Newsweek, April 2026
President Donald Trump has long invoked the late President Jimmy Carter as a cautionary tale. In Trump’s telling, Carter embodied weakness at home and embarrassment abroad. And though wildly different in their political beliefs and personal lives, recent polling data suggests Trump may now be dealing with a dynamic that has long been associated with Carter’s presidency: a widening split between how voters feel about him personally and how they think he is governing in office.
Trump has often mocked Carter’s legacy, citing him as the benchmark of a poor president while touting the successes of his own leadership—though he later claimed that Joe Biden was even worse. “If you look back to Afghanistan or if you look back to the Jimmy Carter days, they were different days,” Trump said earlier this year. “We’re a respected country again.”
