Jimmy Carter had little use for the presidents club but formed a friendship for the ages with Ford

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jimmy Carter and the man he beat for president, Gerald Ford, got so tight after office that their friendship became a kind of buddy movie, complete with road trips that were never long enough because they had so much to gab about.

Carter did not get along nearly so well with the other living presidents. The outsider president was an outlier after his presidency, too.

Nevertheless, past and present occupants of the office will attend Carter's state funeral this week in what could be the largest gathering of the presidents club since five attended Washington services for George H.W. Bush in December 2018.

As a member of that elite, informal club, Carter was uniquely positioned to do important work for his successors, whether Democrat or Republican. He achieved significant results at times, thanks to his public stature as a peacemaker, humanitarian and champion of democracy and his deep relationships with foreign leaders, troublemakers included.

But with Carter, you never knew when he’d go rogue. This was a man so self-confident, he described himself as “probably superior” to the other ex-presidents who were still knocking about. Ornery about taking orders, he could be invaluable to the man in office, exasperating, or both at once.

The others often bonded over “what an annoying cuss Carter could be,” Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy wrote in their book “The Presidents Club.”

“Carter was the driven, self-righteous, impatient perfectionist who united the other club members around what seemed like an eternal question: was Jimmy Carter worth the trouble?”

He was, in the mind of Randall Balmer, a Dartmouth College historian of religion and Carter’s rise to the presidency. Balmer points to the violence averted in the last hours before a U.S. invasion of Haiti in 1994, when Carter, to the benefit of Democratic President Bill Clinton and countless lives saved, brokered a deal with Haiti’s military coup leader to step aside and restore democracy.

“Any time you can avoid military conflict you score that as a win,” Balmer said.

Four years earlier, for the benefit of Republican President George H.W. Bush and the lives at stake in the region, Carter secured peace in Nicaragua at the brink of bloodshed when he persuaded the leftist leader Daniel Ortega to accept the electoral defeat that had so shocked the Sandinistas.

John Danforth, former Republican senator from Missouri, joined Carter on missions to lay the groundwork for the 1990 Nicaragua election and then monitor it. In the first, the Carter entourage came upon Ortega's motorcade on a dusty road through the town of Rivas.

The two men retired to the backyard of the nearest house for an impromptu negotiation over the government trucks Carter wanted Ortega to send around the country to deliver election material.

“Often when we envision former presidents, the picture is distant, even stuffy: men in dark suits and neckties captured in formal poses as though engaged in deep thoughts,” Danforth wrote in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in February 2023. "My picture of Carter is quite the contrary. He is in a back yard in Rivas. A crowing rooster is at his feet. An earnest expression is on his face. He’s not talking statecraft; he’s talking trucks.”

Yet he could infuriate those in power. Years after the U.S.-led Gulf War rolled back Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, it emerged that Carter had lobbied U.N. Security Council members and foreign leaders to reject the elder Bush’s request to authorize the use of force.

After being mostly sidelined by the man who defeated him in 1980, Ronald Reagan, Carter was given several missions by Bush until the Gulf War episode, after which he was cut off, Gibbs and Duffy write.

His relationship with Clinton was limited and uneasy, bookended by Clinton’s reluctance to call on a figure who symbolized humiliating election defeat for Democrats and by Carter’s disapproval of Clinton’s behavior outside his marriage.

But after Clinton won the White House in 1992, he sent Carter to North Korea to take the measure of dictator Kim Il Sung. Clinton aides were livid when Carter went beyond his brief, engaging in an unauthorized negotiation with Kim and, what’s more, talking about it on TV.

But then, Carter was always a step apart from the rest. He was also one to wag a finger at the political establishment, if not to pulverize it like Donald Trump did.

In January 2009, President George W. Bush invited other members of the presidents club to the White House for lunch and Oval Office photos. Bush, his father, Clinton and President-elect Barack Obama are seen clustered in front of the Resolute Desk. Carter is conspicuously off to the side — outlying.

The images spoke volumes about Carter’s place in the club, Balmer said. “Jimmy Carter didn’t fit in with a lot of people. He was really an introvert, not somebody who warms up easily.”

If politics makes strange bedfellows, though, post-politics makes even stranger ones. The embedded hostilities of Democrat-versus-Republican can melt in the presidents club as former rivals become unlikely mates.

Except with Trump. Regardless of party, the club members disdained Trump in his first term, and he had no use for them.

When Carter turned 100 in October, Trump marked the occasion by declaring that Joe Biden is so bad a president that Carter must be “the happiest man because Carter is considered a brilliant president by comparison.”

Trump was more sober in response to Carter's death, saying “the challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude.”

