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The Amanpour Hour

Interview With British Future Director Sunder Katwala; Interview With "Burn Book" Author And "On" And "Pivot" Podcast Host Kara Swisher; Interview With Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas; Interview With "Separated" Director Errol Morris; Interview With "Separated" Executive Producer Jacob Soboroff; How Faith Animated Jimmy Carter's Life, Work And Presidency; Demi Moore Wins First Major Acting Award For "The Substance". Aired 11a-12p ET

Aired January 11, 2025 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:59:46]

ALLISON CHINCHAR, AMS METEOROLOGIST: But that will change by tonight. We're going to start to see these single-digit wind speed numbers jump up to the 20 -- 30 mile per hour range as we go through the overnight hours, and even continuing into Tuesday -- even continuing into Sunday.

Then on Tuesday, we get our next round of strong winds, Monday through Wednesday really peaking on Tuesday. There we could see those wind gusts back up around 50 to 60 miles per hour.

So again, this is going to be a battle back and forth between those changing winds and the firefighters to be able to make any advancements they can in containment.

AMARA WALKER, CNN ANCHOR: Such a difficult situation. Allison, thank you very much.

We'll continue to follow this breaking news all day right here on CNN.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: THE AMANPOUR HOUR starts right now.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. And welcome to THE AMANPOUR HOUR.

Here's where we're headed this week.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: As world leaders brace for Trump 2.0, they're contending with an avalanche of lies and interference from his non-elected wingman, Elon Musk.

Kara Swisher and Sunder Katwala join me on what's behind Elon's latest fixations.

And --

ERROL MORRIS, DIRECTOR, "SEPARATED": How did this all happen in America?

AMANPOUR: Will Trump voters stand for mass deportations. In their film "Separated", Errol Morris and Jacob Soboroff visit the horrors of his 1.0 family separation policy.

Plus --

ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS, SECRETARY OF U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY: I think the movement of people, the migration of people is going to continue to be a challenge on a global scale.

AMANPOUR: Alejandro Mayorkas, outgoing secretary of Homeland Security, reflects on his tenure. And as president Jimmy Carter is laid to rest, an interview from my archive about his failures, his faith and speaking Plains truth to Israel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.

Donald Trump isn't even back in the White House yet and he's already causing ructions overseas, not just threatening to invade and annex allies like Greenland, Panama, Canada, but also allowing his unelected wingman to use his powerful X platform to interfere in their democracies.

Elon Musk, spewing a barrage of disinformation and trolling world leaders calling for Germanys far right extremist AFD Party to save that nation. And just this week, he attacked the U.K.'s mild-mannered Prime Minister Keir Starmer, calling for his, quote, tyrannical government to be overthrown.

And he's thrown his weight behind a notorious extremist right-wing agitator who's currently in prison here.

What? How worried should we all be about Musk's international freelancing? He's the richest man in the world. He does own one of the most powerful social media platforms, and he has the ear of the incoming president, Donald J. Trump.

As this was all landing with a giant thud, I asked tech journalist Kara Swisher and director of the British Future think tank Sunder Katwala, what they think is behind all of this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome both of you to the program.

Mr. Katwala here in the U.K. and watching closely what's happening. How influential is Musk here? How -- you know, how much trepidation should Labour, the government and others be feeling about Musk's interference?

SUNDER KATWALA, DIRECTOR, BRITISH FUTURE: They're feeling a big dilemma about how to respond to him. He won't have the level of influence in British society that he can have in American society, because if you're on Donald Trump's side in America, half of America is with you, and half of America doesn't like you.

It's a much smaller group over here that likes the politics of Donald Trump. But it makes it difficult as well because he's so connected to the American president.

The British government is hoping to have a business-as-usual relationship with an American government led by Donald Trump. And so, Musk's ability to drive the news agenda here was difficult. They'd like to laugh him off.

If he's calling on the king to dissolve the parliament and hold an election, that's not going to happen.

AMANPOUR: Well, basically it can't happen. It's constitutionally --

(CROSSTALKING)

KATWALA: It can't happen. Yes. And so, you can ignore that and not feed the troll, even if he's a billionaire.

But once you get into the grooming issue and Tommy Robinson and the kind of things that stake the rights in Britain in terms of online misinformation, they took the view that the prime minister had to respond to defend his own record on grooming, to defend his ministers in terms of what their role had been. And so, they've reluctantly had to engage with Elon Musk.

