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Opinion: Sure, people made fun of Jimmy Carter. I was lucky to have Jimmy Carter make fun of me

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Opinion: Sure, people made fun of Jimmy Carter. I was lucky to have Jimmy Carter make fun of me

Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday, is the first presidential candidate I remember publicly expressing an opinion of. As it turned out, Carter would also be the first (and only) president to publicly express an opinion of me.

During Carter’s presidency he was criticized and lampooned, but during his life he was more often hailed for his public service and broad, renaissance mind. Personally, I will always think of him as a man with a dry wit and a sharp tongue. If you’ve ever wondered why Carter was always smiling, it may be because he was a pretty funny guy.

My first interaction with the former president was in the spring of 1987. I was the editor-in-chief of the Emory Spoke, the student-run humor magazine at Emory University in Georgia. We published three issues annually, generally blowing our budget on the one published fall semester, a full-color parody of a “real” magazine — “Playspoke” one year, “Spokelights for Children” another.

Shortly before my tenure, a copy of a previous editorial team’s “Peeple Spokely” made its way to Time-Life’s corporate counsel. They quickly forbade us from ever again encroaching on one of their titles. It felt as if hellfire, damnation and personal legal ruin would rain down on any student foolish enough to violate their orders.

My choice was clear. That fall’s issue would parody Time magazine.

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“How will we avoid hellfire and damnation?” our managing editor asked.

It came to me in a flash. “We’ll put Carter on the cover. ‘Man of the Year’! If they come for us, the publicity will kill ’em.”

Because Emory was home to the Carter Center and his presidential library, I leaned hard on every connection I could to make an interview happen. Months after our entreaties began, I was called into the office of the dean who had appeared on the cover of “Rolling Spoke” with a parking cone on his head. The reverence of our irreverence had paid off — we would be granted 30 minutes with Carter, and nothing was off limits.

I’ll chalk it up to nerve and not any innate Republican tendencies, but about a month later, on the day of the interview, when Carter walked in the room, I tossed him a T-shirt featuring the Spoke’s logo and told him to put it on for the cover photo. He gamely complied.

The interview was sublime — Carter talked about Domino’s deliveries to the White House, Willie Nelson playing on the South Lawn, installing a hi-fi in the Oval Office so he could listen to his friends the Allman Brothers. He shared his biggest presidential regret — not sending a second helicopter on the failed hostage rescue in Iran.

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We asked what he wanted to say about President Reagan behind his back: “That he is incapable of telling the truth.” When we asked what he’d say to Reagan’s face, he replied, “The same thing.” That got picked up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

When lobbying for the interview, we’d been clear about our satirical bent and forwarded past Spoke issues. During the discussion we restated our provenance as a humor magazine. “I haven’t heard anything funny, yet,” Carter deadpanned. We asked about his patience with journalists, if he ever wanted to haul off and hit a reporter. “Yes,” he said, “and this is one of those times.”

After the issue was published, Carter sent me a letter that included the line, “I’m glad my humorous responses more than made up for the lack of that quality in your questions.”

Sometimes I still impress myself, remembering that I once traded barbs with a former president. Other days, I’m overwhelmed by the thought that a future Nobel Prize winner called me out on the one thing I thought I was good at.

Our paths crossed a few more times, and each time, Carter’s humor was what stood out. At a formal dinner, he dared me to eat the dessert’s floral garnish. Before I could move, he popped it into his mouth.

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He could have planned that joke to use on anyone who was at the table. But I like to think it was personal, and others who met Carter more than once have told me they also felt a stupefied humility that the onetime leader of the free world remembered them by name.

A few years later, I was working on my MBA, again at Emory and Carter visited as a distinguished lecturer.

He marched to the lectern and scanned our power-suited crowd. Then he turned to his assistant and said, “You didn’t tell me Binney would be here.”

He looked at me, eyebrows raised, and said, politely, “Try to keep up.”

My classmates were bewildered. Some in shock, some in awe. How had I pissed off a president?

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I hadn’t, of course. It was just a perfect opportunity for a man with a sly sense of humor, a good memory and a microphone. A man who made meaningful connections with the people he met, whether on the world stage or a college campus.

Robert J. Binney is a screenwriter in Seattle.

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Trump stirs GOP primary drama with visit to Massie’s Kentucky home turf

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Trump stirs GOP primary drama with visit to Massie’s Kentucky home turf

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President Donald Trump is taking his feud with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to the libertarian lawmaker’s home turf on Wednesday.

Trump is expected to hold an event in Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday, the Republican Party of Kentucky announced on social media Monday. It’s located in the northern part of the state’s 4th Congressional District, which Massie represents.

Massie’s primary rival, Ed Gallrein, will attend the Hebron event, his campaign confirmed to Fox News Digital on Tuesday, while deferring all other questions on the matter to the White House.

Massie himself will miss the event due to a previously scheduled official engagement, his spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

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KHANNA AND MASSIE THREATEN TO FORCE A VOTE ON IRAN AS PROSPECT OF US ATTACK LOOMS

President Donald Trump will be visiting Rep. Thomas Massie’s congressional district on Wednesday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)

When asked about the visit, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told Fox News Digital, “President Trump will visit the great states of Ohio and Kentucky on Wednesday to tout his economic victories and detail his Administration’s aggressive, ongoing efforts to lower prices and make America more affordable.”

The president has thrown his considerable influence behind Gallrein to unseat Massie after the GOP lawmaker publicly defied Trump on multiple occasions.

MASSIE, KHANNA TO VISIT DOJ TO REVIEW UNREDACTED EPSTEIN FILES

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Massie most recently was one of two House Republicans to vote to stop Trump’s joint operation in Iran with Israel, though the legislation was successfully blocked by the majority of GOP lawmakers and a handful of Democrats.

Ed Gallrein, left, seen with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House. (Ed Gallrein congressional campaign)

He was also one of two Republicans to vote against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” last year.

Trump in turn has hurled a slew of personal attacks against Massie, including calling him “weak and pathetic” in a statement endorsing Gallrein in October.

“He only votes against the Republican Party, making life very easy for the Radical Left. Unlike ‘lightweight’ Massie, a totally ineffective LOSER who has failed us so badly, CAPTAIN ED GALLREIN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN,” Trump posted on Truth Social at the time, one of numerous criticisms targeting the Kentucky Republican through the years.

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He called Massie the “worst Republican congressman” in July amid Massie’s bipartisan push to force the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein.

Then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

But Massie has so far appeared to defy political gravity despite making political enemies out of both Trump and House GOP leaders.

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He handily defeated multiple primary challengers in 2024 and 2022, despite public feuds with Trump, and has served his district since 2012.

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Gallrein is a retired Navy SEAL and farmer who launched his campaign days after Trump made his endorsement. Their primary election day is May 19.

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California Democrats launch pricey polling effort to winnow crowded gubernatorial field

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California Democrats launch pricey polling effort to winnow crowded gubernatorial field

As anxiety mounts among California Democrats about the potential of a Republican being elected governor, the state party will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on polling to assess the viability of the sprawling field of candidates hoping to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to plans released Tuesday.

The move comes after nearly every Democratic candidate refused party leaders’ call last week to withdraw from the race to avoid splitting the vote in the June primary — an outcome that could lead to a Republican being elected to statewide office for the first time in two decades.

“Candidates have filed, and now they’ve got the opportunity to showcase their viability, their path to win. I want to simply ensure that everybody has information to fully understand the current state of the race,” said Rusty Hicks, the leader of the California Democratic Party.

As campaign season ramps up, the series of six polls will allow “candidates, supporters, the media, voters, anyone and everyone to have a clear understanding of what is or is not happening in this particular race,” he said.

The filing deadline to appear on the June 2 ballot was Friday. Three days earlier, Hicks released an open letter urging candidates who did not have a path to victory to withdraw from the race. Of the nine prominent Democrats who had announced runs for governor, only one heeded his call: former state Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon.

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That means the eight other candidates’ names will appear on the ballot, regardless of whether they decide to later drop out. And that creates the possibility of a Republican winning the race because of how California elections are decided.

The state has a voter-approved top-two primary system, under which the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party.

