Trump uses Jimmy Carter comparison to mock Biden
Donald Trump is running against Joe Biden, but Trump keeps bringing up another Democrat, Jimmy Carter.
Trump likes to cite the 99year-old Carter as a measuring stick to belittle Biden. Trump calls Carter a happy man because, according to Trump, Biden’s performance in office makes Carter’s presidency look good in comparison. It was once common for Republicans to mock Carter, who lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980 amid inflation, energy shortages, and the Iran hostage crisis.
Trump’s implication is that Biden’s economy makes Carter’s look better. Federal figures show today’s economy is stronger and more stable than in the late 1970s. And over the years, Carter’s overall presidency has gotten stronger assessments from historians.
“Biden is the worst president in the history of our country, worse than Jimmy Carter by a long shot,” Trump said at an Atlanta rally in a variation of a quip he has used throughout the 2024 campaign. “Jimmy Carter is happy,” Trump continued about the two Democrats, “because he had a brilliant presidency compared to Biden.”
Some observers question Trump’s attempts to saddle Biden with the decades-old baggage of a frail man who closed his public life in November by silently leading the mourning for his wife of 77 years.
“It’s just a very dated reference,” said pollster Zac McCrary, whose firm has worked for Biden. “It’s akin to a Democrat launching an attack on Gerald Ford or Herbert Hoover or William McKinley. It doesn’t signify anything to voters except Trump taking a cheap shot at a figure that most Americans at this point believe has given a lot to his country and to the world.”
Trump loyalists insist that even a near-centenarian is fair game in the rough-and-tumble reality of presidential politics.
“I was saying it probably before President Trump: Joe
Biden’s worse than Jimmy Carter,” said Georgia resident Debbie Dooley, an early national tea party organizer during Obama’s first term and a Trump supporter since early in his 2016 campaign. Dooley said inflation under Biden justifies the parallel: “I’m old enough to remember the gas lines under President Carter.”
Any comparison, of course, involves selective interpretation, and Trump’s decision to bring a third president into the campaign carries complications for all three — and perhaps some irony for Trump, who, like Carter, was rejected by voters after one term.
Neither campaign responded to requests for comment on Trump’s Carter comparisons.
Carter remains at home in Plains, Ga., where those close to him say he has kept up with the campaign. Biden is unquestionably the closest friend Carter has had in the White House since he left it. Biden was a first-term lawmaker from Delaware when he became the first senator to endorse Carter’s underdog campaign. After he won the White House, Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited the Carters. They saw a grieving Carter privately before Rosalynn Carter’s funeral in Atlanta last year.