Donald Trump is running against Joe Biden. But he keeps bringing up another Democrat: Jimmy Carter

Donald Trump is running against Joe Biden. But he keeps bringing up another Democrat: Jimmy Carter
This combination of photos shows former President Donald Trump, from left, President Joe Bien and former President Jimmy Carter. (AP Photo)
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Updated 29 April 2024
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Donald Trump is running against Joe Biden. But he keeps bringing up another Democrat: Jimmy Carter

Donald Trump is running against Joe Biden. But he keeps bringing up another Democrat: Jimmy Carter
  • Carter and Trump actually share common ground. Both were Washington outsiders who won the presidency, each fueled by voter discontent with the establishment
  • But unlike Carter, Trump never accepted defeat. He falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen and is accused of instigating violent efforts to overturn Biden's victory

ATLANTA: As Donald Trump campaigns for a return to the White House, he often reaches back more than 40 years and seven administrations to belittle President Joe Biden by comparing him to 99-year-old Jimmy Carter.

Most recently, Trump used his first campaign stop after the start of his criminal hush money trial in New York to needle the 46th president by saying the 39th president, a recently widowed hospice patient who left office in 1981, was selfishly pleased with Biden’s record.
“Biden is the worst president in the history of our country, worse than Jimmy Carter by a long shot,” Trump said in a variation of a quip he has used throughout the 2024 campaign, including as former first lady Rosalynn Carter was on her deathbed. “Jimmy Carter is happy,” Trump continued about the two Democrats, “because he had a brilliant presidency compared to Biden.”
It was once common for Republicans like Trump to lampoon Carter. Many Democrats, including Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, kept their distance for years, too, after a roiled economy, energy shortages and an extended American hostage crisis led to Carter’s landslide defeat in 1980. The negative vibes waned, though, with the passage of time and reconsideration of Carter’s legacy as a political leader, Nobel laureate and global humanitarian.
That leaves some observers, Democrats especially, questioning Trump’s attempts to saddle Biden with the decades-old baggage of a frail man who closed his public life last November by silently leading the mourning for his wife of 77 years.
“It’s just a very dated reference,” said pollster Zac McCrary, whose Alabama-based 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.”




President Jimmy Carter, left, and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., greet Biden supporters at a reception in Wilmington, Delaware on Feb. 20, 1978. (AP)

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.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment about his comparisons; Biden’s campaign was dismissive of them.
“Donald Trump is flailing and struggling to land coherent attacks on President Biden,” spokesman Seth Schuster said.
Carter remains at home in Plains, Georgia, 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 US senator to endorse Carter’s underdog campaign. After he won the White House, Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited the Carters in Plains. They saw a grieving Carter privately before Rosalynn Carter’s funeral in Atlanta last year.
Like Carter, Biden is seeking reelection at a time when Americans are worried about inflation. But today’s economy is not the same as the one Carter faced.
The post-pandemic rebound, fueled by stimulus spending from the US and other governments, has been blamed for global inflation. The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates in response.
But the effective federal funds rate is 5.33 percent right now, while the benchmark was above 17 percent for a key period before the 1980 election. Rates for a 30-year mortgage are about half what they were at the peak of Carter’s administration; unemployment is less than half the Carter peak. The average per-gallon gas price in the US, topping $3.60 this month, is higher than the $3 peak under Trump. It reached $4.50 (adjusted for inflation) during Carter’s last year in office.
Carter and Trump actually share common ground. They are the clearest Washington outsiders in modern history to win the presidency, each fueled by voter discontent with the establishment.
A little-known Georgia governor and peanut farmer, Carter leveraged fallout from Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. Trump was the populist businessman and reality TV star who pledged to “Make America Great Again.” Both men defy ideological labels, standing out for their willingness to talk to dictators and isolated nations such as North Korea, even if they offered differing explanations for why.
Carter cautioned his party about underestimating Trump’s appeal, and the Carters attended Trump’s 2017 inauguration. Jimmy Carter, however, openly criticized Trump’s penchant for lies. After Carter suggested Russian propaganda helped elect Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Trump began to insult Carter as a failure.




