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CNN This Morning
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter Passes Away at Age 100. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired December 30, 2024 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:00:00]
PAULA REID, ANCHOR, CNN THIS MORNING: It's Monday, December 30th, right now on CNN THIS MORNING.
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JIMMY CARTER, LATE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's time for the people to run the government and not the other way around!
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REID: A peanut farmer, a President, a peacemaker. The world pays tribute to former President Jimmy Carter who died Sunday at the age of 100. Plus this.
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CARTER: The life people a 100 years from now remember me, I would like for them to connect peace and human rights to my name.
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REID: A one-term President, but an enduring legacy. A look back at Jimmy Carter's life dedicated to peace and international human rights. And later --
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CARTER: We go where we wish, we meet with whom we choose and we say what we believe. So, you see, it's a very wonderful life.
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REID: Life after the White House. How Jimmy Carter redefined what a post-presidency could be. It's 5:00 a.m. here on the east coast. Here's a live look at Capitol Hill. And good morning, everyone, I'm Paula Reid in for Kasie Hunt, it's wonderful to have you with us as we begin with the death and the legacy of Jimmy Carter, a former Georgia peanut farmer who rose to the presidency, then cultivated a legacy of unprecedented service after leaving the White House.
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CARTER: My name is Jimmy Carter and I'm running for President.
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REID: Carter was the nation's 39th President, he served a single term from 1977 to 1981, losing his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan. Now, his term weighed down by a 440-day hostage ordeal in Iran along with an energy crisis and an economy crushed by inflation. At his inaugural address in 1977, Carter laid out his vision for the presidency, a vision that defined his administration.
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CARTER: I would hope that the nations of the world might say that we had built a lasting peace based not on weapons of war, but on international policies which reflect our own most precious values.
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REID: Carter died peacefully at the age of 100 Sunday surrounded by loved ones at his home in Plains, Georgia. He'd been under a home hospice care since February of 2023. President Biden designating January 9th, 2025 as a national day of mourning for Carter. Biden remembering his friend as a peacemaker and a human rights pioneer.
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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He forged peace, advanced civil rights, human rights, promoted free and fair elections around the world. He built housing and homeless for the homeless with his own hands, and his compassion and moral clarity lifted people up and changed lives and saved lives all over the globe.
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REID: Let's bring in CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali. Tim, thank you so much for being up early with us today. Jimmy Carter, his lasting legacy may really be what he achieved in the decades after leaving office. Let's take a listen to him describe what human rights meant to him.
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CARTER: The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color or nation or language. Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity, and who suffer for the sake of justice, they are the patriots of this cause. I believe with all my heart that America must always stand for these basic human rights at home and abroad.
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REID: Tim, Carter really walked the walk, didn't he?
TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, Paula, when Jimmy Carter left the White House, he was devastated by his loss, by a feeling of failure. And for some time, he couldn't imagine what he would do next. And then he came to terms with this idea that he would not live in the past. He would not retire, if you will, from public service.
[05:05:00]
But he would look to the future. He's a trained engineer, he's a peanut farmer, yes, but he was also a trained engineer and a problem solver. And he thought that he would take advantage. He would use his celebrity to do good works around the world. So, rather than invest himself into a presidential library -- he did have a presidential library.
But he invested himself into the creation with his wife, Rosalynn, of the Carter Center, which would have a global mission to uphold democracy, to observe elections, but also to think about and assist and raise money for public health. So, Jimmy Carter decided that his post-presidency would be a continuation of public service on a global scale.
That was the first time any President had made that kind of commitment, which meant that Jimmy Carter was creating a new kind of post-presidency, and it would be a post-presidency that would lead to his receiving the Nobel Prize in 2002.
REID: Now, you, of course, talk about him losing his re-election bid to Ronald Reagan. It's interesting. Let's take a listen to him explain why he believes he lost.
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CARTER: I think the three things that cost me the election or among others, was the holding of the hostages which created a sense that I shared of a great nation being impotent in seeking the release of 52 innocent people. I felt impotent as a President. I was identified with it. That was a major thing. The next one was the worldwide inflation rate that resulted from the shortage of oil.
All countries suffered including ours. And the third thing was the schism in the Democratic Party that we never did heal.
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REID: Tell us a bit about how he handled those challenges while he was in office.