AMANPOUR: In which case I'm going to now play the sound bite that Kier Starmer felt forced to issue this week as this crescendo rose.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEIR STARMER, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible, they're not interested in victims. They're interested in themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: I want to ask Kara Swisher, who has been interviewing Elon Musk, probably one of the first to do, so many in depth interviews with him, over so many years.

[11:04:50]

AMANPOUR: Why do you think he's developed this fixation and is really, as we all know, using lies and misinformation in this case?

KARA SWISHER, AUTHOR, "BURN BOOK" AND PODCAST HOST, "ON" AND "PIVOT": Yes. I mean, during the election, he was seen to have created most of the lies on Twitter. You know, a lot of studies were showing that's what Elon was saying.

I think he's just -- it's worked in the United States so, he's taking his act on the road, you know. And he feels -- he has a particular fixation with pedophilia. If you've noticed, he got into that lawsuit. He calls people that. And so, he fixates on it quite a bit.

And he finds it an effective tool when he's attacking people. And what he does is he does it en masse, in floods of it. And he thinks it's effective.

And he gets very dramatic. You know, if you don't vote for this person, all hell will break loose, the world will be over.

And so, this is his style, and I think he's been emboldened by the success in the United States. And unfortunately, some of this stuff seems to work overtime as people start to hear misinformation mixed in with facts.

AMANPOUR: But here, Sunder Katwala, can we talk about the grooming scandal, which apparently Americans have a lot of disinformation about, and so does Musk.

But it did happen. It's a two-decade old issue. It -- and I want you to explain it, and I want you to explain Keir Starmer's role when he was head of the crown prosecution, i.e., prosecuting the pedophiles and the gangs. And actually, in pockets, it continues to happen.

So, what is the actual fact?

KATWALA: It is a harrowing story. This society was slow to act on the abuse of children. It happened in lots of different types of settings.

It happened a lot in care homes. It happened a lot in state schools and private schools. It happened in churches, and the Archbishop of Canterbury has just resigned. And local government, police forces, schools, they often cover things up.

It also happened in minority communities. And there was therefore a sort of political correctness concern about saying, might it be divisive to look into this?

But there was also a political incorrectness, really, that vulnerable women, young girls, were not being trusted because they were from poorer backgrounds, they were not being taken seriously, and things were being swept under the carpet.

Starmer was the director of public prosecutions, and he inherited this issue, and he got the prosecutions going off gangs, because you had to believe victims, even if they were not particularly credible witnesses, because they were too young to consent.

And so, you got the first prosecutions. And when that happened, "The Times" newspaper spotted the pattern. And we got a national issue out of it, and we got inquiries in Rotherham 10 years ago that were well reported on CNN and in America --

(CROSSTALKING) AMANPOUR: Indeed. And I'm glad you say that because one of Musk's calumny, frankly, is to say the mainstream media -- i.e., us and others -- never dealt with it. But we did. In fact, I interviewed the reporter of "The Times" when he broke this story.

Here's what he told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREW NORFOLK, THEN-CHIEF INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, "THE TIMES": What was happening in Rotherham is happening in every town and city in England that has a sizeable Pakistani community. And so four years we have been asking for the research to be carried out to understand why that is the case.

There have been some very high-profile criminal prosecutions in the past couple of years because since we started writing about this, there's been a real change in the way authorities have been approaching it and tackling it trying to protect the victims, trying to bring offenders to account.

But until we actually understand why this crime has put down such deep roots in various communities, we're never going to actually prevent it from happening.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Can you address the issue, Mr. Katwala, of the minority aspect of this? Because again, this whole anti-immigration frenzy is suggesting that it's, by and large, you know, Muslim against, you know, Christian white in this country.

KATWALA: The data was very poor, and the inquiry said we needed to collect much data. There are grooming gangs from all backgrounds, and there are a large number of grooming backgrounds that are British- Asian and British-Pakistani.

And councils and police forces were too slow to act. Keir Starmer has an Asian prosecutor who got the things to happen. It's actually an ethnic stereotype if you say you're not going to police it to not offend the community. You know, rape and child abuse needs to be rooted out everywhere.

So, Musk has got it the wrong way around. Keir Starmer was the change maker. He brought about changes to prosecute it better. The whole system has got better now, but we've still got to be very, very vigilant about child abuse in our society.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And after a short break, we'll be back with more of that conversation on what's at stake for the world with the Musk=Trump duo at the helm.

