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Jimmy Carter, Humanitarian And 39th U.S. President, Dies At 100. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired December 29, 2024 - 20:00   ET

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

[20:00:50]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: And good evening. Welcome to our CNN special breaking news coverage. I'm Anderson Cooper in New York.

Tonight, the world is mourning the death of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. The 39th president died this afternoon surrounded by his family in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. He'd been in home hospice care for nearly two years.

Former president Carter became the oldest living former president when he surpassed the record held by the late George H.W. Bush in March of 2019. CNN got a chance to interview the former president in 1998 after he turned 75 years old 25 years ago.

Here's a clip of Carter talking to Larry King about getting older and about dying.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY KING, FORMER TV HOST: When we age, the fear of death, there's no other way to put this, it just seems logical to fear it. It's unknown. It's dark. We ain't interviewed anyone ever come back. Do you think about it? Do you think about dying?

JIMMY CARTER, 39TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: One of the chapters in my book is about the inevitability with which we have to face the end of our life on earth, and I tried to reassure the readers not only saying almost exactly what Billy Graham did, the people with deep religious faith don't fear death, and I don't fear death.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, the former peanut farmer and a lifelong Democrat served a single term as president from 1977 to 1981 before losing reelection to Ronald Reagan. And Carter's most enduring legacy came after his presidency, winning a Nobel Peace Prize and redefining himself as a global humanitarian and human rights pioneer.

Tonight, President Biden honored his legacy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The entire Carter family, on behalf of the world, the whole nation, we send our whole heartfelt sympathies and gratitude, our gratitude for sharing President Carter with us for so many years.

You know, Jimmy Carter stands up as a model of what it means to live a life of meaning and purpose, a life of principle, faith and humility. His life dedicated to others.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: The Camp David Peace Accords were one of President Carter's biggest accomplishments.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour takes a look at the 13 days of negotiations he mediated ending with that now world famous handshake.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR (voice-over): Peace in the Middle East. The impossible dream. But President Jimmy Carter wasn't afraid to take it on, inviting two of the world's fiercest enemies to the White House retreat at Camp David in 1978.

Jimmy Carter had been derided for his administration's foreign policy failures, partly because he's considered to have lost a U.S. friendly Iran to the ayatollahs. But the Camp David accords were his geopolitical triumph. He managed to strike a deal between Israel's Menachem Begin and Egypt's Anwar Sadat.

But this moment really got started a year earlier when the cameras flashed and rolled to capture Sadat's journey into enemy territory.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There has never in all these years been anything as striking and dramatic as this.

AMANPOUR: Indeed, Sadat had made a massive gamble that coming in peace to Jerusalem, becoming the first Arab leader to visit Israel, and speak directly to its people would pay off. But the two Middle East leaders failed to reach a deal on their own.

Enter the American president.

Carter recognized a rare opportunity to act as the indispensable mediator.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Almost never in our history has a president devoted so much time on a single problem.

AMANPOUR: He had studied the characters and histories of the two leaders who deeply mistrusted each other. He wrote Sadat and Begin personal letters inviting them to Camp David.

[20:05:05]

And when they arrived on American soil, it was high stakes for all three men involved.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Failure here would just increase the impression that Mr. Carter is a nice man, but an inept president.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This meeting is truly historic, and the people who will participate know it.

AMANPOUR: Thirteen days of intense negotiations. Crucially, behind closed doors, no leaks, no social media, no media at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Israeli delegation is totally zipped up. Even less is coming out of it than is coming out of the Egyptian delegation.

AMANPOUR: At Camp David, Carter and his team shuttle back and forth between the two men and their teams, often negotiating late into the night. Carter's national security adviser, the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, described what looked like mission impossible.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Sadat, to sign a peace treaty with Begin, had to break ranks with the entire Arab world. He had to face isolation. Begin, to agree with Sadat, had to give up territory for the first time and to give up settlements.

AMANPOUR: When direct talks between Sadat and Begin became too heated, Carter kept them apart and quashed any attempt to call off the negotiations.

After two weeks of complications, drama and false starts, the men finally returned to Washington to deliver the good news they had reached a deal.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just look at two weeks ago what the situation was. Peace process all but dead.

CARTER: An achievement none thought possible.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It appears that the president won. And he won big.

AMANPOUR: Decades after Camp David, I sat down with President Carter and asked him how in the world he had done it.