Democrat Lyndon Johnson leaned frequently on Republican predecessor Dwight Eisenhower, telling him “You’re the best chief of staff I’ve got.” On the night of John Kennedy’s assassination, LBJ sought Ike’s advice on what to say to Congress, adding: “I need you more than ever now.”

Reagan once pulled Clinton aside to tell him the military salute he was executing during the campaign was too lame for the presidency. He taught him how to make it snappy. Clinton in turn cherished his long and frequent phone calls with Richard Nixon, confiding in the disgraced but savvy Republican on foreign policy problems of the era.

Clinton also became close to the Republican he vanquished in 1992, joining the elder Bush in Maine for golf, zippy boat rides and nights by the sea.

More consequentially, the younger Bush asked his dad and Clinton to lead a fundraising mission for countries devastated by the 2004 tsunami, giving rise to a bipartisan pairing that pitched in on more endeavors, like Hurricane Katrina relief. “I just loved him,” Clinton said upon Bush’s death in 2018.

So, too, Obama and the younger Bush have teamed up on occasion and Bush enjoys an especially good-natured relationship with Michelle Obama.

But the Jimmy-Jerry friendship was one for the ages.

Carter took it as a point of pride when two historians, speaking separately at a commemoration of the 200th birthday of the White House, said his friendship with Ford was the most intensely personal between any two presidents in history.

Carter said it began in 1981, when the two were sent by Reagan to represent the U.S. at the funeral of Anwar Sadat, the assassinated Egyptian leader. Nixon was on the trip, too, somewhat awkwardly. The other two took to each other, commiserating over how tough it could be to raise money for a presidential library when you’ve been booted out of office.

They were both Navy men, had three sons, a strong religious faith that Ford was quieter about than Carter, and independent spouses who bonded as well. “The four of us learned to love each other,” Carter said.

Carter and Ford spoke regularly, teamed up as co-leaders on dozens of projects and decided together which events they’d attend and skip in tandem.

“When we were traveling somewhere in an automobile or airplane, we hated to reach our destination, because we enjoyed the private times that we had together,” Carter said.

That’s what he told mourners in January 2007, at a service for Ford the month after he died at age 93.

The Democrat and the Republican he so cherished had made a pact, one hard to imagine in this time of partisan poison: Whoever died first would be eulogized by the other.

FILE - Former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter share a light moment as they take a break from their Symposium on New Weapons Technologies and Soviet-American Relations at the University of Michigan to talk with reporters on Nov. 14, 1984, in Ann Arbor, Mich. (AP Photo/Rob Kozloff, File)

FILE - Former presidents Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, and former first lady Rosalynn Carter stand atop the ramp to an Air Force jet on Oct. 8, 1981, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., just before their departure to attend the funeral in Cairo for slain Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. (AP Photo/John Duricka, File)

FILE - Former President George W. Bush, left, sits with President Barack Obama, right, and first lady Michelle Obama, center, at the dedication ceremony for the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington on Sept. 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

FILE - U.S. President Bill Clinton, flanked by former Presidents George Bush, left, and Jimmy Carter, walks through the Colonnades of the White House, Washington, on Sept. 13, 1993. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

FILE - This photo provided by the North Korean government shows former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, left, and then North Korean President Kim Il Sung looking at the West Sea Barrage in Nampo, North Korea, on June 17, 1994. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP, File)

FILE - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, right, shakes hands with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega during elections in Managua, Feb. 24, 1990. In background in between Carter and Ortega is former first lady Rosalyn Carter. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - President George Bush, former President Ronald Reagan, former President Jimmy Carter, former President Gerald Ford and former President Richard Nixon attend the dedication ceremony for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif, on Nov. 5, 1991. (AP Photo/Marcy Nighswander, File)

FILE - From left, President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, former President Barack Obama, former first lady Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter participate in the State Funeral for former President George H.W. Bush at the National Cathedral on Dec. 5, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool, File)

FILE - Former President Jimmy Carter, left, speaks during a Rose Garden ceremony to unveil the report by the National Commission on Federal Election, July 31, 2001, at the White House in Washington as President Bush looks on at right. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds, File)

FILE - President Jimmy Carter is seen with former President Gerald Ford aboard Air Force 1 between Cairo and Spain on Oct. 10, 1981. (AP Photo/Dirck Halstead, File)

FILE — From left, former President George H.W. Bush, President-elect Barack Obama, President George W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton and former President Jimmy Carter meet in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, on Jan. 7, 2009. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a Minneapolis motorist on Wednesday during the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown in a major U.S. city — a shooting that federal officials claimed was an act of self-defense but that the city’s mayor described as “reckless” and unnecessary.

Videos taken by bystanders with different vantage points and posted to social media show an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The SUV begins to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots into the SUV at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him. It was not clear from the videos if the vehicle made contact with the officer. The SUV then sped into two cars parked on a curb nearby before crashing to a stop.

