Former President Joe Biden has drawn heavy criticism for giving a politically inflected eulogy at civil rights leader Jesse Jackson’s funeral earlier this month, going against the family’s clear request to avoid politics during the service.

Commentator Megyn Kelly unleashed a harsh critique on “The Megyn Kelly Show” after Jesse Jackson Jr. publicly faulted Biden, former President Barack Obama, and former Vice President Kamala Harris for turning the March 6 memorial at House of Hope in Chicago into a political forum.

During her March 9 program, Kelly lambasted the Democratic figures for disregarding the family’s request. “All these Democrats show up at his funeral, and they were asked not to get political,” she said. “Well, they couldn’t contain themselves.”

The dispute followed the Jackson family’s specific appeal that attendees refrain from political remarks during the memorials for the civil rights figure, who died February 17 at 84 after battling progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare neurological disease. Despite that request, several Democratic officials made speeches that seemed aimed at President Donald Trump’s administration.

Biden’s rambling eulogy took an odd turn when the 83-year-old former president made a striking remark about his own intellect while referencing his childhood stutter. Biden told attendees, “I’m a **** of a lot smarter than most of you.” He was making a point about how speech difficulties are often misread as low intelligence, then added, “Well, all kidding aside, it makes you feel really small.”

Kelly did not mince words criticizing Biden’s delivery and questioned why he ignored the family’s wishes.

In his March 6 address, the former president moved beyond personal anecdotes to critique the current administration. “We’re in a tough time, folks. We have an administration that doesn’t share the values we have,” Biden told attendees, according to CNN’s live coverage of the funeral service.

Obama likewise used his eulogy to deliver thinly veiled criticisms of President Trump without directly naming him, saying Americans face “some new assault on our democratic institutions” day by day. He added that “greed and bigotry” are being celebrated while “bullying and mockery” are presented as strength.

At the final memorial held the next day at Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters on Chicago’s South Side, Jesse Jackson Jr. issued a sharp rebuke of the Democratic leaders who spoke at his father’s funeral.

“Yesterday, I listened for several hours to three United States presidents who do not know Jesse Jackson,” the former congressman said on Saturday, March 7. Jackson Jr., who is running in the March 17 Democratic primary to try to regain his old congressional seat in Illinois’ 2nd District, stressed that his father demanded “a consistent, prophetic voice that at no point in time ever sold us out as a people.”

Kelly defended Jackson Jr.’s remarks on her show. “But Jesse Jackson Jr. was not happy. And who could blame him?” she asked.

The pundit saved particular ire for Harris, who also spoke at the service, calling the former vice president “insufferable” for quickly shifting to political critique after offering cursory condolences.

Kelly predicted Harris would mount another presidential bid in 2028, complaining that the former vice president was reusing lines from earlier campaign remarks.

Former President Bill Clinton notably steered clear of political remarks in his eulogy, choosing instead to reflect on his personal friendship with Jackson. “I’m here more as a friend than a former president,” Clinton said. “He was my friend when I needed him.”

Jackson, who led civil rights efforts after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968 and ran for president in 1984 and 1988, left a legacy that went beyond party lines. His passing at 84 marked the close of a significant chapter in American civil rights history.

The funeral dispute underscores the ongoing tension between honoring a family’s wishes at memorials and politicians’ tendency to use prominent occasions for political messaging. Kelly questioned whether “hubris” led the three Democratic leaders to ignore the Jackson family’s plea for a nonpolitical service.

As backlash persists, the episode is a reminder that even solemn tributes to American icons can quickly become flashpoints for partisan dispute in today’s divided political climate.