There you were. You brought peace with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. It all seemed so much easier then. Was it? Or is that just what we think now all these years later?

CARTER: I think it was much more difficult because I was negotiating between two men whose nations had been at war four times in just 25 years.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): The magnitude of that accomplishment lives on in the image of that three-way handshake, the Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin summed it up like this.

MENACHEM BEGIN, FORMER ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: The Camp David conference should be renamed. It was the Jimmy Carter conference. AMANPOUR: The final result -- Israel would return the Sinai Peninsula

to Egypt, a piece of land the two had fought wars over. Egypt would finally recognize Israel's right to exist and give Israel access to the crucial Suez Canal shipping lanes. Both leaders declared no more fighting. All three men would eventually be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

But one thing wouldn't change. Arabs called Sadat a traitor. Three years later, he was assassinated by Muslim extremists in his own country. Still, many years later, President Carter told me that he was proud of this first peace deal between Arabs and Israelis.

CARTER: The peace treaty that was negotiated between Israel and Egypt over extremely difficult circumstances was beneficial to both sides, and not a single word of the treaty has been violated. It was much more difficult than the altercation between the Israelis and the Palestinians is today.

AMANPOUR: And that conflict, the one between Palestinians and Israelis, still rages on to this day. But it doesn't alter the fact that there was a shining moment when Jimmy Carter engaged the full and indispensable role of the United States and changed one corner of the Middle East forever.

Christiane Amanpour, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: That was certainly the brightest moment of the Carter presidency.

We are getting reaction from current and former presidents about the passing of President Jimmy Carter.

President-elect Trump said, quote, "I just heard of the news about the passing of President Jimmy Carter. Those of us who have been fortunate to have served as president understand this is a very exclusive club, and only we can relate to the enormous responsibility of leading the greatest nation in history. The challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country, and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude."

Former President Barack Obama had this to say. "President Carter taught all of us what it means to live a life of grace, dignity, justice, and service. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to the Carter family and everyone who loved and learned from this remarkable man."

I want to talk more about Jimmy Carter's legacy, how he may be remembered. Ron Brownstein joins us now. He's a CNN senior political analyst and senior editor at "The Atlantic."

Ron, just listening to Christiane's report, I mean, it really does take one back. I mean, I was a kid during this time.

[20:10:03]

I wasn't paying that much attention to what was going on. But it's interesting to hear President Carter, in his interview with Christiane, saying that what they were able to accomplish, that deal with Israel and Egypt was, he believed, more difficult than the situation between Israel and the Palestinians.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. You know, it really is interesting to go back there. And if you look at that, as you say, period at Camp David as kind of the highlight of the Carter presidency, one that, Anderson, I think showed his greatest strengths. I mean, he had a tremendous intellect, a kind of an engineer's desire and determination to take apart problems and reassemble them.

And he had, you know, a pretty good personal touch behind closed doors. Fast forward one year later and he spends another 10 days at Camp David, leading to the speech in 1979, the crisis of confidence speech that is often called the malaise speech, which was kind of a low point of his presidency.

And it really kind of shows you the kind of the poles of the Carter experience. He had some important accomplishments, but ultimately he lost the confidence of the country and lost that second term in a resounding vote. And he was an important figure in the Democratic Party. He was an important figure in kind of knitting together American society again after all the tumult and turmoil of the '60s.

But he was a transitional figure in the Democratic Party and could not really build a coalition that lasted both either in Congress or in the electorate.

COOPER: I mean, his candidacy was unlikely to begin with. I mean, he had been in the Navy. He had served honorably in the Navy, in nuclear submarines. His father had died. He went back to take over the family business, which was peanut farming. I think it was a school board. He first got, you know, got elected to state senator. He became governor, obviously. But when he ran for president, I mean, that was a long shot.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, absolutely. He was a dark, dark horse. I mean, you know, when he was elected governor in 1971 and he took over in 1971, in Georgia, he succeeded Lester Maddox as governor of Georgia, who was, you know, a virulent racist and ardent segregationist. And Carter, in many ways, was the embodiment of the hope of a new south in the post-civil rights era. And I thought, like, you know, looking back on Carter, he was the first president I covered at all.

