Rumors spread quickly Tuesday that former President Jimmy Carter had died after a letter attributed to the “Office of Jimmy Carter” claimed that Carter had passed away at his home in Georgia.
As of midday on Tuesday, “Jimmy Carter” was trending on X with more than 23,000 posts, and the announcement letter had been shared by several prominent social media accounts including Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and right-wing political activist Laura Loomer. Both Lee and Loomer have since deleted their posts.
The claim is false: Carter has been in end-of-life hospice care for more than a year, but the former president is still alive. “This letter is false. There has been no announcement or change,” a spokesperson for the Carter Center told The Dispatch Fact Check in an email.
The fake announcement letter originated from X user Boccaccio, who posted it alongside an image of Carter early Tuesday morning. “🚨BREAKING🚨 — Former President Jimmy Carter has passed away. He was 99 years old,” the post reads.
The text of the letter gives a clue that it’s fake by including a purported quote from Carter about his late wife Rosalynn, in which he describes her as a “baddie” and the “original Brat” and uses an explicit nickname for former first lady Nancy Reagan.
Boccaccio later added an “image description” to the post, visible to those who clicked on a gray “alt” button overlaying the image, explaining that Carter is still alive and the letter was “an experiment to see how gullible people are to sensationalist headlines.” The post had more than 1.3 million views as of midday on Tuesday.
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