Boy, for the longest time, President-elect Donald Trump couldn’t criticize Jimmy Carter enough. But now that the beloved former president has died, Trump has changed his tune. He’s insisting he was invited to the late president’s funeral but that seems, well, dubious when you consider that he’d originally said Carter was the nation’s worst president. As recently as two months ago, when Carter turned 100, Trump suggested the cancer-stricken centenarian was happy because Joe Biden had now replaced him as the worst president ever, AOL reports.
But Carter was nothing if not feisty and when late-night TV host Stephen Colbert asked him in 2018 if voters wanted “kind of a jerk” as their leader, he didn’t waste any time. “Apparently, from this recent election, yes,” Carter fired back.
And most of us know by now that Carter told his son, Chip Carter, that he wanted to live long enough to vote for Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Two weeks before the election, Carter’s office confirmed he’d voted by mail for Harris.
But Trump has been sniping at Carter for a long time — all the way back to 2014, when he joked that Carter was dead, which was well, stupid, since Carter was very much alive. But at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump referred to the former president as the “late, great Jimmy Carter.”
“Of course I don’t think Jimmy Carter is dead,” Trump tweeted amid plenty of criticism for his remarks. “Just being sarcastic,” he said, adding, “but never thought he was alive as President, stiff!”
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Trump has frequently called Carter the worst president in history. But then Barack Obama took some of the heat off the former president and Trump kept up with the birtherism, making really bizarre claims about Obama.
“I never thought I’d say it in my lifetime, but President Barack Hussein Obama, aka Barry Sotoro, is a far worse president than Jimmy Carter!” Trump said in 2014.
Carter let it be known that he didn’t think much of Trump, calling him “a disaster” of a president while he was being interviewed by The Washington Post in 2018. Carter suggested that the Republican held “an attitude of ignorance toward the truth.”
So when Trump claims he was invited to Carter’s funeral, it’s difficult to believe. But when asked if he’d spoken to any members of Carter’s family, he answered “I’d rather not say.”
Now that sounds like Trump. Here’s the post I’m referring to below, followed by commentary from X users who also doubted the veracity of his statement.
Q: "Do you plan to go to President Carter's funeral?"
President-elect Trump: "I do. I'll be there. We were invited."
Q: "Have you spoken to any Carter family members?"
Trump: "I'd rather not say." pic.twitter.com/gMS4Vft7UC
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) January 1, 2025
Why is Trump so vague about such a straightforward question? Is it a matter of privacy or simply avoiding accountability, as usual?
— ItsAniceLife (@ItsaNiceLifetoo) January 1, 2025
bro thinks he’s carti YOU ARE NOT MYSTERIOUS.
— David (@IshDavidd) January 1, 2025
Translation – no.
— Greg Mercer (@mercerboy) January 1, 2025
Feature image via Political Tribune Gallery
