Jimmy Carter Lusts for a Trump Posting
PLAINS,
Ga. — Most people would run away screaming at the thought of working
for a boss who humiliates subordinates in public, throttles them in
private, demands constant flattery, spends all day watching cable TV and
behaves in a wildly unpredictable way.
And yet, there is someone who is eager to work for President Trump.
Curious,
but it’s a Democrat. And even curiouser, it’s a fellow member of the
presidents club. And curiousest, it’s someone whom Trump has disparaged
on Twitter as one of the worst presidents in history.
Miracles
can happen. No one knows that better than Jimmy Carter, who defied all
odds 40 years ago to leap from his peanut farm to the White House and
defied all odds again two years ago to beat brain cancer.
The
93-year-old would like to pull another rabbit out of a hat — just not a
killer rabbit — and enter into a productive partnership with Donald
Trump over North Korea. When you think about it, though, it makes sense.
One of the basic premises of the Carter Center is that you should talk
to dictators.
The
closest our two countries had come until now to resuming the Korean War
was in 1994. Carter flew into Pyongyang on his own over the objections
of President Bill Clinton and struck a deal with Kim Il-sung, the
grandfather of the current leader, Kim Jung-un, and the man the grandson
models himself on — right down to his hairstyle. North Korea secretly
cheated on the deal by pursuing another path to a bomb just four years
later.
So is it time for another Carter diplomatic mission, and would he do it for Trump, his polar opposite in so many ways?
“I
would go, yes,” he said, wearing a big “JC” belt buckle and sipping
coffee in his ranch house, which is chockablock with Carter family
paintings and with furniture he made himself, including his four-poster
bed. Rosalynn sits nearby, chiming in slyly at moments.
I
told him that the big shots in Washington were terrified about the
childish, bellicose tit-for-tat tweeting battle between the Dotard and
Little Rocket Man.
“I’m
afraid, too, of a situation,” he said. “I don’t know what they’ll do.
Because they want to save their regime. And we greatly overestimate
China’s influence on North Korea. Particularly to Kim Jong-un. He’s
never, so far as I know, been to China.” (Who knows if he made a
surreptitious trip.) Carter continued, “And they have no relationship.
Kim Jong-il did go to China and was very close to them.”
He
said that the “unpredictable” Kim Jong-un makes him more nervous than
his father, Kim Jong-il, and that if the young leader thinks Trump will
act against him, he could do something pre-emptive. “I think he’s now
got advanced nuclear weaponry that can destroy the Korean Peninsula and
Japan, and some of our outlying territories in the Pacific, maybe even
our mainland,” Carter explained.
He
said he has talked to Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, Trump’s national
security adviser, who is a good friend, including at Zbigniew
Brzezinski’s funeral when McMaster asked to sit next to Carter, but has
so far gotten a negative response.
“I told him that I was available if they ever need me,” he said.
When I asked about Trump’s souring our image in the world, Carter defended his successor.
“Well,
he might be escalating it but I think that precedes Trump,” he said.
“The United States has been the dominant character in the whole world
and now we’re not anymore. And we’re not going to be. Russia’s coming
back and India and China are coming forward.”
Holy malaise.
He
also said he liked Trump’s initiative reaching out to Saudi Arabia. He
doesn’t know Jared Kushner but is not totally dismissive of the idea
that the son-in-law could succeed where others have failed.
“I’ve
seen in the Arab world, including the Palestinian world,” he said, “the
high esteem that they pay to a member of one’s own family.”
Indeed,
Carter was harder on Obama during the interview than he was on Trump.
Both Carter and Trump had stern, demanding fathers. “Daddy expected me
to be perfect,” Carter told me. “So I obeyed his orders and his wishes.”
Saying
that he did not think “there’s much hope now that Israelis will ever
permit a two-state solution,” he knocked Obama on the Middle East: “He
made some very wonderful statements, in my opinion, when he first got in
office, and then he reneged on that.”
Recalling
that “we have 22 votes in our family and Obama got all 22 of them,” he
complained that Obama had “refused” to talk to North Korea more, and
then Carter lamented the fact that Obama joined in the bombing of Yemen,
which Carter says is the most interesting place he’s ever been. (He
even tried chewing khat, an addictive shrub that acts like
amphetamines.)
I asked if he had Obama’s email address.
“No,” he said flatly.
