it's it's imbecilic, and the solicitor general of the united states comes out of the box losing credibility with the justices, i think, is trump saying, this is a quote, with his expertise can fix on this and put everything on hold. a supreme court can't put things on hold. congress says it goes into effect january 19th, if there's a legal infirmity, okay, but there's no provision where the supreme court says the great and powerful donald trump will fix everything, so we'll just counteract what congress says and not let it happen. >>

>> hi, everyone, we are for thi special edition, with the election in the rearview mirror and what promises to be a turbulent year ahead, now might be a good time to take a deep breath and get our bearings, to get really clear about what is coming and what we can do about it. what role we can play however small. that's remember what legendary documentarian, ken burns has said on this program, history doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes, and we have reason to believe that it is probably going to happen when donald trump takes office once again in january, starting with immigration, the president- elect ran on a promise of mass deportations, the convention was blanketed with signs that read mass deportations now, jd vance famously taunted undocumented immigrants telling them to pack your bags, you are

going home in six months. this might also be a good time to remember what our dear friend, rachel maddow likes to say, watch what they do, not what they say and what donald trump did out of the gate was a .2 of the most unapologetic defenders of his draconian and even by trump standards, controversial family separation policy. stephen miller who will be the deputy chief of staff for policy and tom homan who will be the borders are , and when it comes to them, we don't have to guess what they plan to do, tom homan says it all out loud. >> so you are carrying out a targeted operation, grandma is in the house, she is undocumented, does she get arrested, too. >> it depends, we are going to remove people that the judge has ordered to depart. >> is there a way to do this without separating families?

>> of course, families can be deported together. >> why should a child who is an american citizen have to pack up and move to a country that they don't know? >> could the parent an the country illegally and have a child knowing that he had been in the country illegally, they know they have created that crisis. >> the families, including grandma deported, children as collateral damage, as he said. that is what they are saying in all likelihood is coming and what can many of us do with that information? we look to our friend and colleague, jacob who is on the front lines of covering this humanitarian crisis during the first trump presidency, a reporting assignment that brought jacob face-to-face with the children, the kids who were ripped away from their families during the first family separation crackdown. >> i got home, i was home for a couple days and i was at the kids birthday party where i got another call from waldman

saying we are going to let you into the epicenter of separations and that place was called ursula, the central processing center in mcallen, texas. >> i still remember, i was wearing a light blue button- down shirt, i had my moped, that was the time where i saw what had been talked about and rumored in the media, kids locked up in cages, sitting on these concrete or linoleum floors. they thought that showing the world separations through the eyes of people like me, they would scare people that were attempting to come, from coming

and scare congress into allowing them to have more strict immigration laws. >> so you were a tool. >> so, as jacob reported, they thought showing this was the point, so showing the cruelty was also a tool and the voice you heard interviewing jacob is filmmaker errol morris, they teamed up to turn his reporting on the family separation crisis into a new film called separated, i was lucky enough to have jacob and errol join me on this program to discuss what inspired them to make this film and the urgency of recording for prosperity, how unprecedented this policy was. >> this represents something different and something new and it is important to remember and acknowledge that fact when you are separating a two month old nursing infant from his mother,

that is a big, big difference. and you can hear the head of the department of homeland security, the secretary tell us that we are not doing anything unusual, we are just following the law. and why didn't they do this during the obama administration, obama deported a lot of people, why didn't they do this? because they discussed it and decided it was immoral. >> discussed it and decided it was immoral, that is what stopped obama and doesn't stop trump, that is the dividing line. it is possible that it incentivized them. so what happens now? joining us to help answer that question, none other than jacob

saboroff , the author of separated, and we have the immigration rights lawyer with the acu, he argues the challenge to the first trump administrations family separation policy, jacob, i start with you, the book and the film are all done without knowledge that trump would be re-elected, he has been and i wonder if you can just start with what you think your body of reporting will be in the second term, what they have committed to a, the kinds of people that are in place and what with your knowledge and your expertise, you expect them to do with family separation. >> first of all, thank you for doing this special broadcast about this, i think what a republican appointed judge called one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country and i don't think that you can understand what will happen in a second trump term unless you look back at what

