Summit meetings on the fringes of funerals, diplomacy after death as the British political scientist Geoff Berridge put it, have a long and useful tradition. Not only can such working funerals force a meeting at a time that would not otherwise have happened, but they can remind those assembled of the transience of life, physical as well as political, and the urgency of now.

And so it was with the funeral of Senator Lyndsey Graham at Washington National Cathedral. The marking of his death provided the background to carefully choreographed visits to the White House for Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky and Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Each visitor, ostensibly in Washington for Graham’s memorial service, was granted 90 minutes in sequential closed-door meetings with Trump and his advisers. All sides later conveyed that the meetings were, in the words of White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, “positive and productive”.

First up was Zelensky. For the Ukrainian president, this is not the first instance of funeral diplomacy with his US counterpart. The two presidents’ meeting at the Vatican in April 2025 for the funeral of Pope Francis provided the opportunity to put their relationship on to a more constructive footing just two months after their infamous clash at the White House.

Far from not having “the cards”, as Trump........

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