He was a figure of -- he was an important figure of cultural reconciliation in a lot of ways after the 1960s. He was an ardent, you know, he was a devout Christian, evangelical protestant to embrace rock and roll. He was a southerner who embraced civil rights. He was a, as you point out, a Navy veteran who pardoned the Vietnam draft resisters. And, you know, he was someone in a marriage that to all the world looked like a very traditional union, but accepted and celebrated a more assertive role for women. And in all these ways, I thought he sort of cemented a lot of the

cultural change that came through in the '60s. But if he was a figure of cultural integration, as I said, in some ways he was a figure of political disintegration, you know, he was presiding over the Democratic coalition that was really starting to come apart at the seams. And the best kind of, kind of model of how that, you know, upended his presidency was that many of his legislative achievements were attempts, were blocked in Congress by conservative southern Democrats.

And then in 1980, he got a challenge in the primary from the left, from Teddy Kennedy, who thought that he moved too far to the center. He pioneered some of the, I think, reforms in the Democratic Party that Bill Clinton completed, 15, 20 -- you know, 15 a dozen years later. But in some ways, he was a man ahead of his time in recognizing the Democratic Party had to change. He just couldn't bring enough of his party along with him, either on the right or the left.

COOPER: What was it that, I mean, as I said, it was such an unlikely candidacy. It was a long shot. Was it the post-Watergate era that the American people were just tired of the scandal, and he seemed to be a man of virtue, which certainly he lived a great life of virtue? Certainly his post-presidency life exemplifies that.

BROWNSTEIN: That was it. I think by far more than anything else. I mean, his slogan in 1976 was a government -- you know, we deserve a government as good as the American people. He was someone who his decency just sort of emanated from him. He seemed connected to the times in all the ways that I kind of mentioned, you know, someone who bridged the culture wars of the '60s between younger generations that wanted social change and older generations that Nixon had mobilized against that change in his silent majority.

[20:15:04]

And he was someone who seemed to turn -- offered a chance to turn the page after all of that internal strife in the country that culminated in Watergate. And -- but again, in office, he got -- you know, as some of the biographers, Kai Bird, John Alter have pointed out, he got more done than he got credit for. But in many ways he was there as the Democratic coalition was kind of coming apart. He held, he slowed the movement of southern evangelicals in some ways toward the Republican Party in 1976.

But, you know, Anderson, the birth of the modern religious right is often assumed to have been around Roe v. Wade. That isn't really it. If you talk to the people who are involved, Paul Weyrich, who I interviewed many times before he died, it was when Jimmy Carter in 1978, the IRS under Jimmy Carter, I guess in '77, revoked the tax exemption for racially discriminatory religious schools.

And that was Jimmy Carter. I mean, he was someone -- and it was the backlash to that led to the moral majority and all of the movement that we saw under Reagan southerners toward the GOP. Southern evangelicals for the GOP. Carter was someone who really kind of embraced the future culturally. Just politically he had a hard time marshaling enough of a coalition to either build broad popular support or to get his agenda through Congress.

COOPER: Yes. Ron Brownstein, I appreciate you joining us on this night. Thank you.

We're going to be back with more on the legacy of Jimmy Carter after a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:20:17]

COOPER: And welcome back to our breaking news coverage of the death of former president Jimmy Carter.

The 39th president died Sunday afternoon surrounded by family in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, at the age of 100. Aside from his four- year stint at the White House, Mr. Carter spent most of his life in Georgia, serving in the state Senate and as governor.

Ernie Suggs is a reporter for "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution." He joins me now.

Ernie, thank you for being with us tonight. First of all, just your reaction to, you know, having been in Georgia to the president's death.

ERNIE SUGGS, JOURNALIST, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: Well, it's a very sad day, as you can all imagine. You know, I've been covering Jimmy Carter for probably 25 years now. This is a day that we all knew was going to happen. It's a day that we planned and prepared for. And it got more urgent as he got older. It got more urgent as he went into hospice care. So it's a moment that we were prepared for as journalists and as reporters and as Georgians.

But it's a moment that's also very sad for America as well as for Plains, the people of Plains, and for the people of Georgia.

COOPER: I mean, his post, we were talking about his administration in the last block, 43 years he had as being -- as a former president and that really redefined in many ways to many Americans who Jimmy Carter was and is and may define who he is for subsequent generations.

SUGGS: Yes, I think, you know, Anderson, I know you know this. But, you know, when we talk about great figures, we talk about the first line of their obituary and of course everyone's first line of Jimmy Carter's obituary is going to be that he was the 39th president of the United States. But I think if we asked him, he would look at the last 43 years of his life, what he did at the Carter Center, what he did for Habitat for Humanity, what he did for ensuring democracy all over the world, by monitoring elections, by eradicating diseases in Africa.

