Ed Koch Said He Despised Jimmy Carter More Than Any Other Living Person

One of former New York City Mayor Ed Koch's last interviews before his death on Friday came in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire.

The most interesting part of the Q&A came when he was asked who was what living person he "most despise[s]." Koch made a lot of enemies in his life — several mayors, upstate suburbanites and two generations worth of Cuomos among them — but his answer was very surprising:

Which living person do you most despise?
Former president Jimmy Carter.

In a 2008 op-ed in Real Clear Politics, Koch detailed that he refused to campaign with Carter in 1980 because he felt he was hostile toward Israel.

He wrote:

I was popular with the Jewish community and when I would not campaign for him unless he changed his position, he called me to his hotel in New York when attending a fundraiser and said, "You have done me more damage than any man in America." I felt proud then, and even more today, since we now know what a miserable president he was then and the miserable human being he is now as he prepares to meet with Hamas.

Read the full questionnaire at Vanity Fair >

Another legendary interview Ed Koch gave to Playboy >