Parallels drawn between Trump and the events that destroyed Jimmy Carter's presidency

U.S. President Donald Trump at Miami International Airport in Florida, U.S., April 11, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The Democratic Party suffered a painful humiliation when, in the United States' 1980 election, incumbent President Jimmy Carter was voted out of office and defeated by former California Gov. Ronald Reagan — who won the popular vote by roughly 9.5 percent and picked up 489 electoral votes compared to only 49 for Carter. The economy and the Iranian Hostage Crisis were crucial factors in Carter's defeat, and U.S. voters were frustrated by a painful combination of high prices and a tough job market.

Forty-six years later, in 2026, Iran is still in the headlines. The United States is at war with Iran, although U.S. President Donald Trump and the regime in Tehran agreed to a two-week ceasefire.

Alan Elrod, president of the Pulaski Institution — an Arkansas-based political think tank — is drawing parallels between Trump and the MAGA movement in 2026 and the Carter Administration in 1980.

Elrod discussed the Iran war and its implications for Trump during an appearance on The New Republic's podcast, "The Daily Blast," posted on April 13.

Host Greg Sargent, referencing an article Elrod recently wrote for Liberal Currents, told Elrod, "You likened the national drift at this moment to the atmosphere surrounding Jimmy Carter's malaise speech in the '70s. In particular, you pointed out that we're in the middle of an energy crisis — this time created needlessly by Donald Trump, and also Iran, of course — as front and central as it was then. And we're all reeling, as you put it, from Trump's threat of Iranian genocide. The mere fact that the American president threatened civilizational erasure and genocide, threatened to kill tens of millions of people, is itself a crisis, is it not?"

Elrod responded, "Absolutely. I mean, we can't take it back. The elected leader of this country, who speaks for us — he's our president, speaks for us to the world — said he was going to wipe a civilization off the map. That's the kind of thing our allies aren’t going to be able to forget. And it's the kind of thing that we won't be able to forget. American presidents, for all the wars we've waged, even the ones that many Americans see as having been unjust, you did not have American presidents going out and publicly saying: We're doing this so that we could just destroy as many of these people as possible."

The United States, Elrod lamented, is being run by a "malignant narcissist" who is handling the Iran war in a reckless way.

"Iran's leverage in the Strait (of Hormuz) isn't short-term," Elrod told Sargent. "Geographically, they're there forever. I mean, they have it as long as they can apply military force. And it's clear that we haven't been able to take that capability away. Again, I guess if he wants to use just massive destruction, if he wants to nuke Iran, he can do that…. He clearly is a psychopath and a narcissist, and I don't put it past him to unleash millions of deaths on Iran…. He doesn't have any understanding of the limits of raw military force and neither does his secretary of defense, (Pete Hegseth)."

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