President Barack Obama does not call the oldest surviving former president for advice.
That’s according to former president Jimmy Carter, who told NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell in an advance clip of Sunday’s “Meet the Press” that he and the current president have a fractured relationship over Middle East policy.
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“That’s a hard question for me to answer, you know, with complete candor,” Carter said in response to Mitchell’s question about why Carter‘s other successors — Clinton, both Bushes, and even Reagan — called upon him, but not Obama.
“I think the problem was that — in dealing with the issue of peace in between Israel and Egypt — the Carter Center has taken a very strong and public position of equal treatment between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And I think this was a sensitive area in which the president didn’t want to be involved,” he added.
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Carter famously brokered the 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. He said that Obama’s policy toward the area, which he delivered in his 2009 Cairo Speech, may be at odds with Carter‘s approach.
“But I can understand those sensitivities. And I don’t have any criticism of him,” Carter said.
The full interview with former president Carter airs on “Meet the Press” Sun., March 23.
Watch the clip below: