Culture Jimmy Carter Defends Trump - Is hell freezing over?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...een-harder-trump-than-predecessors/788558001/

President Trump has an unexpected defender: Jimmy Carter.

“I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I’ve known about,” Carter told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. "I think they feel free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else without hesitation.”

Carter also defended Trump against claims that the current president's aggressive style is souring U.S. relations with the world. “Well, he might be escalating it but I think that precedes Trump,” he told the Times. “The United States has been the dominant character in the whole world and now we’re not anymore. And we’re not going to be. Russia’s coming back and India and China are coming forward.”

Perhaps Carter is seeking to placate Trump as part of a job interview: The 93-year-old former president said he is willing to undertake a diplomatic mission to North Korea to discuss its nuclear weapons program.


Carter told the Times he had discussed the North Korea issue with H.R. McMaster, Trump's national security adviser.

“I told him that I was available if they ever need me,” Carter said.

While Carter's comments about the media might please Trump, an ex-presidential couple might not be too happy with the Times interview: Bill Clinton and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

"We voted for (Bernie) Sanders" in the primary, Carter said.

 

[AprilRains]

There was Abraham Lincoln, though, or as I like to call him, Brobraham Lincoln. He could split railroad rails. With his DICK.

Damn right. But look how far back one has to reach for such an example.

I guess Herbert Hoover was a competent engineer, and Eisenhower was an accomplished general, but I'm not coming up with much other than those in recent history.

 

[Coconut Gun]

Damn right. But look how far back one has to reach for such an example.

I guess Herbert Hoover was a competent engineer, and Eisenhower was an accomplished general, but I'm not coming up with much other than those in recent history.

I heard this Trump guy made a few bucks from real estate.

 

[Nacho Man Randy Salsa]

Either the tumor in Jimmy's brain is making him go senile, or he's relieved not to be the most hated president even more.

 

[Transvaalan]

This is why he has an aircraft carrier named after him iirc.

And yes, he was a sadly ineffectual President who literally only got elected because Gerald Ford (also a less than good President) took the ballsy and necessary step of falling on his sword by pardoning Nixon to move on past a national disgrace.

ETA: it's actually a submarine, not an aircraft carrier.

Economically, Jimmy Carter was just continuing a trend that had been going on in America since FDR, and had inherited a broken and demoralized military wracked with problems, had the bad luck of the Iranian Revolution happen on his watch, worse luck of those helicopters crashing, was screwed by Reagan and friends, and made some other blunders.

 

[AprilRains]

I heard this Trump guy made a few bucks from real estate.

And lost it and made it and lost it... And started off with it. I don't count that one.

 

[Somsnosa]

wow, are you telling me Trump is not literally Hitler?

 

[Butta Face Lopez]

Jimmy Carter? He's history's greatest monster!

 

[CWCchange]

Yeah, actually some of my earliest memories involve adults mocking Carter for being a peanut farmer.

Like that is the worst thing a person can be? Oh noes, he won't starve and in a blizzard emergency he will be prepared!

It made sense in an argument when your opponent was ridiculed for being an actor.

 

[Chris did nothing wrong]

most liberal President in American history

Bitch, please.

 

[Bassomatic]

Carter would be a more known and respected person if he never made it to POTUS.

I have a copy of the novel he wrote, it's not good, but it's a fun light read, he even did the water color on the front. He's loaded with every skill and trait you'd want in a person, probably why he made such a bad POTUS, along with things out of his control.

Spoiler: book cover

 

[AprilRains]

wow, are you telling me Trump is not literally Hitler?

Show me a pile of death certificates as high as the Eiffel Tower with his name as the cause of death and we'll talk then.

Failing that, a mountain of skulls with tacky gold decor will do.

 

[AprilRains]

Carter would be a more known and respected person if he never made it to POTUS.

I have a copy of the novel he wrote, it's not good, but it's a fun light read, he even did the water color on the front. He's loaded with every skill and trait you'd want in a person, probably why he made such a bad POTUS, along with things out of his control.

Spoiler: book cover

It is very hard for a good man to be president of the United States. A man I know once remarked that between Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson, there was no question about who you would invite to dinner. Goldwater would be a gentleman and a great conversationalist, while with Johnson you'd have to count the silver and test the dog for pregnancy afterward. But equally there was no question about who you wanted as president. Whatever you might think of him personally, that son-of-a-bitch Johnson was the son of a bitch you wanted as president.

 

[Ruin]

Jimmy Carter is a genuinely kind and classy southern gentlemen of the kind you really don't see anymore. It's no surprise to me that he finds this current trend of incredibly nasty rhetoric distasteful.

 

[ObeseScreamingBlackMan]

Jimmy Carter knows :autism: when he sees it.

 

[Fleeb]

Carter is like Yoda:

>Seems like a cool guy
>Questionable political decisions
>Looks like Yoda

 

[oldTireWater]

Can't trust a man who won't lend a hand to a swamp rabbit...

 

[The Great Chandler]

I used to think Carter was like Obama before Obama. Then I realized he doesn't sperg about stupid rhetoric after their mixed receive presidency.

 

[PTNR 2.0]

Carter wasn't even that bad of a president, really. America's collective political conscience has this really weird habit of assuming that because a sitting president got defeated in an election, he must've been dogshit. Reality is more complex than that, though. There have been extremely shitty two term presidents and great one term presidents.

Carter just couldn't catch a break. He was a moderate, middle of the road president (both ideologically and because he was neither an utter idiot like Harding or a crook like Nixon, nor legendary like Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington or FDR), and so got fucked by the liberal wing of his own party in the senate because Ted Kennedy decided he wanted to be president and was a charisma vacuum compared to Reagan. Like all presidents, he had blunders (failing to rescue the hostages) and triumphs (the peace accords he brokered).

George H. W. Bush suffers from a lesser version of the same thing; in many ways, he's very much the GOP's Carter: an OK president that got soundly beaten by the other party. Bush wasn't curbstomped quite as bad as Carter in the election, so his legacy is more rosy. If Clinton had won a 450+ vote EV landslide, I think the general consensus would be that Bush was just as bad as Carter.

Good for Jimmy Carter for speaking his mind. He, of all people, knows how shitty the media can be. He's a good man.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

I still think this is awkward as fuck but gotta give him credit for not feeding himself to the autistic hate machine, like Bush the Tush did.

 

[Koby_Fish]

Yeah, that’s the hilarious drawback to the tactic of putting a negative spin on everything about your opponent, sometimes it makes the attacker look really fucking stupid.

The whole point of calling him a peanut farmer hearkens back to bluebloods who never worked a manual labor job in their lives and who look down upon farmers and such as "uneducated", because if they were educated, why the fuck would they be farmers? Uh...because farming needs to be done?