Donald Trump is running against Joe Biden. But he keeps bringing up another Democrat: Jimmy Carter

Then-President Jimmy Carter, left, and then-U.S. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., greet Biden supporters at a reception in Wilmington, Del., Feb. 20, 1978. Former President Donald Trump is running against President Biden, but Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, keeps bringing up former President Carter. Trump likes to cite the 99-year-old former president as a measuring stick to belittle Biden. (AP Photo)

As Donald Trump campaigns for a return to the White House, he often reaches back more than 40 years and seven administrations to belittle President Joe Biden by comparing him to 99-year-old Jimmy Carter.

Most recently, Trump used his first campaign stop after the start of his criminal hush money trial in New York to needle the 46th president by saying the 39th president, a recently widowed hospice patient who left office in 1981, was selfishly pleased with Biden’s record.

“Biden is the worst president in the history of our country, worse than Jimmy Carter by a long shot,” Trump said in a variation of a quip he has used throughout the 2024 campaign, including as former first lady Rosalynn Carter was on her deathbed. “Jimmy Carter is happy,” Trump continued about the two Democrats, “because he had a brilliant presidency compared to Biden.”