In this photo released by The White House, former President Jimmy Carter, center left, and former first lady Rosalynn Carter, center right, pose for a photo with President Joe Biden, right, and first lady Jill Biden at the home of the Carter's in Plains, Georgia, on April 30, 2021. (AP)

Unlike Carter, Trump never accepted defeat. He falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen, then promoted debunked theories about the election that were repeated by supporters in the mob that stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress convened to certify Biden’s victory. Trump left Washington the morning Biden took office, becoming the first president since Andrew Johnson in 1869 to skip his successor’s inauguration.
Carter conceded to Republican Ronald Reagan, attended his inauguration, then returned to Georgia. There, he and Rosalynn Carter established The Carter Center in 1982. They spent decades advocating for democracy, mediating international conflict and advancing public health in the developing world. They built houses for low-income people with Habitat for Humanity. Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Many historians’ judgment of Carter’s presidency has softened.
He is credited with deregulating much of the transportation industry, making air travel far more accessible to Americans, and creating the Department of Energy to streamline and coordinate the nation’s energy research. He negotiated the Camp David peace deal between Egypt and Israel. He diversified the federal judiciary and executive branch. He appointed the Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, who, along with Reagan, would get credit for the economic growth of the 1980s. Carter was the first president to raise concerns about rising global temperatures. And it was Carter, along with his diplomatic team, who negotiated the release of American hostages in Tehran, though they were not freed until minutes after Carter’s term expired.
Biographies, documentaries and news coverage across Carter’s 10th decade have reassessed that record.
By 2015, a Quinnipiac University poll found 40 percent of registered voters viewed Carter as having done the best work since leaving office among presidents from Carter through George W. Bush. When Gallup asked voters last year to rate Carter’s handling of his presidency, 57 percent approved and 36 percent disapproved. (Trump measured 46 percent approval and 54 percent disapproval at the time, the first retroactive measure Gallup had conducted for him.)
“There has long been a general consensus of admiration for Carter as a person — that sentiment that he was a good and decent man,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor who studies collective public memory and has written extensively on Carter. The more recent conclusions about Carter as a president, she added, suggest “we should consider Carter’s presidency as a lens to think about reevaluating about how we gauge the failure or success of any administration.”
How that plays into Biden’s rematch with Trump, Roessner said, “remains to be seen.”
Regardless, the ties between the 39th and 46th presidents endure, whatever the 45th president might say. When the time comes for Carter’s state funeral, Trump is expected to be invited alongside Carter’s other living successors. But it will be Biden who delivers the eulogy.


US Senate confirms Trump loyalist Kash Patel to head FBI

US Senate confirms Trump loyalist Kash Patel to head FBI
Updated 42 min 55 sec ago
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US Senate confirms Trump loyalist Kash Patel to head FBI

US Senate confirms Trump loyalist Kash Patel to head FBI
  • A son of Indian immigrants, the New York-born Patel served in several high-level posts during Trump’s first administration
  • Patel has denied that he has an ‘enemies list’ and told the Senate Judiciary Committee he was merely interested in bringing lawbreakers to book

