Jimmy Carter: The 'fearless' American president never afraid of speaking his mind

He swept the Democrats to power in 1977 with his Trust Me campaign helping to beat his rival, the unelected Republican president Gerald Ford.

Serving as 39th US president from 1977 to 1981, Carter sought to make government “competent and compassionate” but was ousted by the unstoppable Hollywood appeal of a certain Ronald Reagan.

James Earl Carter was a farmer who left his home of Plains, Georgia, to join the US Navy, returning later to run his family’s peanut business. A stint in the Georgia senate lit the touchpaper on his political career and he rose to the top of the Democratic movement.

But he will also be remembered for a bizarre encounter with a deeply disgruntled opponent.

The president was enjoying a relaxing fishing trip near his home town in 1979 when his craft was attacked by a furious swamp rabbit which reportedly swam up to the boat hissing wildly.

The press had a field day, with one paper bearing the headline President Attacked By Rabbit.

Away from encounters with belligerent bunnies, Mr Carter’s willingness to address politically uncomfortable topics did not diminish with age.

He recently said that he would be willing to travel to North Korea for peace talks on behalf of US President Donald Trump.

He also famously mounted a ferocious and personal attack on Tony Blair over the Iraq war, weeks before the prime minister left office in June 2007.

Mr Carter, who had already denounced George W Bush’s presidency as “the worst in history”, used an interview on BBC radio to condemn Mr Blair for his tight relations with Mr Bush, particularly concerning the Iraq War.

Asked how he would characterise Mr Blair’s relationship with Mr Bush, Mr Carter replied: “Abominable. Loyal, blind, apparently subservient.

“I think that the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world.”

Mr Carter was also voluble over the Rhodesia crisis, which was about to end during his presidency. His support for Robert Mugabe at the time generated widespread criticism and he was said to have ignored the warnings of many prominent Zimbabweans, black and white, about what sort of leader Mugabe would be.

This was seen by Mr Carter’s critics as “deserving a prominent place among the outrages of the Carter years”.

Mr Carter has since said he and his administration had spent more effort and worry on Rhodesia than on the Middle East.

He admitted he had supported two revolutionaries in Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, and with hindsight said later that Mugabe had been “a good leader gone bad”, having at first been “a very enlightened president”.

One US commentator wrote: “History will not look kindly on those in the West who insisted on bringing the avowed Marxist Mugabe into the government. In particular, the Jimmy Carter foreign policy… bears some responsibility for the fate of a small African country with scant connection to American national interests.”

In recent years Mr Carter developed a reputation as an international peace negotiator.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his commitment to finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts, his work with human rights and democracy initiatives, and his promotion of economic and social programmes.

Mr Carter was dispatched to North Korea in August 2008 to secure the release of US citizen Aijalon Mahli Gomes, who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labour after being found guilty of illegally entering North Korea. He successfully secured the release of Mr Gomes.

In 2010 he returned to the White House to greet President Barack Obama and discuss international affairs amid rising tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Proving politics runs in the family, in 2013 his grandson Jason, a state senator, announced his bid to become governor in Georgia, where his famous grandfather governed before becoming president. He eventually lost to incumbent Republican Nathan Deal.

Former first lady Rosalynn Carter, the closest adviser to Mr Carter during his term as US president, died in November 2023.