I
wondered about his relationship with other presidents, given his body
language in the famous picture where he stood off to the side, which he
told Brian Williams was deliberate because “I feel that my role as a
former president is probably superior to that of other presidents.”
“I had my best relationship, when he was in office, with George H. W. Bush,” he said.
Carter
is also not as bothered as some by Trump’s Putin bromance. “At the
Carter Center,” he said, “we deal with Putin and the Russians quite
frequently concerning Syria.”
Did the Russians purloin the election from Hillary?
“Rosie and I have a difference of opinion on that,” he said.
She looked over archly. “They obviously did,” she said.
He said: “I don’t think there’s any evidence that what the Russians did changed enough votes, or any votes.”
Rosalynn pressed, “The drip-drip-drip about Hillary.”
Carter noted that in the primary, “We voted for Sanders.”
I asked the famously ethical Carter what he made of Obama’s post-presidential string of $400,000 speeches.
“I
don’t care if he gets rich or Clinton gets rich or whatever,” he said.
“I don’t want to get into a bragging position; I’m not trying to do
that. But I announced when I was defeated I was not going to be on
corporate boards, I was not going to try to enrich myself with speeches.
I was patterning my policy after Harry Truman.”
When
I compared the Clinton Foundation with the Carter Center, Carter noted:
“Rosie and I put money in the Carter Center. We never take any out.”
I
wondered how the starchy Carter, who put out a White House edict that
nobody could fly first class, felt about the louche Trump White House,
where conflict of interest has been replaced by confluence of interest.
“I
think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president
certainly that I’ve known about,” Carter replied. “I think they feel
free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else
without hesitation.”
Since
Rosalynn’s focus as first lady was mental health, I asked her if we
should break the last taboo and let presidents have a White House
shrink.
“I think it might help them,” she said with a smile.
She
told me that she was left out of a first ladies lunch held by Michelle
Obama on the issue of mental health, making it clear that she was still
hurt.
On
the issue of tearing down Confederate statues, the former president
mused: “That’s a hard one for me. My great-grandfather was at Gettysburg
on the Southern side and his two brothers were with him in the Sumter
artillery. One of them was wounded but none of them were killed. I never
have looked on the carvings on Stone Mountain or the statues as being
racist in their intent. But I can understand African-Americans’ aversion
to them, and I sympathize with them. But I don’t have any objection to
them being labeled with explanatory labels or that sort of thing.”
On
the issue of N.F.L. players kneeling, Carter was less sympathetic: “I
think they ought to find a different way to object, to demonstrate. I
would rather see all the players stand during the American anthem.”
I
asked if he thought the president was deepening racial divisions. “Yes,
I think he is exacerbating it,” he said. “But maybe not deliberately.”
As
a genuinely pious man, how does he feel about the Two Corinthians
president bonding with evangelical voters, who do not desert Trump no
matter how coarse his language or how upsetting the “Access Hollywood”
tape was. Don’t the evangelicals seem cynical to stick?
“Apparently not,” he replied.
In “The Art of the Deal,” Trump wrote that Carter came to his office to ask for $5 million for his presidential library.
Trump was impressed that Carter had “the nerve, the guts” to ask for something so “extraordinary,” but didn’t give it to him.
“He bragged about it,” Carter said wryly. “That was one of his major selling points: ‘I turned down Jimmy Carter.’”
But now the indefatigable Carter is back with another nervy proposal.
Will Trump bite?
I invite you to follow me on Twitter (@MaureenDowd) and join me on Facebook.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
Many ESC fans from all over the world are so very sad because we lost Joy Fleming - one of the best singers ever.
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel sings 'Try to remember' especially for Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund at Vita Magica September
you can join
Betty MacDonald fan club
Betty MacDonald Society
Vita Magica
Eurovision Song Contest Fan Club
on Facebook
Vita Magica Betty MacDonald event with Wolfgang Hampel, Thomas Bödigheimer and Friedrich von Hoheneichen
Vita Magica
Betty MacDonald
Betty MacDonald fan club
Betty MacDonald fan club on Facebook
Betty MacDonald forum
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( Polski)
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - LinkFang ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Academic ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - cyclopaedia.net ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - DBpedia ( English / German )
Wolfgang Hampel - people check ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Memim ( English )
Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French )
Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)
Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD
Betty MacDonald fan club items
Betty MacDonald fan club items - comments
Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I
Betty MacDonald fan club groups
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Greta Larson
