Jimmy Carter admits he voted for Bernie Sanders

Former US President Jimmy Carter has revealed he voted for insurgent candidate Bernie Sanders over party choice Hillary Clinton in during the Democratic primaries.

The former Democrat politician, who served one term as president between 1977 and 1981, said he backed the populist senator from Vermont who nearly won the party’s nomination despite coming from the far-left and only joining the Democrats 18 months earlier.

In a joint New York Times interview with his wife Rosalynn, he explained how he had always been set apart from other former Democrat presidents – saying he had the best relationship with Republican George HW Bush and that he is willing to work with Donald Trump on North Korea.

Mr Carter said he would like to form a productive partnership with Mr Trump over North Korea as he is nervous about “unpredictable” Kim Jong-un and “afraid” of the consequences of a tit-for-tat war of words between Mr Trump and Pyongyang.

He said: “I’m afraid, too, of a situation,” he said. “I don’t know what they’ll do. Because they want to save their regime. And we greatly overestimate China’s influence on North Korea. Particularly to Kim Jong-un. He’s never, so far as I know, been to China.

“And they have no relationship. Kim Jong-il did go to China and was very close to them.”

In 1994, Mr Carter flew to Pyongyang to negotiate a deal with the country over its nuclear weapons programme with then-leader and regime founder Kim Il-sung against then-President Bill Clinton’s wishes.

At the time he was pictured hugging Kim, who died later that year, and called the trip “a good omen” but the country flouted the terms of the deal less than four years later.

But now he warns that the stakes even higher.

He said: “I think he’s now got advanced nuclear weaponry that can destroy the Korean Peninsula and Japan, and some of our outlying territories in the Pacific, maybe even our mainland”.

Mr Carter said that if Mr Trump called on him to go to the country negotiate a new deal he would do so.

The 93-year-old, who recovered from brain cancer less than two years ago, declined to criticise Mr Trump too severely despite the former reality star previously describing him as one of the worst presidents in history.

When asked whether Mr Trump was souring the country’s international reputation, he said he “might be escalating it” but thinks the problem precedes the president as it is part of the US’s wider decline in influence on the world’s stage.

“The United States has been the dominant character in the whole world and now we’re not anymore. And we’re not going to be. Russia’s coming back and India and China are coming forward”, he explained.

Instead the Democrat, who became the only US President in history to win a Nobel Peace Prize for his work out of office in 2002, reserves much of his criticise for Barack Obama.

He said every member of his family voted for Mr Obama in 2008 but criticised his record on foreign affairs.

Mr Carter said Mr Obama “refused” to talk about North Korea more and criticised his decision to join in with the bombing of Yemen.

He also revealed he and his wife disagree on the role Russia played in the election.

Ms Carter said the Kremlin “obviously” interfered with the election due to the “drip, drip, drip” of negative stories about Ms Clinton whereas Mr Carter said there is “no evidence” that what the Russians did had any effect on how people voted.

He also dismissed concerns about the Trump White House’s seemingly close relationship with Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, saying his non-profit organisation – the Carter Center – frequently dealt with Moscow on Syria.