It was as though God was keeping a sardonic eye on the calendar. That Jimmy Carter, America’s most moralistic president, received his state funeral days before the notably contrasting Donald Trump returns to office seemed almost divinely arranged.

Trump’s aides say it is hard to make him to listen to anyone for more than a few minutes. On Thursday at the US national cathedral in Washington, the president-elect sat through 90 minutes of paean to the qualities of virtue and character.

“We told the truth, we obeyed the law, we kept the peace,” said the late Walter Mondale, Carter’s vice-president, in a posthumous eulogy read by his son. Along with the four other living presidents, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, America’s next president was sitting just a few feet away.