The shooting marks a dramatic escalation of a series of immigration enforcement operations in major U.S. cities under the Trump administration. The killing was at least the fifth linked to immigration crackdowns in a handful of states since 2024.

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As the sun set over Minneapolis, the crowd stood at the intersection where the motorist was killed just before a vigil was set to start.

Most were quiet. Some held profanity-laced signs against ICE, waving Mexican flags or sporting keffiyeh scarves.

A few blocks north, cars and improvised barricades blocked the main avenue.

Lynette Reini-Grandell, 65, had already heard that ICE agents were in her neighborhood when she saw the chaotic scene, one car askew in a lane and ICE vehicles backed up behind it.

She said she tried to figure out what was going on when several gunshots rang out and the car that was askew crashed to a stop.

“She was driving away and they killed her,” said Reini-Grandell of the motorist.

Reini-Grandell said she started recording ICE officers approach the woman’s vehicle and kept a close watch as law enforcement told bystanders to stand back.

“I didn’t want to get shot or chemical sprayed,” she said. “I was much calmer when it was happening than I am now.”

In a statement, the city of Minneapolis says police officers “responded to the reports of shots fired and found a woman with life-threatening gunshot wounds to the head.

“Minneapolis firefighters then removed the 37-year-old victim from the vehicle and immediately began lifesaving measures until paramedics could respond. She was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center, where she later died.”

That’s according to Commissioner Bob Jacobson of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.

“Keep in mind that this is an investigation that is also in its infancy. So any speculation about what has happened would be just that,” Jacobson told reporters.

The shooting happened in the district of Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who called it “state violence,” not law enforcement.

The Department of Justice says in its Justice Manual that firearms should not be used simply to disable a moving vehicle.

The policy allows deadly force only in limited circumstances, such as when someone in the vehicle is threatening another person with deadly force, or when the vehicle itself is being used in a way that poses an imminent risk and no reasonable alternative exists, including moving out of the vehicle’s path.

Police training experts have told The Associated Press that officers are generally taught not to step in front of moving vehicles to try to block them.

Training also emphasizes weighing the totality of the situation, including whether the person involved poses an immediate danger and whether the underlying allegation involves violence.

Many department policies specifically bar firing at vehicles just to stop a fleeing suspect.

Some policing experts say the rules need flexibility, pointing to cases in which people have used vehicles as weapons, including attacks in recent years where cars were driven into crowds.

The debate has been sharpened by high-profile cases, including a 2023 shooting in Ohio in which an officer fired through a windshield in a grocery store parking lot while investigating a shoplifting allegation, killing the pregnant motorist. The officer was later charged and acquitted.

For decades, police departments across the U.S. have limited when officers are allowed to fire at moving vehicles, citing the danger to bystanders and the risk that a driver who is shot will lose control.

The New York Police Department was among the first major agencies to adopt those limits. The department barred officers from firing at or from moving vehicles after a 1972 shooting killed a 10-year-old passenger in a stolen car and sparked protests.

Researchers in the late 1970s and early 1980s later found that the policy, along with other use-of-force restrictions, helped reduce bystanders being struck by police gunfire and led to fewer deaths in police shootings.

Over the years, many law enforcement agencies followed New York’s lead. Policing organizations such as the Police Executive Research Forum and the International Association of Chiefs of Police have recommended similar limits, warning that shooting at vehicles creates serious risks from stray gunfire or from a vehicle crashing if the driver is hit.

Chief Brian O’Hara briefly described the shooting to reporters. Unlike federal officials, O’Hara didn’t say the driver was trying to harm anyone. He said she had been shot in the head.

“This woman was in her vehicle and was blocking the roadway on Portland Avenue. ... At some point a federal law enforcement officer approached her on foot and the vehicle began to drive off,” the chief said.

“At least two shots were fired. The vehicle then crashed on the side of the roadway.”

The governor said he’s prepared to deploy the National Guard if necessary. He also said that like many, he is outraged about the killing, which he described as “predictable” and “avoidable.” But he called for calm.

“They want a show. We can’t give it to them. We cannot,” the governor said during a news conference.

“If you protest and express your First Amendment rights, please do so peacefully, as you always do. We can’t give them what they want.”

The president, in a social media post, said he’d viewed video footage of the incident and criticized the woman who was shot as acting “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting” and “then violently, willfully, and viciously” running over the ICE officer.

The president also described another woman seen screaming in the footage of the incident he viewed as “obviously, a professional agitator.”

“Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital,” Trump said of the ICE officer.

“The situation is being studied, in its entirety, but the reason these incidents are happening is because the Radical Left is threatening, assaulting, and targeting our Law Enforcement Officers and ICE Agents on a daily basis. They are just trying to do the job of MAKING AMERICA SAFE.”

