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Former President Jimmy Carter Dead at 100; 179 Dead, 2 Survivors After South Korean Jeju Air Crash; Federal Appeals Court Upholds $5 Million Sexual Abuse Verdict Against Trump in E. Jean Carroll Case. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired December 30, 2024 - 10:00   ET

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

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, good morning to you. You are live in the CNN Newsroom. I'm Pamela Brown in Washington. Jim Acosta has the morning off.

And this morning, the world is remembering the extraordinary life of Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, who became the nation's 39th president and then redefined what life after the White House could look like. Carter passed away yesterday surrounded by family. He was 100 years old.

The southern statesman only served a single term as president, but leaves behind a legacy as a passionate humanitarian and human rights pioneer. People in Plains say they'll miss their hometown hero and friends.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I know that many of us have spoken with him over the years about what he wanted his influence to be in Plains, and it was just as another neighbor. It's a great loss for our world. He's one of the greatest men of peace but also one of the greatest friends to the world. So, we will miss him, sort of.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, I'm very sad that he's gone. I think, what more could he have done? He lived a very full life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: The former president and his wife, Rosalynn, found the Carter Center in 1982, a nonprofit that works to promote peace and freedom around the world. She passed away last year. They have been married for 77 years.

President Biden remembered Carter as a man of great character and courage and proclaimed January 9th as a national day of mourning.

CNN's Rafael Romo is at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Rafael, the center was such an important part of the Carter's life after they left Washington. How are people there remembering him? RAFAEL ROMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, let me tell you that when it comes to love and affection for the former president, the people of Georgia are second to none. And, yes, the governor of the state, Brian Kemp, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, has ordered flags to be flown at half staff. Yes, there has been numerous statements of condolences and praise from the political leadership here in Georgia, but probably the most moving thing that we have seen here at the Carter Center is how regular people have decided to come here to leave flowers, to light candles to honor the memory of Jimmy Carter. Pamela, there was a person who came down and left a jar of peanuts to honor the memory of the peanut farmer who rose to become the 39th president of the United States.

And in the last hour had an opportunity to talk to Laura Neuman. She is the director for peace programs here at the Carter Center and somebody who worked alongside Jimmy Carter for 25 years, also worked very closely with former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, and she spoke with us about the many accomplishments of Jimmy Carter. This is what she had to say. Let's take a listen.

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LAURA NEUMAN, SENIOR ADVISER FOR PEACE PROGRAMS, THE CARTER CENTER: He was a humanitarian. He was a human rights advocate. He was one of the first to turn his back on dictators who were not supporting human rights. He believed strongly in human dignity. He made sure at the Carter Center that we didn't only focus on the highest levels of government, but also the individuals who are most impacted.

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ROMO: And, Pamela, we're now learning about the funeral plans from the Carter family and the Carter Center. We know now that on January 9th, the official state funeral in Washington will be held. There will also be public observances to be held here in Atlanta and D.C. And, finally, at a date to be determined, there will be a private burial in Carter's hometown of Plains, Georgia. Again, many people expressing their condolences here in Atlanta and Georgia. Now back to you.

BROWN: Rafael, thank you so much and join us now for more on the life and legacy of Jimmy Carter is Presidential Historian Douglas Brinkley.

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He is the author of The Unfinished Presidency, Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House.

What is your defining memory of Jimmy Carter?

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, I got to know him quite well working on that book. I traveled with President Carter to Haiti with the whole Aristide showdown, accompanied by Colin Powell and Sam Nunn. I went with him to Israel, and one evening he'd have dinner with Simone Perez. And the next day, we were in the tunnels in Gaza City looking into find the headquarters of Yasser Arafat to have dinner. Carter was trying to create a two-state solution very artistly in the 1990s, early 2000s.