NAFTALI: Well, Jimmy Carter was a man of immense courage, political courage. He made decisions that he knew would hurt him politically. And all of them factored into his defeat in 1980. Let's talk about inflation. Inflation was -- the inflation of his period, of his time was not his creation. It was in large measure a result of the -- of the oil crisis of his time that was created by the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
It was also a product of a -- of some mismanagement on the part of economists who were missing changes in the basic needs of the economy. What did Jimmy Carter do? Jimmy Carter hired as Fed chair somebody he knew who would put up interest rates in order to bring the inflation, the double-digit inflation rate down.
Number two, he tried to get the hostages out through negotiation. Those negotiations didn't succeed initially. And so, what did he do? He decided to embark in a risky rescue operation in Iran in 1980 to bring them home. That rescue operation failed. The American people lost confidence in his ability to handle the Iran hostages issue, not at the very beginning, but only after the failure of the Iran hostage mission.
It was a mission that he didn't micro-manage. He took the advice from the U.S. military, it was a courageous, smart effort, but it didn't work. And finally, Jimmy Carter pushed for fiscal conservatism as a Democratic President. He wanted a balanced budget. That put him up against the great Senate liberal lion, Ted Kennedy, and Ted Kennedy ran against him for the nomination of the Democrat Party.
Ted Kennedy didn't win, but Ted Kennedy's effort, which came very close to toppling Carter, damaged Carter. So, Carter entered the race against Ronald Reagan already a damaged candidate. So, in both -- in all three cases, Jimmy Carter was a victim of his own political courage.
REID: Tim Naftali, thank you. And coming up --
NAFTALI: Thank you, Paula --
REID: On CNN THIS MORNIING, new information coming in about that deadly plane crash in South Korea, what the pilot reported before the doomed emergency landing. Plus, tornadoes ripped through the southeast as search and rescue efforts continue, and our coverage of Jimmy Carter's life and legacy continues next with a look at how he became a champion of human rights and peace, which stretched beyond his time in the White House.
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CARTER: We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
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CARTER: The aircraft carrying the 52 American hostages had cleared Iranian airspace, and that every one of the 52 hostages was alive, was well and free.
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REID: Jimmy Carter, who, despite his defeat after one term in the Oval Office, defined what it means to be a global humanitarian. He passed away yesterday at 100 years old. Now, the 39th President of the United States was a Navy officer, engineer, businessman, author and history will remember him as a man of deep faith and morality.
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Although he achieved success in his four years in office, he will best be remembered for what he achieved in the decades following his presidency. CNN's Nic Robertson has more.
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CARTER: I, Jimmy Carter, do solemnly swear.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR (voice-over): Jimmy Carter's presidency lived in the shadow of America's cold war with the Soviet Union. But he refused to be constrained by east west communist versus capitalist tensions.
CARTER: We expect that normalization will help to move us together toward a world of diversity and of peace.
ROBERTSON: He improved relations with China and tried for the same with the Soviets. In his foreign policies, he pushed for nuclear nonproliferation, Democratic values and human rights. He cut off military supplies to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and dialed back support for other Latin-American leaders in Nicaragua, Argentina and Brazil.
One of his signature White House legacies was the Torrijos-Carter treaties that returned the Panama Canal to Panama in 1999. He also calmed Mid-East tensions, brought together Israeli and Arab leaders at Camp David, opening the door to the Israeli-Egypt Camp David Accords. He normalized relations with China, weakened U.S. ties to Taiwan in a vain hope Beijing would weaken ties with Moscow.
But after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, the last year of his presidency, he toughened his Soviet stance, backed the Afghan Mujahideen in a war against the Red Army. The same year, 1979 Islamic revolution in neighboring Iran dealt Carter a double domestic blow, spiked oil prices and led to a humiliating failed raid -- Operation Eagle Claw in April 1980 to rescue Americans captured by the theocratic revolutionaries in Tehran.
CARTER: I can't stand here tonight and say it doesn't hurt.
ROBERTSON: Events overseas contributed to his 1980 election loss.
CARTER: The people of the United States have made their choice, and of course, I accept that decision.
ROBERTSON: But out of office on the limelight, his global peacemaking grew. In 1994, he was the first former U.S. President to visit North Korea, met Kim Il-Sung, the grandfather of today's leader Kim Jong un, at a time of U.S.-North Korean tensions, won concessions on North Korea's nuclear program, dialing back tensions for a decade. But 1994 was his big year of high profile peacemaking. In September,
he went to Haiti. Raoul Cedras, the Caribbean nation's unpopular leader, was holed up in Port-au-Prince. Carter convinced him to step down quite literally, as the U.S. 82nd Airborne troops were inbound aboard Black Hawk helicopters ready to remove Cedras by force.