happened in the first and simply, you mentioned those signs that we also at the republican national convention, i got to see myself from the floor, that said mass deportation now. the thing that everybody needs to remember and internalize is that mass deportation is family separation, it is just by another name. it is ripping children away from their parents at the border but it is taking parents away from their children and their homes, at their schools, in their communities in a way that it is orders of magnitude larger than the 5500 children who were deliberately taken away from their parents according to the aclu. and positions to human rights said this was torture, the american academy of pediatrics

said it was child abuse and if we think about, and i hope one day all 5500 of those children will be able to tell their story of what the trump administration deliberately did with them, and it is really clear what they deliberately did was harm members, put them in those cages that you see on your screen right now, for no other reason than to scare people from coming to this country because they had some of the most desperate situations on earth and certainly come here for a better life. cleaned in the atlantic, they are looking to supersize what they did in the first term, in a second trump administration. >> when you look at the players on the board and with your knowledge of where their ambitions were stymied, what is your assessment of how capable this new team will be in carrying out mass deportations?

>> both errol morris and i learned in the making of separated, and in the book, that during the first trump term, they wanted to separate maybe as many as 20 or 30,000 children from their parents at the border if they were able to do so and only because of the work of the aclu, of immigration attorneys on the front line, who are as important as any first responder, these are life- saving roles of these people, they are looking out for children and parents that are falling through the cracks of immigration enforcement apparatus, if it wasn't for them, it would have been far worse, and you've got tom homan , saying that family separation , as the intellectual father and was pushing for it as early as the obama admonition, you've got miller who was calling to non-senate confirmed political appointees, low-level people within the government and there

was this coordination on immigration enforcement priorities of the first trump term, what i mean, ripping children apart from their parents and the list goes on, we don't know the full staffing of all of these agencies but there are many of them, the department of homeland security, the department of justice, the department of health and human services, all of them had a hand in what became of the family separation policy and all of them will have a hand again in what happens with parents with children that come to this country. we are talking about literally hundreds of officials potentially that will have the ability to influence in this second term, who some of them may have been a part of the first one, others tried to resist and maybe thrown out of government. all of that has yet to play out. >> this was something i had a chance to talk to both of you this week, and the film makes

clear that even what trump per seems to be a mandate, i think it is debatable whether that is what he has in the second term for what he's talking about here, he was stymied as jacob said by republican appointed judges, just talk about the legal hurdles facing him as he starts with this plan as jacob said, which is a center the family separation by another name. >> i think when people see really egregious stuff, whether it is judges or looking at the legality or the public, i think they will push back and i think you are absolutely right, whatever mandate he has on immigration may be to reform policies, we want reform it if policies and more generally, border policies. when you cross the line, the american public tends to say wait, that is not what we meant. we put the evidence before the judge and they called the policy brittle as jacob said, a shameful period in our history,

we educated them about the cases and i think that is what the public learned and they took to the streets peacefully and said not in our name, so we'll see what happens going forward, the legal hurdles on family separation, we have an ironclad consent decree that says no more family separation, we will see if they try to get around it. but, as jacob pointed out, there's other ways they can go about family separation on a mass scale and force these parents to decide, am i going to take my u.s. citizen child to a country they have never seen before or leave them behind? they have provided an enormous amount of discussion and if a president was to be harsh, they can be harsh but in the past, both democratic and republican administrations have said we don't need to tear families apart, and the trump administration saying we are going to deport millions of

people, we don't care if it is a grandmother or if they have u.s. children citizens. >> for somebody who ran on building a wall which doesn't put the family member here legally in the mind of the voter, to jacob's reporting over the summer, people waved around mass deportations, how far in the fear of the illegal immigrant or asylum seeker or worker, how far do you think we have traveled the country between 16 and 24? >> i think that is the right question, i think we have traveled far, there is more sentiment and i'm depressed about that, i have been doing this three decades and i think this is the worst i have seen but i'm still hopeful there are lines the american public will