Also ahead, discussing Biden's immigration legacy and Trump's mass deportation with the outgoing Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

That's next.

[11:09:41]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back.

Just before the break, I spoke with leading tech journalist Kara Swisher and British Future think tank director Sunder Katwala about Elon Musk's interference in U.K., German, U.S. politics to name a few and what's behind this sudden fixation.

Here's more of our conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Let me quote to you, Kara, something that Baroness Beeban Kidron put out. She's in the House of Lords. She's also very prominent in the online safety and that whole movement and getting it all past parliament. This is something she said just recently.

"Musk trolling British politicians and developing a sudden interest in child sexual abuse victims, and Zuckerberg rowing back content moderation to follow X into a vehicle for the right are performative acts of businesses to curry favor with the new U.S. administration much like the threat to buy Greenland or occupy the Panama Canal.

They're deliberately preposterous, loud, designed to unsettle the world order."

[11:14:54]

AMANPOUR: So how worried should smart people be or how worried should anybody be?

SWISHER: Everybody should be worried. They're -- they have unlimited funds. $400 billion a single person on this planet has. That -- there's a good debate to be had if someone should have $400 billion.

But he's -- you know, they've bought adjacency to Donald Trump, the original coin-op president. And he -- they are in positions of power with unlimited funds, a proclivity for litigation. So, to quiet people. And they don't care about the topics.

Every single thing goes to some sort of business thing they want in some fashion or that they don't want to pay the price. In Mark Zuckerberg's case, he doesn't want to police his site. It costs money. He's saving billions of dollars. His stock will go up.

This is all about -- and I don't mean to say they so much want money. They don't want to be fettered and they want to do what they want.

They are -- I often call them, as you know, Christiane, adult toddlers. They want to do - - they're adult toddlers with a huge bank account and a giant chip on their shoulders, especially Musk. And they will do what they want. And it's very frightening, actually, in many ways.

AMANPOUR: And so, of course, in the United States, Kara, they have used Donald Trump as a vehicle for this business, you know, thing that you were just talking about.

SWISHER: Yes.

AMANPOUR: So, Sunder Katwala, in Europe --

SWISHER: A partner.

AMANPOUR: Yes, go ahead.

SWISHER: A partner.

AMANPOUR: A partner.

SWISHER: Partner.

AMANPOUR: Right.

SWISHER: You know, I mean, it's a trade. It's a trade. It's a trade of money for influence. Attention for influence.

He is very loud on Twitter and he's made it so that everybody has to listen to him. Also, he's manipulated the algorithm in that way.

And so, it's a really -- it's a dangerous situation that troika of people, that -- absolutely. And then, I'd add on Putin. I mean, that's who has control over the information system.

AMANPOUR: I mean, this is so fundamental. And when you just said the algorithm, he actually went and changed the algorithm after he saw President Biden getting more attention for a particular tweet than he did.

SWISHER: That's correct.

AMANPOUR: He left a game and went and changed the algorithm to have it reflect on him -- Elon Musk I'm talking about, to make his tweets more popular.

SWISHER: Yes.

AMANPOUR: So, here in Europe --

SWISHER: He wants to do more.

AMANPOUR: Yes, go ahead.

SWISHER: Can I add one more thing?

AMANPOUR: Yes. SWISHER: TikTok is about -- the TikTok case is going to the Supreme Court. It's there this week. And what if he allowed Elon to buy TikTok? Think about that. What if he got the inside track to buy TikTok in this fight that's going on about who owns TikTok?

AMANPOUR: Wow.

SWISHER: Think about that.

AMANPOUR: Wow.

SWISHER: Just think about it.

AMANPOUR: I'm thinking about it right now.

And I want to just bring it back to you, Mr. Katwala, because all of that, but it is having a political effect, potentially.

What he said, for instance, about Tommy Robinson, the far-right guy here, who he's backing against Nigel Farage, who's, you know, Mr. Right-Wing and Brexit.

And what he said about the AFD, the far-right extremist, you know, heirs of a very ugly tradition in Germany. He said they could save Germany.

Where is that going to lead, do you think, politically overseas here?

KATWALA: I think he's going to struggle to have the impact in Europe, in Britain, in Germany that he's got in America, because he doesn't know enough about Britain and Germany.

