seen waving at full staff Monday in the midst of palm trees and Secret Service agents. A photo captured by a Getty Images photographer appears to show the flag at full height as far back as Saturday evening.

Flags on federal property remain at half-staff nationwide and at government sites and buildings in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, directed all flags be lowered for a 30-day period.

Trump said that flags at his inauguration—now just a week away—should be at full staff despite tradition. He wrote in a post to Truth Social that “nobody wants to see this, and no American can be happy about” flags not waving at full height for his second swearing in.

“Let’s see how it plays out,” Trump wrote on Jan. 3.

Trump attended Carter’s state funeral on Thursday, where cameras captured him laughing and chatting with Barack Obama at the Washington National Cathedral.

The president-elect flew back to Florida after the funeral. He appeared virtually for a sentencing hearing in his hush money case the following morning and has spent each day since at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump has often criticized Carter, a Democrat, for signing a treaty that relinquished control of the American-built Panama Canal to Panama. Those criticisms remained even in the immediate aftermath of Carter’s death at 100 years old.

“Jimmy Carter gave it to them for $1 and they were supposed to treat us well,” Trump said of the canal last week. “I thought it was a terrible thing to do. It was the most expensive structure ever built in the history of our country.”

That remark—in the same rambling news conference where Trump vowed to rename the Gulf of Mexico—came while Carter’s body was being transported from the Carter Center in Atlanta to the U.S. Capitol.

“Nobody wants to talk about the Panama Canal now,” Trump added, addressing the timing of his complaint. “It’s inappropriate, I guess, because it’s a bad part of the Carter legacy.”

Trump hailed Carter as “a good man” and “a very fine person,” even if “giving the Panama Canal to Panama was a very big mistake.”

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Josh FialloBreaking News Reporter

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