Jesse Jackson Jr. called out three former presidents and a former vice president for using his father’s funeral to take shots at the current U.S. president.
Jesse Jackson died from natural causes on February 17 at his home in Chicago, Illinois. He was 84.
Jesse Jackson Jr. rebuked former presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris for using his father’s memorial service to bash sitting President Donald Trump, who was not invited to the service.
The Jackson family had asked invited guests not to politicize Jesse Jackson’s final homegoing service held at Chicago’s House of Hope on Friday, March 6.
Former US president Barack Obama speaks at a public memorial service to celebrate the life of civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson in Chicago, Illinois, on March 6, 2026. Photo by Kamil Krzaczynski / AFP via Getty Images)
During the memorial service, Obama said each day is a “new assault on our democratic institutions.”
“Each day, we’re told by those in high office to fear each other and to turn on each other, and that some Americans count more than others, and that some don’t even count at all,” the former president said.
“Everywhere we see greed and bigotry being celebrated, and bullying and mockery masquerading as strength. It’s hard to hope in those moments,” Obama added.
Harris used her eulogy to brag that she “predicted a lot about what’s happening right now.”
Former Vice President Kamala Harris. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
“I’m not into saying ‘I told you so,’ but we did see it coming,” Harris told mourners. “But what I did not predict is that we would not have Jesse Jackson with us right now to help us get through this.”
Harris was defeated by Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
Jesse Jr. said the grandstanding Democrats disrespected his father, after they used their eulogies to bash Trump’s policies and the Iran-Israel conflict.
“Yesterday, I listened for several hours to three United States presidents who do not know Jesse Jackson,” Jesse Jr. said Saturday during a private memorial service at Rainbow Push Coalition headquarters in Chicago.
“He maintained a tense relationship with the political order, not because the presidents were white or black, but the demands of our message, the demands of speaking for the least of these — those who are disinherited, the damned, the dispossessed, the disrespected — demanded not Democratic or Republican solutions, but demanded a consistent, prophetic voice that at no point in time ever sold us out as people,” he continued.
“And it speaks volumes about who the Rev. Jesse Jackson was.”