So, when he says to Germans, I don't know why the AFD is extreme, they look like Obama's Democrats to me. The Germans know who the AFD are, and so, it's Musk that's being isolated.

He's made a mistake in ditching Nigel Farage for Tommy Robinson. Nigel Farage is a polarizing, popular and unpopular politician that a quarter of people might vote for and that they could say Musk's millions might make Nigel Farage Prime Minister and he's always stayed away from Tommy Robinson.

Because Nigel Farage thinks when you're with Tommy Robinson whose reputation is extremism, racism, football hooliganism then you're a 5 percent politician.

So, Musk has actually taken himself outside of mainstream politics by attacking Farage for not backing Robinson.

So it shows that this attempt to be the sort of Citizen Kane of the world isn't going to work if you're not credible in the countries you're trying to influence.

We could treat him like a pantomime Bond villain, except it will stoke up violence at the extreme end as the sort we saw in Britain. So, it's not that he's going to change our government, but he can make our society more dangerous.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: In a moment, from Biden's border legacy to extreme weather events to terror attacks. Reflections and warnings from the outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYORKAS: The key is to be strong on enforcement while staying true to our values as a nation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:19:37]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

With a barrage of false statistics and playing on Americans' legitimate fears, immigration was a major factor in Donald Trump's election win. But how will he execute his pledge of mass deportations and how will Americans react when people they know, go to school with and even work with are yanked out and away from the country?

I asked the outgoing secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, about the Biden legacy and what's actually happening at the border now.

And also his warnings about extreme weather posing severe threats to Homeland Security have been playing out this terrible week in southern California.

And when I spoke to him from D.C., I started by asking him about the wildfire emergency.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Secretary Mayorkas, thank you for joining us from Washington, D.C.

[11:24:41]

AMANPOUR: Look, in terms of a natural security threat or threat to the homeland which is your brief, what does -- where does extreme weather, migration or displacement caused by it register with the department?

MAYORKAS: Well, we have seen internationally in our hemisphere and across the Atlantic the increased severity and frequency of extreme weather events have driven people from their homes.

It is one of a series of contributing challenges that finds our world with the highest level of human displacement since World War II. There are over 80 million people displaced in the world today. AMANPOUR: That's going to make the major issue that seems to be animating voters over much of the democratic world, including in the United States, the issue of migration, even more -- more difficult, right?

MAYORKAS: I think the movement of people, the migration of people is going to continue to be a challenge on a global scale.

I will say, right now we are delivering to the incoming administration here in the United States the lowest number of individuals encountered at our southern border since 2019. The numbers are lower than the average in that pre-pandemic year.

And that is because of the decisive action that President Biden took in June of 2024 after congressional inaction.

The key is to be strong on enforcement while staying true to our values as a nation.

AMANPOUR: We remember last year by then-Candidate Trump, basically telling his Republican allies in Congress that he wanted to run on this issue. And as we know, he used a lot of false figures and false statistics to talk about that border.

And I'm wondering whether you are concerned about the potential problems, if you think there will be, with President Trump's promise to do mass deportations practically from day one.

Do you think it's going to be possible and will it succeed or backfire?

MAYORKAS: Christiane, I don't quite yet know what mass deportation means in reality. I understand the rhetoric very well and what it is causing domestically. But I do not understand -- do not really know how it will materialize.

We will need to see what it actually means in real life and whether it does transgress. It most certainly will be challenged in the courts.

I must say every action in the realm of immigration is challenged in the courts. It's an incredibly divisive issue. I do hope and passes fundamental reform to a system that has been broken for decades, not just with respect to the migration of people in terms of humanitarian relief, but also to achieve the desired outcome of family reunification, as well as economic prosperity.

AMANPOUR: I want to ask you know about another aspect of Homeland Security, and that is terrorism, obviously. When that attack happened in New Orleans on New Year's Day a certain segment of the population and leaders and nominees for security positions basically said this was, you know, the result of, you know, untrammeled migration.

But here is what Mike Waltz, who is Donald Trump's pick for national security adviser, told Fox the day after. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. MIKE WALTZ (R-FL): Guys, I can't emphasize enough, close the border. Secure our sovereignty you know, and that is completely unacceptable. The entire world knows that we have an open border, they intend to hit us, and they are pushing people into our interior to do just that.