But the main takeaway of him, beyond his Christianity, is the love of the outdoors, fly fishing. He loved the property all over Sumter County. He knew every rock and nook and cranny of that county and stories he would tell about Georgia. You know, he had relatives that were in the Revolutionary War in Georgia and he savored those and he'd go to Andersonville where the Confederate prison was. And he, as a boy, had a pet alligator he got from the Okefenokee Swamp and FDRs little White House wasn't very far away from where Carter grew up. And he had the memories of what it was like to have Roosevelt in the neighborhood.

So, he was a person that was, yes, a great global statesperson and the world's going to honor him. But he also was down home all about the state of Georgia he loved so much.

BROWN: He certainly did. And it is so interesting when you look at his post-White House life and how much that really shaped his legacy. I know you sort of touched on some of it, but he had a remarkable life post-White House.

BRINKLEY: Well, you know, we don't have a defined role for our ex- presidents, like in Britain they have a House of Lords. So, here we have to look at which ones that did something after they left the White House, like John Quincy Adams went to serve in Congress for 16 years, fighting for the abolition of slavery, or William Howard Taft went on to be a Supreme Court Justice.

Carter wanted to make peace in the world. And he saw the opening being that the United Nations can't, by jurisdiction, intervene in civil wars in countries. So, if there's a civil war, say in Sudan, Carter thought he can go there and try to serve as a mediating force.

And this led to this concept of parachuting for peace. He would talk to anybody. He would talk to a dictator, whether in Bosnia, Herzegovina, or a one in North Korea, anything in the name of peace. And I was moved and privileged to look at his papers, his diaries and private papers that aren't open to the public, and many were written to all sorts of unsavory characters around the world asking for the release of political prisoners, people that were fighting for democracy, that were arrested in jail. Carter would find out about it from Helsinki Watch or Amnesty International, and then he'd do a plea to release that person from jail with quite stunning results.

BROWN: Your book also focused on you know, the beautiful relationship of Carter and his late wife. They were married for 77 years. And it just seems like when you look at all the quote, like what he said about her over the years, I mean, they were just so happy. I mean, he really cracked the code of how to have a loving, beautiful, happy marriage. It's incredible, you know, when you look at that and the impact their relationship had on his life.

BRINKLEY: There's no question about it. And, you know, the Rosalynn Carter was great friends with John and Betty Pope. John Pope has recently passed away but he was in the funeral business. And they really kind of would hold up and invented the Carter campaign in 1976. Virtually nobody thought he had a chance of pulling that off but he had tenacity. And he'd go to Iowa with the idea, I'm going to shake every hand in the state, I'm going to knock on every door. And when he got a good result out of Iowa, the peanut brigade his family and friends, went into a small state, New Hampshire, and just trailblazed, were offering testimonial to the integrity of Jimmy Carter.

And then the Democratic Party didn't like Carter. They wanted to get rid of him. There was an ABC movement in 1976, Anybody But Carter. And they started throwing people out. I mean, George Wallace and Carter knocked him off, Jerry Brown of California, Carter knocked him off. Frank Church of Idaho, Carter knocked him off, Birch Bayh of Indiana, Carter knocked him off. He was just people bought into the fact that he wasn't part of the morass of Washington, D.C. in the long 60s, that he didn't have his fingerprints on anything Watergate related or Vietnam War, Supreme Court packings or the assassinations of the 60s.

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He kind of was a clean one-off or an agent to represent it to the public, old fashioned rural values, southern accent and a very fine one term as governor.

And it's a book he wrote called, Why Not the Best, an autobiography that he used as a tool to introduce them to people. And he made fast friends. I mean, he got the endorsement of Rolling Stone Magazine from Hunter S. Thompson. He had befriended the Allman Brothers Band out of Macon, Georgia, where Capricorn Records was at. And he used that connection to his benefit. He plays softball with Willie Nelson. And so he grew here. And his only real mistake and a big mistake in running is when he did an interview for Playboy Magazine because Jody Powell and Ham Jordan thought maybe we need he wasn't ranking high with men. Women liked him more than men. And they thought Playboy would work.

And alas, Carter made that slip up of, well, yes, I've lusted in my heart for women before. And it stuck to him. And later in life here, he was 90 and doing a book signing and women would be in line and saying, Mr. President, you can lust in your heart any time for me as a joke. It stayed with him for the rest of his life.

