Republican Rep. Matt Soper of Delta is in hot water over a Sunday tweet in which he celebrated the death of former President Jimmy Carter, complete with a bottle of Champaign.

Soper has since deleted the tweet, but not before he was at the receiving end of a mountain of criticism for calling Carter a despot and saying that the 39th president “destroyed the country” in such a way that four generations later, the nation is still suffering. Soper never tweeted an apology for his insult to Carter, who died Sunday after a lifetime of service, particularly to the poor through his work with Habitat for Humanity.

The 39th President was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Soper was born in 1984, four years after Carter lost a re-election bid to Ronald Reagan.

The tweet immediately went viral on social media. One person commented,  “Jimmy Carter represents the best of us…Matt Soper reflects the worst of us.”

Colorado Pols tweeted that “If even Donald Trump can avoid thanking God that Jimmy Carter is dead, there perhaps are still some minimum standards. And once again, Rep. Matt Soper fell beneath them.” 

Soper told 9News he apologized but that apology never made it to X and that did not go unnoticed.

The former editor of the Arizona Daily Star tweeted “Republican Rep. Matt Soper of Colorado’s House of Representatives, District 54, did not have the courage to appear on 9News. Soper’s tweet was detestable and defamatory about the deceased President Jimmy Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner. His apology to a newscaster is not enough!”

Inexplicably, Soper tweeted birthday congratulations to the former president when Carter turned 100 in October.

It’s not the first time the Western Slope Republican has raised eyebrows over offensive statements on X, formerly known as Twitter.

During the 2023 session, Soper vowed four gun control measures – he didn’t say which ones – would cause the Western Slope to declare civil war.

“Come and take it! They’ll have to invade the West Slope and murder us if they intend on us being defenceless! (sic). We will NOT bow to tyrants and those who seek to disarms (sic) us need to be prepared for civil war!”

He apologized two days later on the floor of the House but without identifying which words he was apologizing for. 

“Normally I’m known as being rational and reasonable, and choosing my words very carefully,” he told the House during a moment of personal privilege. “They were chosen carefully. But I do want to apologize for a couple of words that were in the Tweet, because I do think it’s important that um, we choose our words carefully.”