Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - Bill O'Reilly's Honest Evaluation of Jimmy Carter's Legacy

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Bill talks about the legacy of Jimmy Carter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by San Pellegrino Chau. A new kind of flavor of sparkling water. The kind made with real fruit juice, a pinch of Sicilian salt, and the sparkle of the Italian sun. With no added sugar and just 10 or less calories per can, enjoy with love from Italy. By San Pellegrino Chau now. What we try to do is give you a different look. about very important stories in the news. And of course, this week, Jimmy Carter was laid to rest.

The President of the United States from 1976 to 1980, he was a disaster in office. A good man in total, I had some dealings with him. He did not like me, okay? Not unusual, as Tom Jones one sang. A lot of people don't like me. Not me. I'm blunt. I can be overbearing sometimes, maybe. Court didn't like me. But I had to deal with him on the track chairs for the veterans who were severely wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And we worked it out. It wasn't easy. He was prickly, but we worked it out. And we raised $30 million. When I say we, it was me and the five living presidents, all signed stuff that were. we auctioned off and you might know if you had watched the O'Reilly Factor. Every vet who needed a high-tech wheelchair got one. So Jimmy Carter, I think, was a decent man and honest. I know he's an honest man, which separates him from Joe Biden, who's not an honest man, in my opinion. Trump, different situation. But in public service, okay, in public service. In public service, service. Carter was, I don't think he enriched himself. In fact, I know he didn't, whereas a lot of presidents did. I mean, the Obama's living real large, real large. Not saying they're doing

anything wrong because they're on boards and they give lectures and write books. It's all legitimate. But Carter didn't ever do that. I mean, he went back to planes and he wasn't really interested in money. I think that's true. Now, in 1976, he was elected because Gerald Ford was a member of the swamp. See, there was a swamp was back then. And he pardoned Richard Nixon for Watergate, and a lot of Americans didn't like that. They wanted vengeance on Nixon. Ford said, and he was right, that historically, you didn't want to put the nation through that kind of a trial and that kind of an ordeal.

Ford was right. But I think that tilted the election to Jimmy Carter, because it was very close. close. Carter was a very good campaign, a big smile, a lot of energy, young guy, I'm going to change everything, blah, blah, blah. Before it was kind of an old guy, I've been around, as I said, member of the swamp. So Carter comes in. Now, he did not cast a wide net like Ronald Reagan did for very experienced people. He brought in his boys from Georgia, and they were almost exclusively boys. And Hamilton Jordan, all these people came in, Jody Powell, they didn't know what they were doing. And Jimmy didn't know what he was doing. And immediately our enemies abroad picked

that up. Right? This guy, Nixon was brilliant. He knew what was going on in China and Russia. He could deal with these people. Guard had no blank and clue. So that started the churn. All right. So OPEC, the oil producers, they started to raise their prices, that caused inflation, then gas lines as it was embargoes, Iran causing trouble, seizing hostages, violating our embassy in Tehran. Carter didn't do anything about that. As soon as that embassy was stormed and hostages were taken, U.S. military action should have started. Boom. Like that. You don't do that. That's an act of war. And we should have taken them right out. And we wouldn't have the problems today if we did. But I didn't do it.

Didn't want to do it, didn't know how to do it, whatever it may be. All right? He was weak. And once he got in trouble with the inflation and the oil, which really destroyed the economy, didn't know how to get out of it. And it got worse and worse and worse and worse. Now, he got the Abraham Accords for the Middle East and all that. But the tone of it was weak president.

And if you want the details, you just read my book confronting the presidents, still after 17 weeks, number seven on the New York Times list, if you can believe it. And we lay it out, you know, much more specifically that I can do here in 10 minutes about the mistakes that he made, Jimmy Carter. He had way too much ideology in his presentation. He was good in the sense that he was a big proponent of Judeo-Christian tradition. He was a believer in God, and he invoked that. I met Carter at Lovefield in Dallas in 1976. He got off the plane. I was the only reporter there to greet him.

And he's campaigning for president. And he walks down the private plane steps, and he's got a garment bag under his, over his shoulder. And he goes, hey, Bill, good to see you. Knows my name. Totally disarms a young reporter. I go, governor, I asked a few questions, you know. I wasn't an analyst then. I was just a reporter, and I got a good story of it.

But later I learned that, number one, he knew my name. because the Carter campaigners called the three affiliates and said, who you send him? Very smart. And number two, in the garment bag over his shoulder, there was no garment. It was empty. But he did that to show everybody that he wasn't kind of snooty guy, carried his own bag. But there was nothing in the bed. Love it. So I thought you would enjoy that. And I knew that he was a disaster because I was waiting on a gas line like everybody else for hours. I go, this guy's not going to get reelected. And then Reagan came in.

Press hated Reagan, by the way. They loved Carter, even though the country was in turbulence. And the Iranians didn't release the hostages until inauguration day for Ronald Reagan in 1981. The day Reagan was inaugurated, hostages got released. How about that? So, Jimmy Carter's presidency will go down in history, has gone down, as one of the weakest in the 20th century, and it was. You had Herbert Hoover disaster, Warren Harding, unbelievably incompetent, all right?

Then you had a series, LBJ was corrupt, and a liar about Vietnam, but he knew what he was doing. He just chose to do the bad things. But Carter was befuddled. He just didn't know. You can't compare Carter to Biden because Biden, I believe, is corrupt. And I think that's going to bear out. You're getting a lot more stuff coming out on Biden. What do you say? Carter wasn't corrupt, but he had weak people around him. And when you don't have good advisors, And pay a price. Trump paid a price in his first term because some of his advisors were, no. Now Trump's running the show, 100%.

He's got Stephen Miller at his right hand. Miller's smart. He might not like him or agree with him, but, you know, the car didn't have anybody like that. And so he got deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And in his campaign for re-election, I mean, it was, he had nothing. It was all, well, you know, you got, you know, a few dozen Americans being held prisoner in a third world backwater, Iran, and you can't get them out? No.

So, I'm glad that the funeral went off as a dignified presentation. We should all respect the office of the presidency, but I've got to be honest. Carter was not a good president. Good man, maybe, not a good chief executive.