BROWN: Wow, an incredible life, for sure. Douglas Brinkley, thank you so much for helping us better understand Carter's legacy.

BRINKLEY: Thank you.

BROWN: And coming up, new details about that fiery plane crash in South Korea, the pilot's final words before impact, next.

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BROWN: Well, right now, investigators are out the side of a deadly plane crash in South Korea. Here's what we're learning about Sunday's disaster. 179 people were killed, but two crew members survived. South Korean officials say the pilot issued mayday calls and used the terms bird strike and go-around before the crash landing. The plane was a Boeing 737-800. Video appears to show the plane without its landing gear fully deployed. The National Transportation Safety Board, FAA and Boeing are helping South Korean officials with this investigation.

Well, family members assembled at the airport, some giving DNA samples to help identify victims. This is the deadliest aviation disaster in South Korea since 1997.

So, let's get some analysis on these developments. David Soucie joins us now. He is a CNN safety analyst and former FAA inspector.

David, we saw that video that appeared to show the plane hitting the runway without its landing gear fully deployed. What does that video tell you?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, it's, there's obviously a lot of things went wrong all at the same time. There's a couple of reasons that gear may have been up. One would be the mechanical failure of it, and there was notice before that the pilot had made a note about the landing gear when he took off. But as he approached the airport without an engine from the from the bird strike, it could possibly be that he left that gear up intentionally to try to gain enough speed and range to make it to the airport as well. So, there's still a lot of unanswered questions, and luckily we have the black boxes to go to for those answers.

BROWN: So, talk to us a little bit more about a possible bird strike here and how that might have played a role in all of this.

SOUCIE: So, some people were saying before that the bird strike has something to do with the landing gear going down. And in my experience, I haven't seen that ever happened before. A bird strike at most would cause that engine to go into flames or to fail, and it appears that's what happened. There's some videos showing that that may have happened in flight. So, I believe that the pilot was dealing with that bird strike.

Now, if the right engine had gone out, it's very, very rare for a flock of birds to get into both engines and cause that failure and you can tell that there is still power on the one engine as it made its approach. But one engine isn't always enough to get you where you want to go. So, there is -- again, there's so many questions about what happened, but the bird strike is pretty sure that did occur and how the pilot reacted to that bird strike is still the part that's in question,

BROWN: Right. I mean, so does it make sense to you that you would do an emergency landing and go-around because of a bird strike like that, if it just took out one engine?

SOUCIE: Yes, because you have to think about when you come in for a landing, the approach setup is extremely important. There's airspeed that you have to set your airplane to. You have to understand the angle and the descent that you're coming in at. So, all of that has to be set up miles and miles and miles ahead of the airport. So, if you come in and things aren't right, that if you get a bird strike, or if there's any anomaly that happens during that phase of approach, you talk about doing a go-around. So, what that means is that you. You have your throttle spec, you have everything set.

But when you get down closer to the airport, you can do a go-around. There's actually a button that says, go-around on the airplane. And when you push that, it throttles back up and you get airspeed to go around and make another approach so that you can set it up properly.

When there's some anomaly that happens, it can set that off very badly. And in this case, it looks like it did because they didn't land at the front of the airport where they should have it. They landed further down, so their airspeeds were too hot, they were too fast, and then that's why they careened off the airport the way that they did.

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BROWN: And what do you make of the construction of the airport and that concrete wall, you know, where they went into?

SOUCIE: Yes, that's something that I'm looking into right now. Airport designs require that the aircraft can go off the runway at a higher speed and that it has enough room and enough area with no obstacles to continue to slow itself down or to let the friction stop the aircraft. And that's in the airport design manuals that are out there by the FAA and are accepted worldwide. So, those regulations, I'm looking at them right now, but in my mind, there's no reason to have had a concrete structure the size that they did just off that runway. And that would have made a big difference in how this ended.