That's what his legacy was. I think a lot of people would say more so than even being president of United States because after he became president, after he left the White House, after he left the Oval Office, he set out to make the world better. He said, I'm not president anymore. How can I make the world better? He started the Carter Center and he did all the things that expanded what his outreach was and expanded what his Christian beliefs was in terms of helping people.

COOPER: You also really can't talk about Jimmy Carter without talking about Rosalynn Carter. I mean, they were married for 77 years. Just an extraordinary, extraordinary life together.

SUGGS: And even more so than that. You know, Jimmy Carter's mother was a midwife. And Jimmy Carter's mother delivered Rosalynn Carter. So Jimmy Carter knew Rosalynn Carter every day of her life, which is an amazing -- that's amazing.

COOPER: That's crazy.

SUGGS: Yes, The Census Bureau doesn't even track weddings or marriages much over 75 years. So the fact that he knew this woman for all her life, they were married for 77 years, and they were joined at the hip, you know. That was an incredible partnership. Everywhere he went, she went. Everywhere, you know, even when she was sick and he was sick, they would sit in the middle of their Plains home, Plains, Georgia, home holding hands, watching Braves games, watching the news. Watching old, you know, MeTV reruns of westerns and television shows. So they were really, really a link partnership.

COOPER: His mom was also ahead of her time.

SUGGS: Yes, his -- I mean, I think his whole family. Well, his mother, you know, his mother influenced him a lot. His mother was very influential in Plains, Georgia, very influential in who he became and what he became. And also, you know, just his surroundings also influenced him. You know, you talk about Plains, Georgia, you talk about these small Georgia towns. It's a very, very small town.

He was raised in this little tiny village, so to speak, with around black people. So he understood race early on. He understood the disadvantages of how we treat people. And he took that -- a lot of that from his mother. His mother delivered a lot of the black children in Plains, Georgia. His mother delivered a lot of children in Plains. There's a lot of black children --

COOPER: This was at the time of segregation we should point out.

SUGGS: Exactly. Exactly. So he grew up at a time, and he -- well, he grew up at a time of segregation, but he understood the greater cause of humanity and the greater cause of what diversity meant even in a small town like Plains.

COOPER: Ernie Suggs, it's really such a pleasure to talk to you.

SUGGS: Well, thank you very much for having me.

COOPER: Yes, I would love to do it again. Thank you, from "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution."

We're going to have more on President Carter's legacy including a conversation with his biographer just ahead on CNN. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:28:33]

COOPER: Former president Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100. We heard the news earlier this afternoon. He died surrounded by his family at his home in Plains, Georgia. Jimmy Carter once said that his Christian faith allowed him to be what he said was completely at ease with death.

CNN's Jake Tapper looks at how Carter's faith guided his extraordinary life.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARTER: I, Jimmy Carter, do solemnly swear.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Jimmy Carter faced the American presidency the same way he faced nearly everything else in his life with unflinching faith.

CARTER: I have just taken the oath of office on the bible. My mother gave me just a few years ago.

TAPPER: And as Americans look to President Carter to lead them, President Carter looked to God for guidance.

CARTER: With God's help and for the sake of our nation, it is time for us to join hands in America.

TAPPER: As a devout evangelical, the pride of Plains, Georgia, was active in his hometown church well into his 90s.

CARTER: Well, thank you for coming this morning.

TAPPER: Both as a student of faith and as a teacher.

CARTER: My father was a Sunday school teacher. He taught me when I was a child. I still teach Sunday school when I can.

TAPPER: A commitment to God and family were long held hallmarks of the Carter home.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: The scripture was part of his daily childhood life. Every night at supper, they would not only say the Lord's prayer, but would read the Gospel.

[20:30:07]

TAPPER: When Carter left home for the Naval Academy, his faith followed.

BRINKLEY: He would spend his weekends on leave doing bible classes, tutoring people in scripture. He talks about Jesus Christ all the time. TAPPER: But in 1966, the lifelong Christian came to question his

beliefs, his faith shaken after losing the Georgia governor's race in the primary.

CARTER: I really felt let down by God.

TAPPER: Carter's younger sister read him scripture from the "Book of James," reminding the future president --

CARTER: That a setback in life should be an institution that results in perseverance and patience and self-analysis and renewed spiritual commitment.

