Did former President Jimmy Carter die on July 23, 2024? No, that's not true: The owner of the account that posted a fake letter about Carter passing away told Lead Stories he carried out the hoax to show how sensationalist news spreads. The Carter Center, a human rights organization founded by the 39th president, also denied that Carter had died, saying of the post: "This is false."
A version of the claim that Carter had died appeared in a post (archived here) on X, formerly known as Twitter, on July 23, 2024. It opened:
🚨BREAKING: Former President Jimmy Carter Passes Away at 99 Years Old.
So in 2 weeks we've had an ex-President almost die.
A sitting President reportedly die.
And an ex-President who actually died.
Here is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Jul 23 22:01:16 UTC)
That post followed a letter claiming Carter had died posted on X by another user, the account @Bocc_accio on July 23, 2024, as this archived version shows. It had text that was revealed when the "ALT" that appeared in a bubble on the screen was clicked:
President Carter is still alive and in hospice care. This was an experiment to see how gullible people are to sensationalist headlines.
The owner of the account that posted the letter responded to a comment request from Lead Stories in direct messages on X on July 23, 2024. They said they wrote the letter on July 22, 2024, and posted it the following day:
What prompted me to create it was the amount of misinformation which spread throughout the weekend, particularly the rumor peddling done by the likes of Laura Loomer, surrounding the state of President Biden's health was maddening.
I wanted to prove that many people on X often spread sensationalist news and headlines without actually fact checking or double checking the source content.
I have no ill will towards President Carter and his family, and I admire him greatly for his service to our nation and efforts to promote democracy around the world. But any healthy democracy is dependent on the health of its press, and I believe my post proved that America's press is not in a very healthy state right now.
The Carter Center released a statement to Reuters, with a spokesperson saying, "This is false. There has been no announcement or change."
The letter had tell-tale signs that it was not a legitimate message from Carter's office. The "list of accomplishments" was very negative:
During his administration, President Carter, championed human rights around the world, achieved significant foreign policy accomplishments including: selling the United States out to Panama; the Camp David Accords; a now-failing treaty of peace between Egypt and Israel; getting soft on the Soviet Union; failing to secure several hostages from Iran; and the establishment of U.S. diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China.
And the quote from the former president upon his wife's passing in November 2023 was obviously not what was said at the time, This phrase does not appear in the statement released by the Carter Center website (archived here):
At her passing last November, President Carter said, 'Rosalynn was a baddie. Jill, Melania, even throat goat Nancy Reagan had nothing on Rosalynn. She was the original Brat.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning Jimmy Carter can be found here.