WASHINGTON: The Republican-controlled US Senate on Thursday confirmed Kash Patel, a staunch loyalist of President Donald Trump, to be director of the FBI, the country’s top law enforcement agency.
Patel, 44, whose nomination sparked fierce but ultimately futile opposition from Democrats, was approved by a 51-49 vote.
The vote was split along party lines with the exception of two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted not to confirm Patel to head the 38,000-strong Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Patel drew fire from Democrats for his promotion of conspiracy theories, his defense of pro-Trump rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and his vow to root out members of a supposed “deep state” plotting to oppose the Republican president.
The Senate has approved all of Trump’s cabinet picks so far, underscoring his iron grip on the Republican Party.
Among them is Tulsi Gabbard, confirmed as the nation’s spy chief despite past support for adversarial nations including Russia and Syria, and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be health secretary.
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, in a last-ditch bid to derail Patel’s nomination, held a press conference outside FBI headquarters in downtown Washington on Thursday and warned that he would be “a political and national security disaster” as FBI chief.
Speaking later on the Senate floor, Durbin said Patel is “dangerously, politically extreme.”
“He has repeatedly expressed his intention to use our nation’s most important law enforcement agency to retaliate against his political enemies,” he said.
Patel, who holds a law degree from Pace University and worked as a federal prosecutor, replaces Christopher Wray, who was named FBI director by Trump during his first term in office.
Relations between Wray and Trump became strained, however, and though he had three more years remaining in his 10-year tenure, Wray resigned after Trump won November’s presidential election.
A son of Indian immigrants, the New York-born Patel served in several high-level posts during Trump’s first administration, including as senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council and as chief of staff to the acting defense secretary.
There were fiery exchanges at Patel’s confirmation hearing last month as Democrats brought up a list of 60 supposed “deep state” actors — all critics of Trump — he included in a 2022 book, whom he said should be investigated or “otherwise reviled.”
Patel has denied that he has an “enemies list” and told the Senate Judiciary Committee he was merely interested in bringing lawbreakers to book.
“All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,” he said.
The FBI has been in turmoil since Trump took office and a number of agents have been fired or demoted including some involved in the prosecutions of Trump for seeking to overturn the 2020 election results and mishandling classified documents.
Nine FBI agents have sued the Justice Department, seeking to block efforts to collect information on agents who were involved in investigating Trump and the attack on the Capitol by his supporters.
In their complaint, the FBI agents said the effort to collect information on employees who participated in the investigations was part of a “purge” orchestrated by Trump as “politically motivated retribution.”
Trump, on his first day in the White House, pardoned more than 1,500 of his supporters who stormed Congress in a bid to block certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.


Mexico says won’t accept US ‘invasion’ in fight against cartels

Mexico says won’t accept US ‘invasion’ in fight against cartels
Updated 21 February 2025
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Mexico says won’t accept US ‘invasion’ in fight against cartels

Mexico says won’t accept US ‘invasion’ in fight against cartels
  • The eight Latin American drug trafficking groups designated as terrorist organizations include Mexican gangs such as the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels
  • Claudia Sheinbaum: ‘They can call them (the cartels) whatever they want, but with Mexico, it is collaboration and coordination, never subordination or interventionism, and even less invasion’