Two prominent Republicans will appear on the ballot: former conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Even though Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1, and the state’s electorate last elevated Republicans to statewide office in 2006, it is mathematically possible for Democrats to splinter the vote, allowing the two GOP candidates to advance.

Under such a scenario, not only would Republicans be guaranteed the leadership of the nation’s most-populous state, but Democratic voter turnout also would probably be depressed in November, potentially affecting down-ballot races such as those that could determine control of Congress.

Hicks’ call last week prompted concerns among candidates of color, including former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, that the effort was aimed at every nonwhite candidate in the race.

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The state party chairman responded that his letter was not aimed at any specific candidate.

“It’s not something I lose sleep over,” Hicks said when asked about the racial claims. But he added that the voter surveys will be conducted by Los Angeles-based Evitarus, the state’s only Black- and Latino-led full-service polling firm, and will oversample historically underrepresented communities: Latino, Black and Asian American voters.

Hicks said the polling will cost “multiple six figures” but did not specify the exact amount.

The first poll will be released on March 24, and then five additional surveys will come out every seven to 10 days until voters start receiving mail ballots in early May.

“We’re putting this forward to ensure everyone is armed with the information they need to clearly have an eyes-wide-open assessment of where the state of the race currently is between now and when ballots land in the mailboxes of voters,” Hicks said.

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Trump reveals top issues GOP should focus on to secure midterms victory: ‘I’ve never been more confident’

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Trump reveals top issues GOP should focus on to secure midterms victory: ‘I’ve never been more confident’

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President Donald Trump outlined five key items he believes will tip the upcoming midterm elections in the GOP’s favor — if Republicans can muscle them through Congress.

“No transgender mutilation surgery for our children,” Trump told an audience at the Republican Members’ Issues Conference. “Voter ID, citizenship [verification], mail-in ballots, we don’t want men playing in women’s sports.”

It’s the best of Trump. Those are the best of Trump. This is the number one priority, it should be, for the House,” Trump said.

Trump’s exhortations to Republican lawmakers come as the GOP wages an uphill campaign to hang on to a controlling majority in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. He framed his legislative priorities as a way for Republicans to capitalize on popular demands within the GOP base that would increase their chances of preserving a Republican governing trifecta.

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President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One before departing Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 1, 2026. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)

HOUSE REPUBLICANS PUSH ELECTION OVERHAUL WITH VOTER ID, MAIL-IN BALLOT CHANGES AHEAD OF MIDTERMS

Currently, Republicans hold just four more seats than Democrats in the House of Representatives.

The GOP holds six more than Democrats in the Senate.

To keep the numbers in their favor, Republicans will need to beat historical trends. In the vast majority of past cases, parties that capture the White House in presidential elections face blowback in the midterms. Notably, the last time a majority party gained seats in both chambers of Congress in the midterms came under the Bush administration in 2002, following devastating attacks on the World Trade Center.

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House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, left, and President Donald Trump shake hands during an Invest America roundtable in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, District of Columbia, on June 9, 2025. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

REPUBLICANS, TRUMP RUN INTO SENATE ROADBLOCK ON VOTER ID BILL

Trump said he believes Republicans have a shot at bucking the trend come November if they focus on his list.

“It’ll guarantee the midterms,” Trump said of his legislative priorities.

Republicans have already taken strikes towards two of them through the SAVE America Act, a piece of legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and cast a ballot. That bill cleared the House last month for a second time in the 119th Congress.

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Its future is uncertain in the Senate, where Republicans would need the assistance of seven Democrats to overcome the 60-vote threshold to defeat a filibuster. Democrats, for their part, believe the legislation would disenfranchise voters who cannot readily provide documented proof of citizenship through a passport, REAL ID, or birth certificate. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. has promised a vote on the package despite its long odds. 

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, talks with a guest during a “Only Citizens Vote Bus Tour” rally in Upper Senate Park to urge Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

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Several members have introduced bills on transgender issues, although none of them have cleared either chamber.

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I’ve never been more confident that if we keep these promises and deliver on this popular agenda, the American people will stand with us in overwhelming numbers, just as they did in 2024,” Trump said.

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