STUART EIZENSTAT, PRESIDENT CARTER'S FORMER POLICY ADVISER: She made him into what evangelicals called a born again Christian.

TAPPER: With renewed conviction, Carter went on to serve as Georgia's governor and later as America's commander-in-chief. The 39th president, and his new vice president, Walter Mondale, had Christianity in common. They bonded over it.

WALTER MONDALE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: I grew up in a minister's family, and he recognized what I was about, and I think that's one of the things that pulled us together.

TAPPER: It was also one of the qualities that helped Carter become the first president to welcome the Pope to the White House.

CARTER: Let all of us here, of every faith, stand as one unto God for peace and justice and for love.

TAPPER: The president's knowledge of world religion played a key role in his brokering of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty in 1979, a key accomplishment of his administration.

PETER BOURNE, PRESIDENT CARTER'S FORMER ADVISER: Because of his intimate reading of the bible and other religious documents, he felt an intimacy with -- the almost the land of the Middle East, and he just thought that was the most important thing that he could do as president.

TAPPER: But Carter's devotion to service did not end with his presidency. The former peanut farmer dedicated his energy to humanitarian work, building homes for the poor even as he neared his 95th birthday.

CARTER: I happen to be a Christian, and it's a practical way to put my religious beliefs into practical use.

TAPPER: While he continued to refer to himself humbly --

CARTER: I'm a Sunday school teacher, but I have a lot of people that confide in me.

TAPPER: President Carter and his namesake, Carter Center, touched the lives of millions. CARTER: Well, work at the Carter Center has been, I'd say, more

personally gratifying to me.

TAPPER: Founded in 1982 as part of his presidential library, the Carter Center has worked to ensure the fairness of more than 100 elections in nearly 40 countries and is credited with virtually eliminating diseases like Guinea worm that had long burdened parts of Africa.

CARTER: Guinea worm is probably one of the oldest diseases remembered by human beings. It's in the bible. We think it's a fiery serpent.

TAPPER: For his work, Jimmy Carter earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. In addition to his philanthropic work, Jimmy Carter was a prolific author. He published more than 25 books, touching on his belief in God, country, and kindness.

You only have to have two loves in your life, he wrote, for God and for the person in front of you at any particular time.

The person with Carter most was his wife, Rosalynn, who worshiped alongside him for more than seven decades.

CARTER: When I'm overseas, or when she is, we read the same passage in the bible and we kind of, you know, communicate silently.

TAPPER: Even when cancer threatened to take Mr. Carter from his wife and from the life he loved, he kept his faith and looked again to God.

CARTER: Now I feel you know that it's in the hands of God whom I worship, and I'll be prepared for anything that comes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: The world is certainly mourning his loss, nowhere more deeply than in his home state of Georgia.

CNN's Rafael Romo is live in Atlanta with more reaction.

Well, what are you hearing tonight from people there?

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, to begin with, Anderson, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has already ordered flags across the state to be flown at half-staff. We have heard from the political leadership across the state praising the former president, of course. But we've also seen a lot of regular people coming down here to the Carter Center, where we are, to bring flowers. Some people came here to light some candles, and even a gentleman who came and placed a jar of peanuts in front of the Carter Center sign behind me to honor the peanut farmer who became the 39th president of the United States.

[20:35:01]

And this institution behind me, Anderson, is very significant because after leaving the White House, he came back to Georgia and in partnership with Emory University here in Atlanta, he founded the Carter Center, which allowed him to keep on working on some of the causes that were near to his heart, including promoting democracy, fighting disease across the world, and also seeking international peace.

Just a few moments ago, I had an opportunity to talk to Craig Withers. He is the vice president for overseas operations here at the Carter Center. I asked him, how is he going to remember the life and legacy of Jimmy Carter, and this is what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CRAIG WITHERS, VP OF OVERSEAS OPERATIONS, THE CARTER CENTER: The first thing that comes to mind it was a life well-lived, highly principled, stuck to those principles. He would apply them in different settings, in different ways, but he always adhered to those principles. When I think of him, I think of someone who was very intelligent, very insightful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMO: And of course, Anderson, President Carter is respected and admired around the world, but nothing compares to the love and pride that people here in Georgia feel about the 39th president of the United States -- Anderson.

COOPER: Yes. Rafael Romo, thanks very much.

I want to turn now to an expert on the life and legacy of the 39th president, joining me now is CNN contributor and President Carter biographer, Kai Bird. He's the author of "The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter."