not be crossed, and the challenge for us is to talk about the human stories are not just let this be abstract principles. what we saw during the first family separation period was just unconscionable, a little boy was taken away, who had glasses and they took him away but they didn't let him get his glasses, so all day long, the mother was thinking, will they give her another pair of glasses if they break? you know, a little boy being stuffed in a car and the mother could see him as the car drove away. little children just worrying about being taken away in the middle of the night, working with a three-year-old boy who stands by the window every day to look and see if men are going to take him away again, that is what i hope the american public will realize,

these are not just abstract principles, they are real human lives, that doesn't mean we don't reform the system but let's have some amount of humanity where we deal with it. >> it is unbearable to hear about this emotional torture of children in the name of u.s. immigration policy. i wonder what your hopes are for the impact of this film now on the eve of the second trump presidency. >> i think lee said the operative word, humanity, it's an amazing organization in california that takes down to the border, this is about humanity, so they can see for themselves who is impacted by these policies and i will never forget, in the summer of 2018, the days between june 13th and june 20th, from the moment i walked into that 1500 square -- excuse me, 2500 square foot walmart where they were holding 20,000 boys, or when i went into the facility in mcallen,

texas, children locked up in cages, laying on those linoleum floors under blanket, supervised by security contractors, watchtower. i had never seen anything like it and i don't think the american public had ever been exposed to anything like that, certainly not to the degree of the family separation policy and what it led to was not even a bipartisan outrage, it was really universal outrage where people came out into the streets, it did not a political party or persuasion, no demographic barrier, and spoke out about this in a way where everybody, no matter if you are far right or far left, absently condemned with the trump administration was doing to those children and i think sadly, people have wanted to know less about what is going on with their immigration system because of the way that immigration has looked during this last four years, and my

hope is that we can connect to a place where we can have a common sense, clear conversation about who the people are that are coming to this country and why they are coming to this country, they are all fellow human beings and we should treat each other as such. we all did it together in the summer of 2018 and i know we can do it again and that is part of the reason why we made this film to remind people in this moment of what happened, what was possible, and the inspirational, positive sense about how people in the government fought back, and it was the one significant policy reversal of the last trumpet term. he sat in his oval office and signed the order reversing the policy with kirstjen nielsen standing over his shoulder, and that action by the american public is possible again in the face of something like this. >> i'm just looking at your

positivity, but i want you to stick around, i'm going to show more of this film. also ahead, what does this mean right now for the more than 4 million children who are u.s. citizens living for their mom or dad who is undocumented, wondering what is going to happen to their family, if and when donald trump unleashes another family separation crackdown. and a tool that each of us has at our fingertips right now, some public outcry, this inflection point, so keep your eyes on these stories and more, when we continue after this break. don't go anywhere. go anywhere. easy to apply for the whole family. vicks vapostick. and try new vaposhower max for steamy vicks vapors. singer: this is our night!

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>> i'm alex witt, in new york

city, we have some sad breaking news to share with you, former president jimmy carter has died at the age of 100, as you might know, the 39th president started receiving home hospice care in february of last year, he and his wife were married for 77 years before she died, he passes away at the longest living president in u.s. history. and we have a look back at his life and legacy. >> my name is jimmy carter and i'm running for president. >> the election confounded the conventional medical wisdom, until that year, caucuses against his rivals, carter was virtually unknown against his native georgia, he grew up in a farm that lacked electricity and indoor plumbing. he attended the u.s. naval academy, served as a navy lieutenant and then came home to run the family peanut farm.

he met roselyn smith, the woman who would become not only his wife but his closest friend and adviser. carter entered politics using two terms in the georgia state senate. by 1970 he was elected governor and in his address, he made it clear that there was a new breeze blowing from the south. >> the time for racial discrimination is over. >> but outside of georgia, carter remains largely unknown, even stumping the panelist during an appearance of what's my line back in 1973. just a year later, he announced he was running for president. this political outsider and born-again christian was a welcome change for a republic disillusioned with its leaders in the wake of watergate and other scandals, in the general election, carter defeated gerald ford, becoming the first president from the deep south