An immigrant rights group says on Facebook that it will hold a vigil for the woman who was shot.

“We witnessed an atrocious attack on our community today,” read the post from the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee. “Community members were taken from us and an observer was shot dead. ICE OUT OF MINNESOTA NOW.”

Minnesota initially grabbed President Donald Trump’s and Republicans’ attention over a series of fraud cases where many of the defendants had roots in Somalia. Prosecutors say that billions of dollars were stolen from federally funded health care benefits and a COVID-19 program in recent years.

Minnesota has the largest Somali population in the U.S., a group Trump called “garbage” in December and said he didn’t want them in the country.

The president has also criticized Democratic Gov. Walz for failing to catch the alleged crimes.

Late last month, a right-wing influencer posted a video claiming that day care centers in Minneapolis run by Somali residents had taken over $100 million in fraud. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel then posted on social media about increased operations in the city partly targeting, as Patel put it, “large-scale fraud schemes.”

On Tuesday, DHS said it planned to deploy 2,000 federal agents and officers to the Minneapolis area.

In October, a Chicago woman was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent in a similar incident involving a vehicle, though she survived.

Almost immediately, Homeland Security officials issued a statement labeling Marimar Martinez, a 30-year-old teaching assistant at a Montessori school, as a “domestic terrorist” who had “ambushed” and “rammed” agents with her vehicle.

She was charged in federal court with assaulting a federal officer, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. But federal prosecutors were later forced to dismiss the case against Martinez before trial after security camera video and bodycam footage emerged that her defense lawyers said undermined the official narrative.

The videos showed a Border Patrol agent steering his vehicle into Martinez’s truck, rather than the other way around, her attorney said.

“I’ve seen the video. Don’t believe this propaganda machine,” Walz wrote on X, responding to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s post alleging that a woman had “weaponized her vehicle” before she was shot and killed by an ICE officer.

The state will ensure there is a full, fair, and expeditious investigation to ensure accountability and justice,” wrote the governor.

Daniel Borgertpoepping, a spokesperson for the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, says that “We have jurisdiction to bring charges, as do the feds.

“It’s a little bit of a complicated interplay but the bottom line is yes, we have jurisdiction to bring criminal charges.”

Secretary Kristi Noem, during a visit to Texas, says it was carried out against ICE officers by a woman who “attempted to run them over and rammed them with her vehicle. An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively, shot, to protect himself and the people around him.”

But Mayor Frey blasted that characterization as well as the federal deployment in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

“They are not here to cause safety in this city. What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust,” Frey said.

The location is just a few blocks from some of the oldest immigrant markets in the area and a mile from where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020.

During a news conference in Texas on Wednesday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed that the agency had deployed more than 2,000 officers to the Twin Cities and already made “hundreds and hundreds” of arrests.

The mayor says in a social media post that immigration agents are “causing chaos in our city.”

“We are demanding ICE leave the city and state immediately. We stand rock solid with our immigrant and refugee communities,” Frey said.

The crowd vented its anger at the local and federal officers who were there, including Gregory Bovino, a senior U.S. Customs and Border Patrol official who has been the face of crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere.

In a scene that harkened back to the Los Angeles and Chicago immigration crackdowns, bystanders heckled the officers and blew whistles that have become ubiquitous during the operations.

“Shame! Shame! Shame!” and “ICE out of Minnesota!” they loudly chanted from behind the police tape.

That’s according to a statement from department spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin.

The shooting marks a dramatic escalation of the latest in a series of immigration enforcement operations in major American cities under the Trump administration. It’s at least the fifth person killed in a handful of states since 2024.

The twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have been on edge since DHS announced Tuesday that it had launched the operation, with more than 2,000 agents and officers expected to participate in the crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said Wednesday that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot and killed a motorist acted recklessly. Fry rejected federal officials’ claims that the officer had acted in self-defense.

During a news conference hours after the ICE officer shot the woman, an angry Frey blasted the federal immigration crackdown on the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

“They are not here to cause safety in this city. What they are doing is not to provide safety in America. What they are doing is causing chaos and distrust,” Frey said. “They’re ripping families apart. They’re sowing chaos on our streets and in this case quite literally killing people.”

“They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense," the mayor said.

Law enforcement agents stand on the scene of a shooting in Minneapolis, on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026. (Alex Kormann/Star Tribune via AP)

A bullet hole is seen in the windshield as law enforcement officers work the scene of a shooting involving federal law enforcement agents, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)

A bullet hole and blood stains are seen in a crashed vehicle on at the scene of a shooting in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026. (Ben Hovland/Minnesota Public Radio via AP)