Kai, in what way do you see him as an outlier?

KAI BIRD, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Oh, in every way. From the time he was a little boy growing up in Plains, and that Village Archer down the road. You know, he was an outlier. He was the only white boy in Archer, in that little village. He as a politician, he was always the outlier. He was a southern white man, but a liberal. Almost a secret liberal at times in his early career. And -- but he had, from his childhood experiences, you know, he just had not a racial bone in his body.

He understood race. He was very comfortable going into a black southern Baptist African church. He was an outlier in this way as well. And this is very important. As a president he was extremely ambitious. You have to be ambitious to be able to do that grueling campaign and win. And he wanted the power. But once he had the power, he was determined to do good and to ignore the politics.

So that was an unusual presidency. He took on a series of tough issues. People forget this. He was actually a very accomplished president in terms of legislation and in terms of his foreign policy. Jake Tapper, in his set up there, you know, alluded to a lot of these accomplishments in foreign policy, Camp David, but, you know, he took on climate change. He took on the environment. He took on healthcare. (CROSSTALK)

COOPER: If memory serves me right, he installed solar panels at the White House.

BIRD: That's exactly right. He was an early proponent of solar power. Put them on the roof of the White House. And, of course, Ronald Reagan came along and took them down. And a few years ago, Carter built -- devoted several thousand acres of his farmland in Georgia to a solar farm that now provides power for much of Southern Georgia and in particular, Plains. It's an extraordinary, you know, he was way ahead of his time on all these issues.

COOPER: We were looking earlier, I mean, Jake was talking about the importance of faith in his life. It's something he grew up in. It's a tradition he continued. His father, you know, had taught at the church. He continued to teach Sunday school. That was something he did his entire life.

BIRD: Absolutely. And, you know, his presidency is defined by integrity, by his pride in telling the truth. You know, famously he ran in 1976 and part of his stump speech on the campaign was, I will never tell you a lie. And at that point, his longtime lawyer, a smart, jovial country lawyer from South Georgia, Charlie H. Kirbo, turned to someone in the campaign and said, well, there goes the liar vote.

And yet Carter was serious about this. You know, he didn't want to lie to us. He wanted to tell the truth.

[20:40:03]

He, you know, his presidency was scandal free. There was no sex scandal. There were no indictments. There were, you know, it was, in fact, just the opposite. He took the hit politically for doing a lot of tough things, like passing the Panama Canal Treaty, which now I guess the incoming president wants to take back. It's an extraordinary reversal.

COOPER: Yes.

BIRD: But, Carter was, you know, known for being a humanitarian and a man of complete integrity. And I think we're going to miss him.

COOPER: Well, certainly his life post after the White House was all about integrity and that. And we'll talk more about that in the coming hours.

Kai Bird, thank you.

Our breaking news coverage continues. When we come back Jimmy Carter, the oldest living president, has died at the age of 100. We'll take a look at his time in the Oval Office and the impact he had after leaving the White House when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROSALYNN CARTER, FORMER FIRST LADY: How has your long and vibrant marriage enriched your life and work?

CARTER: How would you answer it first?

R. CARTER: Oh, well, I don't know.

(LAUGHTER)

R. CARTER: I've been married all of my life almost. And I don't know how it could have been enriched more if it had not been for Jimmy Carter.

CARTER: I think if we hadn't had a good and vibrant and active marriage, we couldn't have had -- I couldn't have been president and we couldn't have had the Carter Center.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: And President Jimmy Carter was married to the love of his life, Rosalynn Carter, for over 77 years. They were married on July 7th, 1946. And she was, as she said, by his side during and after his presidency. They were always together.

Joining us now is CNN contributor Kate Andersen Brower. Kate wrote this article for CNN, headlined, "What Made the Carter's Marriage Magic?"

So what was it? What -- I mean, 77 years, how did they -- we were talking earlier. I hadn't realized that it was Jimmy Carter's mom who was the midwife who delivered Rosalynn Carter. So he knew her her entire life.

KATE ANDERSEN BROWER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. I mean, he was 3 years old when she was born. And, you know, he would lean over the crib and saw her, and she was very good friends with his sister. And, you know, they got married so young. She was 18. He was 21. This was just at the end of World War Two. And they were a team. And it wasn't always easy. I mean, the thing I love about them is their honesty about how difficult marriage could be at times.

