Jimmy Carter, just two months shy of his 100th birthday, is “only trying to make it” past the milestone to cast his ballot for Kamala Harris in November’s presidential election, his grandson said Saturday.
The former Democratic president will ring in 100 on Oct. 1, and a star-studded concert has been planned in his honor, the Carter Center announced on Thursday. The event will take place on Sept. 17 in Atlanta, where artists such as Maren Morris, Eric Church and The War and Treaty will perform tributes “celebrating President Carter’s legacy of service to humanity.”
But the concert isn’t the main event on Carter’s mind, his grandson Jason told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this weekend. Defeating Donald Trump however is.
“I think he’s a disaster … In human rights and in treating people equal,” Carter said of Trump back in 2018.
Despite no longer being awake every day, as Jason said in June, Carter seems to have been revitalized by Vice President Harris officially challenging Trump.
The 39th Commander in Chief, who was moved into hospice care in Georgia in early 2023, has been “more alert and interested in politics” in the days since Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee after President Biden ended his bid for reelection last month.
Though Election Day isn’t until Nov. 5, Carter won’t have to wait that long to cast his vote for Harris. Georgia’s early voting period begins Oct. 15, two weeks after the Nobel Peace Prize winner is set to become a centenarian. Absentee ballots are sent out up to 29 days before the election.
Back in February, a year into Carter’s hospice care, Jason assured “CBS Sunday Morning” that regardless of his grandfather’s physical condition, his “spirit is as strong as ever,” even after the death of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter last November. She was 96.
Carter, who made history by nominating the first Black woman to the U.S. Cabinet, has now lived enough to see Harris make history of her own as the first female VP in American history and, as of Friday, the first woman of color to secure the Democratic nomination for the White House.