MEXICO CITY: Mexico’s president warned the United States on Thursday her country would never tolerate an “invasion” of its national sovereignty and vowed fresh legal action against US gunmakers after Washington designated cartels as terrorist organizations.
The remarks were the latest in a series hitting back at the administration of President Donald Trump, which has ramped up pressure on its southern neighbor to curb illegal flows of drugs and migrants.
Mexico is trying to avoid the sweeping 25-percent tariffs threatened by Trump by increasing cooperation in the fight against narcotics trafficked by the cartels in his sights.
The eight Latin American drug trafficking groups designated as terrorist organizations include Mexican gangs such as the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels — two of the country’s most powerful and violent criminal organizations.
But the designation “cannot be an opportunity for the US to invade our sovereignty,” President Claudia Sheinbaum told a news conference.
“They can call them (the cartels) whatever they want, but with Mexico, it is collaboration and coordination, never subordination or interventionism, and even less invasion.”
Sheinbaum said Mexico would expand its legal action against US gun manufacturers, which her government accuses of negligence in the sale of weapons that end up in the hands of drug traffickers.
The lawsuit could lead to a new charge of alleged “complicity” with terrorist groups, she said.
Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in the White House last month saying that the cartels “constitute a national-security threat beyond that posed by traditional organized crime.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that the designations “provide law enforcement additional tools to stop these groups.”
“Terrorist designations play a critical role in our fight against terrorism and are an effective way to curtail support for terrorist activities,” he said in a statement.
While he did not mention it, the move has raised speculation about possible military action against the cartels.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has been given a prominent role in the Trump administration, suggested the designation “means they’re eligible for drone strikes.”
On Wednesday, Sheinbaum confirmed that the United States had been operating drones spying on Mexican cartels as part of a collaboration that has existed for years.
According to The New York Times, Washington has stepped up secret drone flights over Mexico in search of fentanyl labs as part of Trump’s campaign against drug cartels.
Military threats from the United States always generate resentment in Mexico, which lost half of its territory to the United States in the 19th century.
Sheinbaum said that she would present to Congress a constitutional reform to protect “the integrity, independence and sovereignty of the nation” including against the violation of its territory by land, air or sea.
Mexico says that between 200,000 and 750,000 weapons manufactured by US gunmakers are smuggled across the border from the United States every year, often being used in crime.
The Latin American country tightly controls firearm sales, making them practically impossible to obtain legally.
Even so, drug-related violence has seen around 480,000 people killed in Mexico since the government deployed the army to combat trafficking in 2006, according to official figures.
While she has ruled out declaring “war” on drug cartels, Sheinbaum has quietly dropped her predecessor’s “hugs not bullets” strategy, which prioritized tackling the root causes of criminal violence over security operations.
Her government has announced a series of major drug seizures and deployed more troops to the border with the United States in return for Trump pausing tariffs for one month.
Mexican authorities also announced the arrest this week of two prominent members of the Sinaloa Cartel, including the head of security for one of its warring factions.


Glamping retreat for Indonesia leaders sparks criticism as cuts bite

Glamping retreat for Indonesia leaders sparks criticism as cuts bite
Updated 20 February 2025
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Glamping retreat for Indonesia leaders sparks criticism as cuts bite

Glamping retreat for Indonesia leaders sparks criticism as cuts bite

JAKARTA: The Indonesian government will host a week-long mountain glamping retreat for hundreds of regional leaders this week, a presidential official said Wednesday, sparking criticism as President Prabowo Subianto imposes widespread budget cuts.

More than 500 mayors, governors and regents will be taken to a military-style academy in the Central Java city of Magelang, where the recently inaugurated president’s Cabinet stayed in luxury tents in October. The 73-year-old former general, accused of rights abuses under dictator Suharto in the late 1990s, has pledged to drill and unite the country’s top politicians, choosing the mountains of Central Java for that mission. The camping trip for 503 politicians will take place between Feb. 21-28, presidential spokesman Hariqo Wibawa Satria told AFP, confirming Prabowo would attend in some capacity. The regional heads will be trained on good governance, improvement of public services and “chemistry building,” he said.

But the gathering — costing $808,000 from the Home Ministry budget — has prompted outrage online and criticism from NGOs.

“What’s the urgency? Why should it be glamping with aides? A cheaper version of camping should be doable,” a user posted in Indonesian on social media site X.

The criticism comes as Prabowo slashes budgets across the government after ordering cuts of around $19 billion last month.


Putin hails Russia’s huge number of ‘terror’ convictions

Putin hails Russia’s huge number of ‘terror’ convictions
Updated 20 February 2025
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Putin hails Russia’s huge number of ‘terror’ convictions

Putin hails Russia’s huge number of ‘terror’ convictions
  • “Military courts have a key role in deciding on criminal cases with a terrorist direction,” Putin said in a speech to Russia’s top judges.
  • “Last year, around 950 such cases were looked at, 1,075 people were sentenced“