And they know that if we're looking internally at ourselves, we can't be defending ourselves abroad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So, it wasn't, right? I mean, you tell me, just remind the viewers who that perpetrator was and how does this immediate politicization, weaponization of the border affect actual national security?

MAYORKAS: Christiane, the terrorist who perpetrated the horrific attacks on New Year's Eve was a U.S.-born citizen who served in our military.

The issue of the border is not related to this individual's attack on innocent people. Fourteen innocent people lost their lives. Others were injured, including two law enforcement officers.

[11:29:46]

MAYORKAS: We have to get to a place -- and we have to get to a place where we come together as a country in times of tragedy and in times of need and not politicize issues that should unite us.

AMANPOUR: Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, thank you for joining us.

MAYORKAS: Thank you for having me, Christiane.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Well, it is indeed time to come together, especially in southern California right now. President Biden has canceled a farewell visit to Italy to deal with this wildfire disaster.

After the break, Trump and immigration. We reflect further on his most brutal first term policy, family separation or zero tolerance, laid bare in "Separated", a film by Oscar winning director Errol Morris and journalist Jacob Soboroff.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MORRIS: To me, the policies are unmistakably racist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:34:53]

AMANPOUR: Welcome back. And more now on the looming showdown over immigration under Trump 2.0.

with mass deportations this time involving potentially whole families. Family separation, you'll recall, was part of Trump's first term policy of zero tolerance, seeing children forcibly removed from their parents at the border.

And this cruel and dark stain on American history is at the heart of "Separated". It's a new film by the Oscar-winning director Errol Morris that's based on journalist Jacob Soboroff's bestselling book.

Here's a clip from the trailer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do I call this child abuse? Do I call it torture?

JONATHAN WHITE, OFFICE FOR REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT: Separation was the purpose. Prosecution was the tool.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not over. Five years later, we are still trying to reunite up to a thousand children.

WHITE: There is really nothing to stop them.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is a new era.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It troubles me profoundly that it could happen again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: They both joined me to discuss this timely film and what Trump's return could mean for families.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Errol Morris and Jacob Soboroff, welcome to our program.

Jacob, can I just start with you in terms of being a news reporter? These new interventions or predicted interventions by the new administration. What is the status right now of the border, the plans, people, crossings? What are you finding in your reporting right now?

JACOB SOBOROFF, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, "SEPARATED": What I learned, Christiane, in covering the family separation policy of the last Trump administration is that when the incoming Trump administration says they're going to do something, believe them.

And in 2016, they said they were going to deliberately separate thousands of children from their parents at the border, and they did just that. What a Republican-appointed judge called one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country.

And I reported on the floor of the Republican National Convention during this presidential election period and I stood, you know, feet away as thousands of people held up those signs saying "Mass deportation now".

It's a part of the policy platform not just of the Republican National Committee, but of the Trump campaign and now the incoming Trump administration. And what is a mass deportation policy? It's family separation by another name.

AMANPOUR: Where does this fit, Errol, in the sort of compendium of where you, you know, focus your lens and focus your works?

MORRIS: I'm endlessly fascinated by self-deception. The question of, what do these people think that they were doing? To me, the policies are unmistakably racist.

The campaign, the Republican campaign -- the president, to me, was also unmistakably racist. And yet, it sells. It has an appeal to a vast number of voters, myself not included. And how did this all happen in America?

AMANPOUR: But the interesting thing, Jacob, also, is to follow on from what Errol just said, the sort of the culture of deception, including amongst the officials who you were covering at the time.

So, in the documentary, it shows that in June of 2018, Kirstjen Nielsen, she was the, you know, Department of Homeland Security, she tweeted, "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border, period."

Jacob, was that true or not true back then?

SOBOROFF: No, that was not true. And you know, self-deception might be a generous description of what she was doing there. They knew exactly what they were doing.

And what Errol Morris lays out in almost a forensic examination --

(CROSSTALK)

MORRIS: You could also call it a lie.

AMANPOUR: Can I ask you both another question? Because you do bring it up and some of the officials talk about it. The administration openly or amongst themselves use this policy because they believe that it was a deterrent.

And that was their philosophy, that was their political imperative. So why, Errol --

MORRIS: See, I don't believe it.

AMANPOUR: Ok.

MORRIS: I actually don't believe. They might have sold it as a deterrent, but I think its main purpose was a dog whistle to the base, to their followers, to show those followers, look how mean we can be, look how cruel we can be, look how tough we can be with immigrants.

