President Donald Trump declared during an Oval Office meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni that President Joe Biden’s tenure in office was so terrible that Jimmy Carter “died a happy man” knowing that there was someone “worse” than him.
“And then you had like the last administration, the only thing they were good at was cheating in elections,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “That‘s about all they could do. They couldn‘t do anything. They were useless. They were incompetent.”
He added: “Worst administration in the history of our country. Worse than Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter died a happy man. You know why? Because he wasn‘t the worst. President Joe Biden was.”
The president’s inflammatory remarks took place as the White House press corps pressed him on not only a wide array of issues such as the administration’s illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the president’s recent attacks on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
“I think he’s terrible, but I can't complain because we had the most successful administration economically in the history of our country,” he huffed at one point on Thursday afternoon. “I think we‘re going to do even better this time, because you will see that the numbers that we‘re taking in are astronomical. We’re taking in tremendous amounts of money with the tariffs.”
Continuing to insist that his sweeping tariffs were necessary because the United States was “treated very unfairly on trade,” Trump claimed that “countries are having a hard time getting used to the fact that they can’t do that to us anymore because we have a real president.” At that point, he pivoted to slamming his predecessor.
“We had presidents that in some cases were smart, but they didn‘t understand business, or they didn‘t like business or, you know, it wasn’t like a priority,” the president said. “And then you had like the last administration, the only thing they were good at was cheating in elections. That’s about all they could do. They couldn’t do anything. They were useless. They were incompetent. Worst administration in the history of our country. Worse than Jimmy Carter.” Jimmy Carter died a happy man. You know why? Because he wasn‘t the worst. President Joe Biden was.”
Prior to Carter’s death last December at the age of 100, Trump had long jeered the 39th president and repeatedly asserted that Carter’s term in office was one of the “worst” in history. Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump unfavorably compared the two Democratic leaders, describing Biden as “the worst” who made Carter look “brilliant” by comparison, and went so far as to deliver this campaign line on Carter’s 100th birthday.
Following Carter’s death, however, Trump offered up some fairly gracious words about the former president’s life and time in the White House, and later attended Carter’s funeral along with the other living presidents.
“The challenges Jimmy faced as President came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude,” he said, adding that Carter was a “good man” who was “very consequential, far more than most presidents, after he left the Oval Office.”
Still, Trump has dedicated much of his energy in the early months of his second administration promising to undo many of Carter’s accomplishments, such as potentially reneging on the 1977 treaty that gave control of the Panama Canal over to its home country and shuttering the Department of Education, which was created in 1979.
