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CNN Live Event/Special

The State Funeral Of President Jimmy Carter. Aired 5:30-6p ET

Aired January 07, 2025 - 17:30   ET

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

[17:30:00]

(SINGING)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: So the leaders, Democratic and Republican of the House of Representatives, are going to lay wreaths at President Carter's casket right now. You see on the bottom right of your screen. To the left, House Speaker newly reelected Mike Johnson of Louisiana. And to his right, Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

Next, the Vice President of the United States, who also has a ceremonial role as the President of the U.S. Senate, will deliver a wreath. President Biden will be delivering a eulogy on Thursday of President Carter's memorial service. There she is with the Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff.

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MARGARET GRUN KIBBEN, HOUSE CHAPLAIN: Would you pray with me? Holy and loving God, receive into your eternal joy your good and faithful servant, James Earl Carter, Jr. Reward him richly and grant him your own well done for his humble and honorable life, worth far more than the many accolades and attributions we have gladly given. May President Jimmy Carter now rest from his labors and be received into the embrace of your everlasting arms.

And when the ceremony and fanfare due this man of character and compassion fades into history, when the processions and parades have dispersed, leave with us, O God, the lasting impression and inspiration of a life well lived. Ignite in us the same passion for public service, the courage to champion the underserved, the strength to bear as faithfully the weight of the call to which you have called each one of us to do as justly, to love mercy as unreservedly, to walk as humbly with you as we have witnessed in the testimony of President Jimmy Carter's life of faithfulness.

We offer our prayers in the name of the one whom Jimmy Carter would have known to be the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega, his rock and our redeemer. Amen.

TAPPER: All right, so that is it looks like the end of the proceeding for the day. The president's grown children are approaching their father's casket. There we see Chip and Jack and Jeff, Amy Carter was there earlier. I don't see her, right. Oh, there she is right there. Amy Carter in front there, looking at their father's casket. [17:45:12]

In about an hour or so, after the dignitaries in the Capitol rotunda have had their opportunity to pay their respects to the 39th President, it will be open to the public, to members of the public who will be able to pay their respect to. And I can't think of anything more fitting. And I knowing the little I know about Jimmy Carter compared to the august individuals on my panel, I -- that probably Jim Fallows, former head speechwriter for President Carter. That probably will mean more, it would mean more to him wherever he is.

JAMES FALLOWS, FORMER CHIEF SPEECHWRITER FOR PRESIDENT CARTER: Indeed. And about what we just heard, I would like to make a secular point connected to a spiritual point.

TAPPER: Please do.

FALLOWS: The secular point is most of us in the business of storytelling. We know that people understand the world through stories. And the time when we've had so many stories of people doing the -- the convenient thing, the short sighted thing, the weak thing, to have the story of this man's life is really important. I think we heard that was part of what Vice President Harris was talking about.

The secular point is we know that Jimmy Carter was a man of profound faith with his -- with his Christian faith. It's underappreciated how he was a man of all faiths. He tried always to address Islam and Judaism and Hinduism and all the rest. I think probably what he would have chosen for this moment is the Jewish sentiment. May his memory be a blessing.

STUART EIZENSTAT, FORMER CHIEF WHITE HOUSE DOMESTIC POLICY ADVISER, CARTER ADMIN.: Yes, Jim's point is very important. He did embrace other religions. For example, he came to our Passover Seder just two weeks after he had negotiated the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. It was so moving to be with the person who 25 years, 2,500 years earlier, the Israelites fled from Egypt and here he had negotiated the peace with them. He stayed with the entire Seder. He also was the first president to light a Hanukkah Menorah, the first. And he created the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

ANITA MCBRIDE, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF TO LAURA BUSH: I have one actually to add to that as well. Here, this Born Again Baptist was the first president to invite a pope to come to the White House in 1979, John Paul II. And we did not have diplomatic relations with the Vatican yet. That didn't happen until later, until the Reagan administration. So to your point about embracing all faiths, that's a great example.

TAPPER: That's really beautiful.

MCBRIDE: Yes.

TAPPER: The notion that -- that his faith meant so much. But -- but John King said earlier he never -- he never pushed his faith on anybody. MCBRIDE: Right.

TAPPER: It was obviously important to him, but then also just the deep recognition of other faiths. Jim Fallows, as the former speechwriter, head speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, what do you think he would have made of the speeches in tribute to him today that we heard from the Republican leader John Thune, the House Speaker Mike Johnson, and of course the Vice President Kamala Harris?

FALLOWS: I think you would have appreciated the way in which the two Republican leaders paid respect to the life he had lived, the example he said. I think you would have taken even deeper pleasure from Vice President Harris's assessment of what he did as president and the farsighted way in which he in the environmental realm and human rights in appointing women and -- and non-whites to the judiciary, the ways in which he was a pioneer. So I -- I bet he would have had an ascending curve of, you know, liking them more and more as they went on.

TAPPER: And -- and one thing we know from the family, and I interviewed Jason Carter, his grandson, right after it happened, but he was, and he lasted much longer than this, but he was in his final year. He could not wait to vote for Kamala Harris, I'm sure not only because of her Democratic and progressive politics, but also being a woman and being an African American. He could not wait. He voted for her early via absentee ballot in Georgia and then, you know, hung around for three more months.

