Jimmy Carter revealed in a new documentary that Willie Nelson hid the real identity of the person who smoked pot on the White House roof during his presidency.
In the documentary “Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President,” the oldest living president revealed that his son Chip was the one who actually smoked “a big fat Austin torpedo” with Willie Nelson on the roof of the White House in 1980.
Nelson originally had written in his autobiography that he was joined by a “servant” in the White House when he famously smoked the joint on the roof. Jimmy Carter revealed in the documentary that Nelson was covering up for his son James Earl “Chip” Carter.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Chip recalled when he went to the roof with Nelson on Sept. 13, 1980, “In the break I said, 'Let’s go upstairs.’ We just kept going up till we got to the roof, where we leaned against the flagpole at the top of the place and lit one up.”
Rumors of the mystery person who smoked pot with Nelson on the roof varied from White House staff members to the president himself.
Jimmy Carter said that Nelson covered up for Chip because he “didn’t want to categorize as a pot-smoker like him” according to the documentary.
In 2019, Nelson told a Texas TV station in an interview that he has stopped smoking pot. He said that years of smoking marijuana have affected his health.
“I have abused my lungs quite a bit in the past, so breathing is a little more difficult these days, and I have to be careful. I started smoking cedar bark, went from that to cigarettes, to whatever. And that almost killed me. I don’t smoke anymore ... take better care of myself,” Nelson told KSAT.