They wrote a book together, and she said it was the closest they ever came to getting a divorce because there was so much stress and it got so tense. She would write a few pages and they would pass them back and forth to their editor with just R and J on them, and wouldn't even pass them to each other. They wrote the book up that way.

So they were just real, humble, down-to-earth people, grew up in a small, you know, Georgia town. And I think it's remarkable that they went back there, too, and were really devoted to keeping Plains thriving. And that's something that I know that President Carter was really, you know, invested in and wants to make sure that the town still, you know, survives. And the Carter Center continues well after they're both gone. COOPER: Rosalynn early on was a champion for mental health issues and

sort of trying to normalize it in the public space, talking about mental health issues, which was very much ahead of her time. It seemed like they did everything together.

ANDERSEN BROWER: Oh, yes. I mean, they never went to bed angry with each other. They were, it's interesting. I interviewed both of them together, and she was much more blunt than he was. You know, I -- it was during President Trump's first term and I asked him what he thought of Trump and he said, you know, all presidents have lied. And I'm just disappointed, like, I've been with other presidents.

And Rosalynn kind of cut him off and said, Jimmy, this is much worse. You know this is different. And I found that really intriguing that she spoke her mind and wasn't afraid to be herself. And I think he valued that in her, too. And they would have these weekly lunches where she would go and sit with him and bring him all the concerns she was hearing from people around the country.

She's a lot easier to talk to. People get very, you know, nervous around the president, and they feel like they could talk to Rosalynn Carter. And she saw herself kind of like Eleanor Roosevelt in that way, that she could go out and bring him back the news of how people were really feeling.

COOPER: And what do you think her impact on his presidency was?

ANDERSEN BROWER: I mean, you have to think Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a judge, that was a huge nomination for him. He, I mean, obviously he didn't know at the time she would become a Supreme Court justice one day, but he did have a very diverse group of women, people of color that he nominated. And you have to think that she had some role in that. They were both aghast at segregation. They were both socially liberal, which is really interesting because he was a born again.

And I just come back to the fact, like he's the first president. And I think one of the only who was inaugurated with his nickname, Jimmy. It wasn't James. He wanted people to call him Jimmy. And I think that says a lot about the kind of person he was. He didn't want to be put on this pedestal. This was the post-Watergate era. This was, you know, the people's president.

That famous scene of them walking down after the inauguration really sticks with me that they were -- he was a man of the people in many ways. And he practiced what he preached, which is unusual.

COOPER: Kate Andersen Brower, thanks so much.

We'll have more on our breaking news in the death of former president Jimmy Carter when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:53:56]

COOPER: Welcome back. Our breaking news coverage of the death of former president Jimmy Carter continues.

Nearly two years after being put into hospice care, Mr. Carter died Sunday at 100 years old. But his legacy really only grew after he left the White House. And despite a shortened political career, he described him as being, quote, "as blessed as any human being in the world." Former president Carter spoke with CNN's Larry King in 1998 about aging and his thoughts on death.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KING: When we age, the fear of death, there's no other way to put this, it just seems logical to fear it. It's unknown. It's dark. We ain't interviewed anyone ever come back. Do you think about it? Do you think about dying?

CARTER: One of the chapters in my book is about the inevitability with which we have to face the end of our life on earth, and I tried to reassure the readers not only saying almost exactly what Billy Graham did, the people with deep religious faith don't fear death, and I don't fear death.

KING: Don't fear death.

[20:55:06]

CARTER: Don't fear death. But another thing is, if you're an agnostic and don't have the faith that Billy Graham and I seem to share, then how do you approach the inevitability of death --

KING: With worry.

CARTER: With a minimal burden on your own family, both psychologically and financially? And I use it as an example. Maybe this is not quite fair. The members of my own family, my mother died peacefully with the kids around her bed, and she and my brother Billy retained their sense of humor to the last breath, you might say.

My sister ruth was an evangelist and deeply religious. She was completely at ease when she died, and my sister Gloria was a motorcyclist. She was surrounded by bikers who were on their way to the races in Florida. And when she died, she -- her funeral procession was a hearse and 37 Harley Davidsons in front and on her tombstone it's called she rides in Harley heaven. So all of them retain kind of a sense of humor toward the end of life.

KING: But, you, no fear?

CARTER: No, I don't have any fear of death. I'm not prepared to die. I want to live as long as I can and enjoy life and enjoy the companionship.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news. COOPER: And good evening.