“Treasonous p***k.” – It’s always good form to say nice things about those who passed, even when they weren’t the best when they were alive. And that’s what we are seeing now with Jimmy Carter, America’s formerly worst president (Joe Biden now takes that prize).
Even Donald Trump, among other former critics, is being gracious in his remarks about our 39th president.
And as much as I’d like to do the same, Carter simply does not deserve it. He was just awful.
One of my first published opinion pieces over two decades ago in the Miami Herald was about how bad Carter was as president. Years later I wrote a cover story for Newsmax magazine titled “Jimmy Carter, America’s Worst President,” detailing all of Carter’s horrible policies and actions, both during and after his presidency.
My reposted Newsmax piece is linked here online.
A former high-ranking Reagan official even reached out to me after that piece to applaud me for being spot-on about Carter.
And nothing has changed since.
Rather than rehash what I wrote about him before, let’s review what others are saying that echo my commentary from years back.
While some conservatives have found ways to defend Carter as a person, or even some of his policies, Phil Klein says it right in National Review (NR): “The reality is that he was a terrible president but an even worse former president.”
He adds: “One of the few silver linings that can be offered about Jimmy Carter is that, thankfully, he was too politically inept to be given the opportunity to do even more damage.”
I would note that we should thank Jimmy Carter for one big thing – being so bad that he gave us Ronald Reagan, one of America’s best presidents. This, much like Biden just gave us Trump for a second time.
Meanwhile, Klein says about Carter in his thorough account for NR:
Carter’s true legacy is one of economic misery at home and embarrassment on the world stage. He left the country in its weakest position of the post–World War II era. After being booted out of office in landslide fashion, the self-described “citizen of the world” spent the rest of his life meddling in U.S. foreign policy and working against the United States and its allies in a manner that could fairly be described as treasonous. His obsessive hatred of Israel, and pompous belief that only he could forge Middle East peace, led him to befriend terrorists and lash out at American Jews who criticized him.
While most know about the terrible “malaise” America suffered under Carter, including stagflation (a new economic ill unseen before in America) not to mention the foreign defeats like the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis, as well as his weakness and appeasement of the Soviet Union and giveaway of the Panama Canal, many have bought the lie that at least Carter was a good and decent ex-president.
Yet, nothing could be further from the truth.
While few can question his actions supporting Habitat for Humanity’s efforts building houses for the poor, he sadly didn’t just leave his activities at that.
His entire post-presidency consisted of borderline treasonous activities undermining and opposing policies of his duly elected, mostly Republican, successors.
He actively tried to thwart George Bush senior’s preparations for war against Saddam Hussein after the evil dictator’s invasion of Kuwait. As Klein notes, “by actively working to get foreign leaders to withdraw support for the U.S. days before troops were to be in the crossfire, Carter was taking actions that were closer to treason than they were to legitimate peace activism.”
Klein adds that, however, “Carter’s meddling was not limited to the first Iraq War or to Republican administrations.”
Carter can be rightfully blamed for allowing North Korea to get nukes under Bill Clinton’s administration.
In 1994, there was a standoff between the U.S., its allies, and North Korea over the communist country’s nuclear program, and without telling Team Clinton, notes Klein:
Carter flew to North Korea with a CNN film crew and proceeded to negotiate the framework of an agreement. He then informed the Clinton team after the fact, with little warning, that he was about to go on CNN to announce the deal. This infuriated the Clinton administration, and according to [Douglas] Brinkley’s account [in The Unfinished Presidency], one cabinet member called the former president a “treasonous prick.” To make matters worse, Carter then accepted a dinner invitation from Kim, at which point Carter claimed on camera that the U.S. had stopped pursuing sanctions at the U.N., which was untrue. Nevertheless, once Carter went on television to announce all this, Clinton felt completely boxed in, and he was forced to accept the deal and abandon sanction efforts.
Within a few years, at the end of Clinton’s second term, North Korea had begun to build its nuclear arsenal. And we have been dealing with that growing threat ever since. There is far more to say about Carter’s arrogance, ineptitude, antisemitism and sheer subversion, but it would take a book to fully document.
Instead, as Klein concludes: “In the coming days and weeks, there will be an effort to rewrite history and claim that the 39th president was underappreciated, and that people have been too harsh on him. But the truth is that historians have not been harsh enough.”
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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What about the Panama Canal?
It’s just like the posthumous comments about some gang banger who gets shot in a street fight. Suddenly he was such a good boy. He had a big heart and a promising future. NOT. Carter’s activities post presidency violated the basic premise that once you’re out of office you shouldn’t try to undermine the current office holder. Hmmm. Seems to me we experienced someone else like that more recently. Maybe Obama? At least we can assume Joe Biden won’t be very effective in that role.
His only +
Habitat for Humanity
All else Zero
Thank you so very much Paul Crespo for the real truth! And I, as a Georgia resident know even much more than what you told. JEC was an embarrassment to the state of Georgia, the Baptist Church and the United States. (Hal Lindsey said that he, JEC, never met a dictator that he didn’t like.)
During my life time (born in 1935), i think Jimmy Carter was the worst president. He gave away the Panama Canal that my ancestors built, payed for, defended and operated and wee got nothing in return. No payment, no control, nothing, how stupid and naive. In the late 70′ i was employed at Bell Aerospace Corp in New Orleans working on building surface effects ships to do anti-submarine warfare. He cut off all the Navy contracts we had so i and all the others working there had to sell their houses and move to find work. At the time inflation was rampant and we had to pay exorbitant interest rates (9 to 15 %) for house mortgages.