I normally wouldn’t write about politics without it being law-enforcement related. But here at OpsLens, experience matters. So, some time around the late 1990s-early-2000s, the department assigned my squad to augment a protection detail for former President Jimmy Carter. He was in Seattle for a Habitat for Humanity (HFH) event.
I’ll never forget it because as President Carter was in a meet-and-greet line at the venue, a man with his hand inside his jacket’s lapel suddenly moved toward Mr. Carter. I grasped the man’s hand and blocked his path.
Apparently, President Carter had a better view of the man’s hand than I did. The president nudged me aside, saying, “It’s okay, let him through.” The man pulled out a donation check made out to HFH. Mr. Carter took the check and put it in his pocket.
Anyway, anecdote aside, back then, though I hadn’t thought much of his presidency, I still had some respect for him as a former president. I thought he was genuine and well-intentioned. But, since he’d left office, he has done some dubious things that reflect badly on his former office. But I still didn’t think he’d gone completely over the line.
Most recently, however, he descended to a new low. This former President of the United States just made some news by degrading the presidency itself by dismissing our current president as “illegitimate.”
As bad as the Democratic Party behaves when it loses, I am stunned by the Democrat ex-president’s extremism. Doesn’t every former president have an implied duty not to degrade the office he once held? After all, isn’t the office more important than any individual occupying it? Apparently, not according to Mr. Carter.
This is so smarmy, so slimy, and so…silly.
According to The Political Insider, “Former president Jimmy Carter claims that a full investigation would reveal that Donald Trump is an illegitimate President who actually lost the election in 2016.” Mr. Carter must mean after another “full investigation,” right? Has he not heard about the full investigation done by Bob Mueller and his posse of anti-Trump Democrats?
How did the 45th president steal the presidency, according to our 39th president? How else? The Russians. I guess Robert Mueller’s full investigation wasn’t enough—because it didn’t turn out the way Mr. Carter wanted it to.
Without citing any evidence, Mr. Carter said, “He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.” How much can we trust the former president’s conclusions with his track record of such a reckless post-presidency that it has surpassed the incompetence of his failed presidency?
I wouldn’t have believed Mr. Carter could have done anything to further mangle the wreckage of his presidential legacy. I was wrong. Jimmy Carter found a way to tarnish an already embarrassing legacy. No, history has not been and will not be kind to the peanut farmer president, not kind at all.
When I met President Carter, I found him to be congenial and affable with an obvious passion for his cause: HFH. He was well-known for his Christian faith and his seeming earnestness. However, he obviously has another, darker side. Because I don’t know another way to describe his expressing such radical, irresponsible sentiments about the legitimacy of a fellow president other than being abjectly mean.