MOSCOW: Russian military courts sentenced more than 1,000 people on terrorist charges last year, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday, referring to a massive wave of prosecutions during the Ukraine offensive.
Russia’s secretive military courts prosecute captured Ukrainian soldiers, Russians accused of working with Kyiv or sabotaging Moscow’s army, domestic opponents of the Kremlin, and alleged radicals and terrorist groups.
“Military courts have a key role in deciding on criminal cases with a terrorist direction,” Putin said in a speech to Russia’s top judges.
“Last year, around 950 such cases were looked at, 1,075 people were sentenced.”
Russia regularly sentences people over opposition to the Ukraine offensive, while convicting captured Ukrainian soldiers on treason and terrorist charges.
The Geneva Conventions prohibit the prosecution of prisoners of war (POW) for taking part in armed hostilities.
Moscow has also intensified its targeting of alleged jihadist cells since the March 2024 massacre at a Moscow concert hall that killed 145 people — an attack claimed by the Islamic State.
The crackdown at home is of a scale not seen since the Soviet era.
The OVD-Info rights group says 1,184 people have been prosecuted in Russia for their opposition to the Ukraine conflict — including 258 for justifying “terrorism” and 58 for “acts of terrorism.”
The Memorial rights group says Russia has 868 political prisoners, though its co-founder Oleg Orlov told AFP last year there were “a lot more” that campaigners did not know about.
Jailed for “discrediting” Russia’s armed forces, he was then released in a prisoner exchange with the United States.
Putin on Thursday praised Russia’s judges for their “dedication” in overseeing the ballooning case load.
He said Russia had created 100 courts and appointed 570 judges in occupied parts of eastern Ukraine, where Moscow has jailed an unknown number of Ukrainians for opposing Moscow’s military offensive.
“They are completely integrated in the united Russian judicial system,” Russia’s Supreme Court chief Irina Podnosova told Putin.
She said military courts had seen a steep rise in overall cases during the Ukraine campaign.
“In 2024, they looked at 18,000 criminal (cases), 13,000 administrative (cases) and 9,000 civilian (cases),” she added.
Little is known of the fate of Ukrainians sentenced by Russian-installed courts in the four Ukrainian regions Russia annexed in 2022 — Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia.
Russian courts are known for their low acquittal rates.


Teenager kills two women in knife attack at Czech shop

Teenager kills two women in knife attack at Czech shop
Updated 20 February 2025
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Teenager kills two women in knife attack at Czech shop

Teenager kills two women in knife attack at Czech shop
  • Police arrested the teenager, a Czech national, minutes after the attack at an Action branch on the outskirts of Hradec Kralove
  • The attacker’s motive was unclear but that there was nothing to indicate a terror attack, police said

HRADEE KRALOVE, Czech Republic: A 16-year-old boy killed two women in a knife attack at a discount shop in the Czech Republic on Thursday, police said, adding the motive remained unclear.
Police arrested the teenager, a Czech national, minutes after the attack at an Action branch on the outskirts of Hradec Kralove, around 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Prague.
“Both of those attacked suffered injuries which were so serious that they could not be saved despite all efforts of the rescuers,” police said on X.
Police spokeswoman Iva Kormosova said the teenager attacked a shop assistant at the counter and another worker in a service area of the store.
The attacker’s motive was unclear but that there was nothing to indicate a terror attack, police said.
“The information we have for now seems to suggest he chose the victims randomly,” they added.
Rescuers received the first call about 0730 GMT, half an hour after the shop had opened.
“When we arrived, we found two people stabbed,” Anatolij Truhlar, head doctor of the local air rescue service, told the private CNN Prima News TV channel.
“Unfortunately, despite 40 minutes of resuscitation efforts, both persons died,” he added.
Police were deployed outside the Action discount store where a lone candle flickered, and a part of an adjacent car park was closed with police tape until Thursday afternoon.
“I think you’re not safe anywhere, given what’s going on around us,” passer-by Adela Ptackova told AFP.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala expressed condolences to the families of the victims, calling the murders “an incomprehensible, horrendous act.”
Terror attacks are rare in the Czech Republic, an EU and NATO member of 10.9 million people, but in 2023 a student killed 14 people and wounded 25 in a shooting rampage at a Prague university.
The Czech Republic’s southern neighbor Austria is reeling from the murder of a teenager in a knife attack by a Syrian asylum seeker in the city of Villach at the weekend.