To me, that was the main purpose of it all.

AMANPOUR: When you found the people to speak to in this documentary, for instance, Jonathan White, he's at the heart of the film just about, his testimony.

He's a captain, Jonathan White, career government official in the Office of Refugee Resettlement, brave enough to speak out about this whole process.

So, let's hear a clip of some of what he has to say. Here's Jonathan White.

[11:39:50]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WHITE: Family separation, though, was not about unaccompanied children. It was about accompanied children. It's about children with their families.

And the Unaccompanied Children Program, which I worked in, was essentially hijacked for a purpose for which it was never intended nor authorized in law. It was a program designed to be a child protection program for children who entered the United States without parents. And it was instead used as a tool to take children from their parents.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Errol, how did you find Jonathan White? How did you persuade him to talk? He's obviously very passionate and very, you know, morally committed to getting this story out. Why did he agree to participate, do you think?

MORRIS: His strong feelings about this policy being morally wrong. He was not really allowed to speak. Most people could not or would not speak to me at all, because there were restrictions, government restrictions.

If they're still working for the government, they're not allowed to talk. Certainly, they're not allowed to talk without permission.

Jonathan White felt so strongly about these issues, that he was willing to take the risk. The risk of talking publicly about his feelings of outrage.

To me, he's a hero, an American hero.

AMANPOUR: And Jacob, it's not easy under this current climate to keep reporting in this very tough way about these policies. How do you plan to keep reporting on this issue?

SOBOROFF: I think we have to do exactly what we did when we were invited into those facilities by the Trump administration in 2018, which is to hold a mirror up to society to show them what is happening. You know, this movie is really tough to grapple with and the subject

matter is, but it's also for me, inspiring. It's inspiring because of my fellow journalists who were able to go out there and expose the story for what it was.

It's inspiring because of the career civil servants who were willing to speak up from inside the government. I think it's important to hear those voices because they did everything they could to stop this policy from happening and indeed prevented it from being far worse.

And it's inspiring because hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, all over the world came out in a -- not a bipartisan fashion, but a universal one.

The Pope spoke out, as we're reminded in this film, in order to stop a policy that the president himself, President Trump at the time, said he was stopping because he didn't like the sight and the feeling of the families being separated. Not because of moral opposition, but because of news media reports and people in the street.

And so, I think we have to remember that. Remember what ended a policy like this, who was responsible for it, and make sure to elevate those voices going forward.

AMANPOUR: Jacob Soboroff and Errol Morris, thank you very much. Your book, your film, "Separated".

MORRIS: Thank you.

SOBOROFF: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And coming up from my archive, we remember the 39th U.S. President, Jimmy Carter. And look back at my 2007 conversation with him about his faith, failures and successes.

[11:42:54]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back.

He made it to 100. President Jimmy Carter was laid to rest this week in a solemn state funeral, bringing together all five living presidents at Washington's National Cathedral. He leaves behind a complicated foreign policy legacy, defined in part by religion.

Most notably, he's considered to have lost a U.S.-friendly Iran to religious fundamentalist ayatollahs back in 1979. And the ensuing hostage crisis where 52 Americans were held for 444 days in the Tehran embassy, effectively ended his presidency.

Decades later, in 2007, I interviewed Carter for a series called "God's Warriors" on the intersection between extreme religion and politics. A committed Christian himself who made human rights a central plank of

his foreign policy, Carter reflected on how his own faith played a role in his life and his work.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Out of office, Carter returned home to plains, Georgia, and to his church.

JIMMY CARTER, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is the first real indication of God's will for women to play a leading role in the early church.

AMANPOUR: He taught adult Sunday school and still does. But in the 1990s, he watched the Southern Baptist Convention he belonged to grow progressively more conservative and more political, contrary to his faith.

CARTER: And they were, in my opinion, a radical departure from what, to me, the Baptist faith had always represented.

In effect they adopted a creed that said if you don't agree with this written document in its entirety, you cannot be a pastor in a Southern Baptist Church.

AMANPOUR: Especially troublesome to the president, an amendment in 2000 to the group's statement of beliefs on the role of women.

"From now on like Muslims and Orthodox Jews, Southern Baptists would restrict the role of women."

CARTER: Women must be submissive to their husbands, and no woman can be a leader in the church as a pastor or deacon in the church, and that women are precluded from instructing men. So those things have been of great concern to me.

