Of All the People to Come to President Trump’s Defense…

The left has gone so far off the deep end in their demonization of Donald Trump that some dedicated, lifetime liberals are finally being forced to come to his defense. You won’t find many U.S. presidents in history further to the left than Jimmy Carter, but even he has noticed that the media has gone way overboard in their coverage of this White House.

In an interview with The New York Times, Carter – who was subject to plenty of criticism in his day as well – said that reporters should take a more balanced view of the Trump administration.

“I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I’ve known about,” Carter told the Times. “I think they feel free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else without hesitation.”

Not only that, but the former president said he was with Trump when it came to the issue of NFL players kneeling for the national anthem.

“I think they ought to find a different way to object, to demonstrate,” he said. “I would rather see all the players stand during the American anthem.”

Perhaps Carter’s most surprising stance was, however, about the influence of Russian meddling during the election. Carter said that the media was making a bigger deal out of the hacks than was necessary and he noted his approval of Trump’s efforts to smooth out relations with Vladimir Putin.

“At the Carter Center, we deal with Putin and the Russians quite frequently concerning Syria,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any evidence that what the Russians did changed enough votes…or any votes.”

The media, liberal pundits, and today’s Democrats ought to pay close attention to what Carter is saying in this interview, because you can bet that he represents the thinking of many left-leaning voters. It’s one thing to disapprove of Trump’s policies or even his personality. It’s another to accuse him of being a dictator-in-training or a puppet of the Moscow regime. It’s another to say he helped thwart American democracy by working with the Kremlin to cheat his way into the White House. It’s another to spend all day, every day accusing him of being a closet white supremacist who wants to be the 21^st century’s answer to Hitler. This is what we’ve heard from the liberal media for the last two and a half years. Voters – even those who have no love for Trump – are getting sick and tired of it.