
Former US President Jimmy Carter dies aged 100 | BBC News
BBC News- 112 views
- 29 Dec 2024
The former US President Jimmy Carter has died aged 100. He died at home in Plains, Georgia. His son said he was "a hero, not ...
The former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, has died at the age of 100. He was the longest living former US President. He served in the White House from 1977 to 1981, a Democrat who first entered politics in the 1960s. He only served for one term, but followed his presidency with a career that included winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work. From Washington, Gary O'Donahue looks back at his life.
As a candidate and as a president, I'll never tell a lie.
It was that sincerity and passion that propelled Jimmy Carter to the presidency. Leaving a naval career, he took over the family business in the Deep South, growing peanuts made him rich. Turning to politics, he served one term as governor of Georgia before taking an underdog run at the presidency.
My name is Jimmy Carter, and I'm running for President.
He campaigned on a platform to bind America's wounds after Watergate and Vietnam.
Hi, Jimmy Carter. Do solamente swear.
An ardent feminist and environmentalist, he was ahead of his time on many issues. In 1979, an iconic moment, joining hands with Israel's Prime Minister, Monarchim Bégin, and Egypt's Anwar Sadat, sealing the Camp David Accords. It was his finest achievement. But an energy crisis saw rocketing inflation, high interest rates and long lines at the pumps. On top of all that came the Iranian Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis which followed, saw 52 Americans held in Teran, and eight military personnel die trying to rescue them. That all made re-election nigh on impossible, and he lost 46 out of 50 states to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election. But Jimmy Carter made more of his post-Whitehouse years than any President potential predecessor, setting up the Carter Center in Atlanta, building houses for the poor, and campaigning across the world for democracy and justice. Twenty-two years after leaving office, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. Only when he was past 90 years old did he tell a news conference without a shred of self-pity that cancer had spread to his brain.
I think I have been as blessed as any human being in the world with coming I've become the President of the United States of America, and everything's been a blessing for me, so I'm thankful.
By his side for 77 years of marriage, Rosalind Carter was, according to her husband, his equal partner in everything. He made a rare public appearance from hospice care when she died. Jimmy Carter's legacy has been hotly debated and often revised, but few would dispute that America's longest-lived President gave, in his own words, his very best.
The former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, who has died at the age of 100. Well, these are live pictures of the White House tonight. The flag already lowered two half mast. Let's talk to Tom Bateman, who is in Washington for us. Tom, there's news just breaking in the past hour, but already tributes coming in.
Absolutely, Sophie. His family confirming the news in the last hour. His son, Chip Carter, saying that he died peacefully at home today. He was surrounded by his family. It had been known that in recent years, he was being treated for an aggressive form of skin cancer, and the family had announced last year that he would be leaving hospital and receiving care in hospice. You mentioned there this was a life that broke a series of records, the oldest living president in US history. He was married to his wife, who he survived as you heard from Gary there last year, married for 77 years. She died in November last year. In terms of his legacy, I expect in the coming hours we'll have statements from President Biden, President-Elect Trump, and many others about the impact he made on this country, not just during his one-term presidency in the late 1970s, but also in the four decades of work that he did and dedicated to public service after that. I think his presidency itself will largely be remembered for a series of crises at home. It was a period of stagflation. Many Americans remember long lines at petrol stations in this country, and also a series of emergencies abroad, including the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran and the taking of American hostages there in the late 1970s, a crisis that lasted over a year and a half, in which he was involved in a botched rescue attempt in 1980.
But I think the signature achievement and the legacy 1980. But I think the signature achievement and the legacy of Jimmy Carter will be around the Camp David Accords, a historic peace between Israel and Egypt, the first country to recognize and do a peace deal with the Israelis back in the late 1970s. Both Mena Kempbegin of Israel andempbegin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt, of whom Jimmy Carter was shuttling between at Camp David at the time, got the Nobel Peace Prize, as did Jimmy Carter many decades later.