[11:49:51]

AMANPOUR: The Southern Baptist Amendment on a woman's role passed in 2000. Carter then publicly broke with the convention.

He's continued to speak out against what he sees as the growing influence of fundamentalism in many religions characterized by rigidity, male domination and exclusion.

CARTER: And it's impossible for a fundamentalist to admit that he is ever wrong because he would be admitting that God was wrong.

AMANPOUR: Jimmy Carter is working to reclaim his faith.

CARTER: I think the permanent crisis that faces the Christian church in its totality is division.

AMANPOUR: Along with former President Bill Clinton, they formed what they call the celebration of a New Baptist Covenant calling on Christians to focus on issues like poverty rather than on divisive issues like abortion and gay marriage.

CARTER: We have adopted as our guidelines a gospel based on peace and justice and humility and service and love that really helps people who are in need.

AMANPOUR: Rather than?

CARTER: Rather than more of a fundamentalist commitment where you define who can be and who cannot be a member of the organization.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And in another corner of the world divided by religious fundamentalists to this day came Carter's signature foreign policy achievement, the Camp David Peace Accords, a historic agreement between Egypt and Israel and a zeal for real peace that led to Carter's complex history with Israel.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARTER: Israel will never have peace as long as they are confiscating and colonizing Palestinian land.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: I spoke with former President Jimmy Carter, who has written a controversial book that's critical of Israel and its settlement policy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: You have said that settlements are a real obstacle to peace.

CARTER: There's no doubt in any rational analyst's mind that the settlements are the major obstacle to peace.

AMANPOUR: But on the other hand, many people say actually its Palestinian suicide bombers that are the major obstacle to peace.

CARTER: Well, there's no doubt that any sort of attack by Palestinians or others is horrible and must be condemned.

But the basic problem is the settlements and the lack of an accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians, and Israel's withdrawing from Palestinian land.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: For decades, the U.S. has said Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are an obstacle to peace. So why not withhold Americas abundant foreign aid to pressure Israel, I asked former president Jimmy Carter.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: America gives Israel $3 billion a year, no questions asked just about. Why doesn't it say, ok, no more $3 billion?

CARTER: There's no way that a member of Congress would ever vote for that and hope to be reelected.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Most recently, former President Carter was criticized for criticizing Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in his book "Palestine Peace, Not Apartheid".

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're an anti-Semite.

CARTER: It's very difficult to speak publicly in criticism of Israel.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And let me explain why I think you're a bigot, a racist and an anti-Semite.

CARTER: I've been publicly called anti-Semitic even in full page advertisements in "The New York Times".

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Despite that backlash that he received, President Carter refused to back down, insisting that criticism of Israel came from his life's mission to shine and to bring a lasting peace to the region.

Given the events since October 7th, that mission seems much more distant than ever.

When we come back, a lesson in womanhood. Demi Moore on her award- winning role in a body horror epic, "The Substance".

[11:53:50]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: And finally, just days after the Golden Globes were awarded in Hollywood, wildfires erupted to ravage the Los Angeles area, a stark backdrop for Hollywood's awards season, which is now meant to be in full swing.

The Screen Actors' Guild award nominations are out building buzz for the Oscars, while Golden Globes went to period drama epic "The Brutalist", which won three, and Fernanda Torres became the first Brazilian to win best actress in "I'm Still Here".

But the defining moment went to Demi Moore, who took home her first- ever major acting award in nearly 45 years of acting, winning for her powerful performance in "The Substance". It's a body horror epic on the perils of a woman aging.

Demi Moore proves that it's never too late to win awards, and now she's been nominated for a SAG one. Before the gong started ringing, though, I sat down with her in New

York, where we spoke about the importance of pushing boundaries and working outside her comfort zone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEMI MOORE, ACTRESS: In a way, knowing that I wasn't going to be photographed and shot in the most glamorous ways, in fact, quite -- quite the opposite I was going to be -- it was going to be heightened shots, accentuating those very things that perhaps I don't love.

[11:59:40]

MOORE: And, you know, the truth is, it really was for me, in the end, it was a reclaiming. It was -- and a more empowering ownership by just saying, I am who I am, and this is where I am at this moment in time.

And finding kind of the power in that important message of accepting who we are as we are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: That's all we have time for.

Don't forget, you can find that interview and all of our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com/audio and on all other major platforms.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. Thank you for watching and see you again next week.