Jimmy Carter Was A Co-opted President

  President Jimmy Carter, the 39th US president (1977-1981), provides a classic example of how a rich, influential establishment can co-opt and exalt people into power to serve their interests. […]
Published on January 15, 2025

 

President Jimmy Carter, the 39th US president (1977-1981), provides a classic example of how a rich, influential establishment can co-opt and exalt people into power to serve their interests.

Carter was born in 1924, four years before public relations pioneer Edward Bernays wrote the following in his book Propaganda: “A presidential candidate may be ‘drafted’ in response to ‘overwhelming popular demand,’ but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room.”

But Carter’s biggest backers numbered just two: Chase Manhattan banker David Rockefeller and Polish-American intellectual Zbigniew Brzezinski who co-founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973. Carter accepted an invitation to join the commission, and, at the 1974 Democratic convention, he even handed out their pamphlets.

Brzezinski, a Columbia University professor, envisioned the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan as three economic powerhouses, which, if moulded correctly, could supplant the world’s religions, ideologies, and nationalism with a humanist technocracy.

Senator Barry Goldwater, Republican presidential candidate in 1964 said the following in his 1980 memoirs With No Apologies. “What the Trilaterals truly intend is the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political government of the nation-states involved. As managers and creators of the system they will rule the world.”

Rockefeller and Brzezinski were also members of the Bilderberg Group, a private, annual gathering of politicians, businesspeople, and intellectuals launched in 1954. They were also members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a group Carter also joined. The globalist think tank, founded in 1921, became a pool from which leaders were groomed, chosen, or absorbed, much like the World Economic Forum of more recent decades.

So, why choose Carter? Yes, Carter was a member of the Georgia State Senate from 1963 to 1967 and elected Georgia governor in 1971. More importantly, the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War left the U.S. thirsting for authenticity and integrity. The everyday good guy appeal of the Baptist and peanut farmer made him an electable commodity.

From the time Carter joined the Trilateralists, his connections won him enviable media coverage. “Jimmy who?” won the 1976 Democratic nomination.

Carter campaigned for president on the slogan, “You can trust me!” and beat Gerald Ford, gaining 50.1 percent of the popular vote. Carter didn’t win any states west of Minnesota except Texas and Hawaii, but his 297 electoral seats still prevailed over Ford’s 240.

In the book I’ll Never Lie to You, Carter wrote, “The insiders have had their chance and they have not delivered. And their time has run out. The time has come for the great majority of Americans to have a president who will turn the government of this country inside out.”

After Carter became president in 1976, Christian TV host Pat Robertson, pro-family activist Lou Sheldon from California, and Carter engaged in a three-way phone call. Robertson suggested that Carter appoint some fellow evangelicals to his administration.

“He greeted the idea with enthusiasm and agreed to receive a list [of candidates] if we could get it to him within two weeks,” Robertson recalled in his 1992 book The New World Order. Robertson and Sheldon produced a racially-diverse list of men and women, all distinguished Democrats who passed a preliminary screening by an FBI contact.

Robertson chartered a flight to the Carter farm in Georgia so Sheldon could present the list in person. Sheldon later reported to Robertson, “Jimmy was so touched by all the work that we did that tears came to his eyes.”

But Robertson told Sheldon, “Lou, you are wrong. The reason he cried is because the appointment process is out of his hands, and he is not going to appoint any of those people.”

Oh? But what of Carter’s pledge to put “fresh faces” in his administration?

Campaign manager Hamilton Jordan said, “If, after the inauguration, you find Cy Vance as secretary of state and Zbigniew Brzezinski as head of national security, then I would say that we failed and I’d quit.” However, that’s exactly what happened, and, no, Jordan didn’t quit.

Vance had been chair of the Rockefeller Foundation since 1975, just as Dean Rusk was before John F. Kennedy appointed Rusk as his secretary of state. Thirteen of the Trilateral Commission’s 65 U.S. members were given top posts under Carter, including vice-president Walter Mondale.

Although the Vietnam War was over, America’s demoralization didn’t miss a step under Carter. He gave Communist China full diplomatic relations and granted Panama a treaty that left them owners of the Panama Canal. Carter watched while OPEC nations prompted an oil crisis, Iran became a theocracy and took U.S. hostages, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and expanded their influence into Central America through the Sandinistas

Fortunately, Americans wised up. Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidential election, ushering the U.S. into a period of domestic prosperity and international strength. Though Carter outlived Reagan, the latter’s legacy was far better.

 

Lee Harding is a Research Associate for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

 

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