President Donald Trump on Thursday lambasted former President Joe Biden’s administration as the worst in American history, adding that former President Jimmy Carter “died a happy man” knowing that his administration was supposedly better than Biden’s.
“They were useless. They were incompetent. Worst administration in the history of our country. Worse than Jimmy Carter,” Trump said during a sit-down meeting with the Italian prime minister in the White House.
“Jimmy Carter died a happy man. You know why? Because he wasn’t the worst. President Joe Biden was,” he said, echoing a sentiment he made repeatedly during his 2024 campaign, including around the time that Carter’s wife, Rosalynn Carter, died in November 2023.
“My wife attended the funeral two months ago of Rosalynn Carter, and it was beautiful and Jimmy Carter was there,” Trump said in January 2024. “And I thought to myself, Jimmy Carter is happy now because he will go down as being a brilliant president by comparison to Joe Biden … He’s gonna be known as brilliant!”
Carter was a one-term Democratic president, serving from 1977 to 1981.
Trump has repeatedly criticized Carter, who died in December at age 100, though occasionally he wavered on his shared feelings about him.
At one point in 2019, the White House said that Trump “has always liked President Carter” after the pair shared a phone call about China.
A few months later, Trump called Carter “a terrible president” after Carter questioned whether Trump won his election because of Russian interference.
In a 2022 op-ed for The New York Times, Carter warned about what was at stake in the upcoming election, which Trump won.
“Without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy,” he wrote. “Americans must set aside differences and work together before it is too late.”
“I now fear that what we have fought so hard to achieve globally — the right to free, fair elections, unhindered by strongman politicians who seek nothing more than to grow their own power — has become dangerously fragile at home,” he wrote.
According to Carter’s family, his final wish before his death was to be able to vote for former Vice President Kamala Harris, who ran a historically short presidential campaign against Trump last year.
Carter lived long enough to cast his vote for Harris, also outliving all other U.S. presidents.
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