BROWN: You have to wonder how many lives would have been saved had that not been there, which is just awful to even think about.

David Soucie, thank you so much.

SOUCIE: Of course, thank you for having me.

BROWN: And Just into CNN, a federal appeals court makes a major decision in one of the cases against President-elect Donald Trump. That's next.

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BROWN: And just into CNN, a federal appeals court has upheld a jury's verdict finding Donald Trump's sexually abused E Jean Carroll. Libel -- he's libel for that, according to this finding, and denied his request for a new trial. Trump has repeatedly denied that he sexually abused Carroll, saying in a September press conference that it was a, quote, made up, fabricated story.

CNN's Kara Scannell joins us now. Kara, so what does this mean for the case?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So, Pam, this means that E. Jean Carroll is one step closer to getting that $5 million that the jury awarded her in both compensatory and other damages. You know, this was a case that went to trial where the jury found that Donald Trump had sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll for an encounter they had where she alleges that he essentially raped her in a department store in the mid 1990s. And the jury found that he had sexually abused her one step short of that.

But Trump had appealed it, saying that the judge had made some errors and allowing certain evidence in, including the testimony of two other women who had alleged that it completely separate encounters with Donald Trump that he had sexually assaulted them.

So, this appeals court now has issued the 77-page opinion in which they said that they don't believe the trial judge had abused his discretion by allowing in the testimony of those two women, among other challenges. And they say that this verdict is upheld, that Donald Trump's rights were not impugned, saying that even if the judge had made mistakes, the strength of the evidence presented by Carroll's team found that was enough to satisfy this and did not warrant giving Donald Trump a new trial in this case.

Now, you'll also remember there was a separate trial for just defamation that was brought by E. Jean Carroll. That case also went to trial. The jury in that case awarded her $83.3 million. Now, that verdict is still up on appeal. No decision on that one yet.

But I've reached out to both E. Jean Carroll's camp and Donald Trump's camp. No responses yet. I mean, Donald Trump's team could try to bring this to the Supreme Court, though the Supreme Court would not have to take the case. Pam?

BROWN: All right. Kara Scannell, thank you so much.

President-elect Donald Trump wants a say in TikTok's future in the U.S. He is asking the Supreme Court to pause the upcoming nationwide ban on the app so that his administration can look into a negotiated resolution. The ban is set to take effect the day before his inauguration.

The Biden administration says TikTok poses grave national security concerns.

CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig joins us now. Elie, do you expect the justices will grant Trump's request here?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: I don't think so, Pam, if I had to guess, and here's why. This is a bizarre request by Donald Trump. We've never seen anything quite like it. Essentially, what he says is, Hey, Supreme Court, hang on. You don't have to make this precipitous ruling. Give me a chance when I take office to try to work out a deal.

Now, in the non-legal world, in the business world, perfectly reasonable, logical thing to ask for, but the problem is that's just not what the Supreme Court does. They don't step out of their role as judges and justices to enable parties to try to work out business deals on the side. So, if I had to guess, I think the Supreme Court will decline Donald Trump's request to put this thing on hold. I think the Supreme Court will hear oral argument as scheduled next week and then we'll issue a ruling.

BROWN: And it's interesting too, because he's arguing, look, you know, I'm about to take office as president, let me handle this as president, right? Don't do anything before that. And as you pointed out, there are oral arguments over this case, walk us through how that might go.

HONIG: Yes, so the fundamental arguments here made by the challengers, made by TikTok itself, is that this law violates the First Amendment, that this is a platform, a social media platform, where 170 million Americans, that's almost half the population, is involved, and you can't just shut it down because of some speculative national security risk.

The response, though, from the Biden administration supporting the ban is that this is an issue that's been considered carefully by Congress. A bipartisan majority of Congress passed this law, and that it's necessary to protect national security because TikTok, according to the Biden administration, is a threat because it subjects the user data of 100-plus million Americans to Chinese control and because the Chinese government has the ability to manipulate the content.

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So, it's really a balance between national security interests on one hand, the First Amendment on the other.