EIZENSTAT: So, Jake, there were eight women on the federal bench when he came into office. There were 41 when he left.

TAPPER: Amazing.

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: And you know, just talking about the scene that we are looking at right now, we just saw members of the very, very large Carter clan coming and paying tribute to their father, grandfather, great grandfather, uncle, but doing so surrounded by Republicans and Democrats. And look, these days we can't take this kind of scene for granted.

The fact that you did have not only the Vice President who is of course a member of Jimmy Carter's party, someone who just reminded us that Jimmy Carter really had wanted to become president, but leaders on the Republican side of the aisle who didn't have to talk about policies or anything of that nature because they were able to talk about the man who he was, particularly in the 40 something years, almost half a century post presidency, and the way that he lived his life.

[17:50:12]

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR & SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, James, I -- I'm thinking about what you just said about the stories that really drive how we remember and understand people. And I do think that in this time since he left the presidency, it's been a time to -- to understand him a lot better as a -- as a person, the through line of -- of his life being somebody who wanted to make things better.

And so much of the conversation politically about Jimmy Carter is often about disagreements with policy decisions that he made and also about the fact that he was not reelected. But he -- his motivations, I think, are important to emphasize in this moment.

He was someone who started his life not aspiring to be President of the United States. And in an era in which we have so many people who spend their entire lifetimes just trying to accumulate power, it's something that I think people have a hard time understanding. And maybe some people deride him for it.

But I think that is what is different about Jimmy Carter. And when you dig into his story as a person and as a human being, I -- I think the humility the -- of -- of who he was as a person isn't just a trope. It actually is a real thing. I also think about the Republicans who had a lot to say today. And -- and, you know, as I'm looking -- I -- I was looking over a lot of Jimmy Carter's legacy.

It struck me that a lot of things that he supported and did, they would have supported --

MCBRIDE: Deregulation.

PHILLIP: Deregulation.

TAPPER: It's just amazing thing I wanted to talk about that --

PHILLIP: Yes.

TAPPER: -- deregulation.

PHILLIP: He was a supporter of coal. He was someone who talked about reducing American dependence on foreign oil. He -- he was a devout Christian. He did proselytize among his friends and -- and colleagues and -- when he was in the White House. Some of those things get forgotten in -- in the mix up of today's politics. But that's part of the story of this man.

TAPPER: So you were talking, one of you was talking about things that Jimmy Carter did in terms of the military that you didn't put it this way, but -- but Reagan gets -- gets credit for doing, then the de -- deregulation actually much more so even. He really -- the reason that we can all book airline reservations as easy as we are can and compare prices is because he did a complete deregulation of the airline industry. And that's something that I didn't catch if Thune or Johnson mentioned it, but -- but that is something that conservatives, indeed all Americans, can embrace in a lot of ways.

EIZENSTAT: Very interesting. Senator -- former Senator Phil Gramm from Texas wrote a beautiful op-ed in "The Wall Street Journal" on his hundredth birthday saying that the deregulation of airlines, of trucking, of rail, of telecommunications and even beer, we have --

BASH: Yes. Right.

EIZENSTAT: -- every time those deregulated beer.

PHILLIP: Microbrewery.

EIZENSTAT: Was -- it -- it made this country a more competitive, innovative country. And on your point, so much on bipartisanship, what I thought was so beautiful about this and why he would have enjoyed it so much, he worked at this bipartisanship. He had regular breakfast meetings with the Republican leadership --

TAPPER: Yes.

EIZENSTAT: -- as he did with the Democratic leadership.

TAPPER: The Senate Republican leader, Howard Baker, the House Republican leader, John Rose.

EIZENSTAT: John Rose.

TAPPER: Pretty remarkable. We see members of the Biden Cabinet who have been coming up, that is, of course, the Mayor of Washington, D.C. Muriel Bowser at the casket of right now. But -- but -- that -- bi -- those bipartisan efforts that he made, you know, worked in some areas, didn't work in others. Jim, you were talking about how Republicans. Oh, here we have the two senators from Georgia. And that must have, Jimmy Carter must have gotten a kick. Not only that the two senators of Georgia were Democrats, but also that one was Jewish and one was African American. I'm sure as a -- as a progressive and somebody who believed in diversity, that -- that he was tickled by that.

But -- but Jim, the bipartisanship people don't remember it now. And Jimmy Carter isn't necessarily remembered for that, but it was a big part of what he tried to do.

FALLOWS: It -- it was and sort of the most intense battles he had were within the Democratic Party, which had huge -- huge majorities in the legislature. Then I wanted to mention two other points quickly, if I could, about Carter's faith. It's worth remembering he left the Southern Baptist movement because of their position on women. Now that was a very dramatic thing and consistent for him -- him to do.

The other is that we haven't talked about his role as an election monitor and democracy monitor in his post presidency. One of his grandsons, Joshua Carter, I was at an event, not -- not Jason, who was the politician but Joshua, was giving a speech about six weeks ago about what his grandfather would say about the state of American democracy right now. And it was a cautionary tale.

[17:55:01]

TAPPER: Stay with CNN for live coverage of the funeral service for President James Earl Carter at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday. We'll be covering that starting at 8:00 a.m. Wolf Blitzer has more news in The Situation Room after this quick break. We'll see you tomorrow.

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