Carter won the day, saved lives. The U.S. troops landed as de facto peacekeepers. And later that year, Carter went to the dark heart of Bosnia's violent ethnic civil war, met the nationalist Serbs in their mountain stronghold Pollic(ph), tried to stop their bloody, murderous siege and shelling of the capital, Sarajevo, to bring an end to the killing that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives during horrific ethnic cleansing.
Success came slowly in steps. Carter helped initiate a short Christmas ceasefire, and by his presence, pushed the horrific conflict toward greater international attention.
RICHARD HOLBROOKE, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES: We have work to do. We have to go back to it now. Thank you very much.
ROBERTSON: Less than a year later, another U.S. diplomat, Richard Holbrooke, parlayed Carter's brief calm into the war ending Dayton Peace Accords. Nineteen-ninety-four marked a peak in Carter's peacemaking, but far from the end of it. He helped found a group of seasoned international diplomats known as the elders whose work spanned the Mid-East and far beyond.
He helped the charity, Habitat for Humanity, changed lives, building affordable homes, often showing up to help with construction himself.
[05:20:00]
In 2002, he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development. It was a path he'd picked, a post-presidency with meaning, and he followed it right up to his death. Nic Robertson, CNN, London.
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REID: And next on CNN THIS MORNING, a deadly crash-landing. A passenger jet bursts into flames after an emergency landing in South Korea, just two people survived. Plus --
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CARTER: Well, the best thing I ever did was marrying Rosalynn. That's a pinnacle of my life.
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REID: A statesman and a steadfast husband. We continue to remember former President Jimmy Carter when our coverage continues ahead.
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[05:25:00]
REID: It is 24 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. Going live to South Korea, where new this morning, officials confirming the pilot of Sunday's deadly plane crash reported a bird- strike before making an emergency landing that killed 179 people. Only two crews survived, both in the tail section of the jet.
An emergency safety inspection of South Korea's airline operation system has been ordered. And today is expected to be one of the busiest airport travel days of the holiday season, and it might not be as smooth as travelers would hope. Storms in parts of the country expect to cause delays and cancellations.
And the best piece of advice arrive early. And at least, four people are dead after severe storms tore through the southeast. Tornadoes ripped off roofs and flattened homes in Texas and Mississippi. This morning, crews in both states focusing on search and rescue. And another quick-moving storm could bring rain to New York on new year's eve.
Let's go to meteorologist Allison Chinchar. Rain on new year's eve, nobody wants to hear that. What do you know?
ALLISON CHINCHAR, METEOROLOGIST: I know, that's right. So, let's recap the weekend first. Again, it was a very busy weekend. We had severe weather starting late Thursday, continuing all the way into Sunday. Over 300 total severe storm reports, including 58 tornado reports.
That system is now offshore for the southeast, but we still have some of it lingering across portions of the Great Lakes and the northeast. You can see some rain here across Vermont, New Hampshire, down through Connecticut, and then some rain and snow sliding in from Michigan and into portions of Ohio.
The next system out to the west, this is bringing very heavy snow. But yes, this system itself could have some big implications on new year's eve for other parts of the country. You've got the Winter weather warnings in effect in several of these states. We could be looking at, at least 6 inches to 12 inches in some of these spots obviously even higher amounts once you go up in elevation.
But that system again will traverse its way across the country later today and into Tuesday, and then eventually by Wednesday, sliding into portions of the northeast. And then this begs the question, OK, so, what does the new year's eve forecast actually look like for some of these areas? If you've got some outdoor celebrations in Cleveland, Chicago, New York, several areas of the Midwest and the northeast could have some rain and snow mixing in.
Doesn't mean you can't get out and enjoy it, just you're going to have to bundle up for those specific festivities. New year's eve itself in New York City, we are looking at rain showers, Paula, but at least temperature-wise, it should be nice and mild. REID: Well, there's a little good news in there, Allison, thank you
so much.
CHINCHAR: Thanks.
REID: And after the break on CNN THIS MORNING from Plains, Georgia to Pennsylvania Avenue, a look back at how Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer, ended up in the White House. Plus, a champion of human rights, Carter's life-time of dedication to international peace well past his time in the Oval Office.
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CARTER: America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it's the other way around. Human rights invented America.
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