in almost a century. in the first sign this would be a down-to-earth presidency, jimmy carter walked the entire way from the capitol to the white house during the inauguration. prosperity was in the air. >> there's no way that i or anybody else in the government can solve the energy problem if you are not willing to help. >> once in the white house, his lack of experience in washington politics became a severe handicap, the independent-minded congress failed to approve some of his most important legislative initiatives, and for many, he dealt with matters of foreign policy much more skillfully than he did domestic. he was firm in his commitment to human rights. >> no member of the united nations can plan the mistreatment of its citizens as fully its own business. >> the soviet union sent troops into afghanistan in 1979,

carter responded with punitive measures against the soviets including a trade embargo but one of his actions seemed to anger americans as much as it did the russians. >> i have given notice that the u.s. will not attend the moscow woman fix. >> the major achievement was the signing of camp david at 1978, he brought to the egyptian president together for 11 days, it served as the basis for the treaty signed six months later in washington. jimmy carter faces his toughest test of all when americans were taken hostage in iran of november of 1979, this time either his resolved nor the power of the american government was effective enough in gaining freedom for these hostages. carter's boldest effort met with tragedy in the iranian desert. >> late yesterday i canceled a carefully planned operation which was underway in iran for

the withdrawal of american hostages. >> by making the release of the hostages his goal, he looked at his prospects for the election, things were better at home as the county -- economy continued to deteriorate, carter's popularity plummeted, he blamed the country's problems on a crisis of confidence. his weakness brought a challenge from ted kennedy for the democratic nomination in 1980, carter survived the battle but he went into the fall campaign greatly weakened. his opponent, ronald reagan campaigned tirelessly to restore america to its former position of greatness, jimmy carter lost in a landslide. in 1982, he established the carter center, committed to advancing human rights and promoting democracy around the world. he built houses for the poor and worked for peace in haiti and north korea and bosnia.

>> the bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. >> in 2002, at age 78, carter became only the third u.s. president to be awarded the nobel peace prize, in august of 2015, carter announced the troubling health diagnosis. liver surgery where they removed a 10th of his liver revealed melanoma that had spread to his brain, but a little less than four months later, he revealed at sunday school he was cancer free and his brain scans show any signs or spots. >> they were responding to the treatment and when i went this week they didn't find any cancer at all. >> over the years, despite various health challenges, jimmy carter continued to build houses, to play a role in national politics and to celebrate new milestones.

in 2021, they marked their 75th wedding anniversary. their love story continued until her death two years later, the longest presidential marriage in history, in 2024, carter became the longest living american president, celebrating his 100th birthday, his tireless dedication to humanity and global efforts to preserve freedom all that to a new kind of modern axiom. jimmy carter was one of the best ex-presidents america ever had. jose diaz-balart, msnbc. >> we have peter baker, thank you for being here on this very sad note, michael, i know that we are getting word that jimmy carter passed not even 45

minutes ago so perhaps the white house has not issued an official statement but, give me what you think president biden must be going through right now, thinking about the passage of such a dignified and extraordinary president of the democratic party. >> well, alex, the presidents club is exclusive, only 45 men had ever served as the president, so joe biden will be mourning the loss of his predecessor and somebody with whom he had a very close and long-standing relationship, i think it is worth noting at this time that president biden, as then a young senator in his early 30s was the first lawmaker outside of georgia who endorsed governor carter when he launched his campaign for the presidency in 1976, that was the beginning of a relationship that continued through the years. it was one of great respect and one in which their interests

were largely aligned especially on the issues, especially with foreign policy, both men consider the working class the heartbeat of the democratic party. president biden has spoken with president carter as recently as just in the past year when he attended, his wife's funeral in georgia, at the time president biden saying he did get to speak to him to tell him how much he loved him. we know in his first year, biden made a point to visit georgia, traveling there as a broader trip to georgia to spend some personal time with carter. so the president is going to be mourning this loss, just like so many other americans at this time, both men, members of the one term club, they have had their trials in office and

biden just a little over three weeks from leading the presidency, we know there have been plans in place to honor the life of president carter that will include some services in washington, d.c. and president biden has said he will be delivering a eulogy for president carter when the time comes. >> absently, and we should say that while funeral plans are still being ironed out in terms of detail, they will be released by the joint task force national capital region at some point soon and of course this was not unexpected, and with former president carter 100 years old and we did last see him publicly attending the funeral of his long time and love twice -- wife, he did not look in exquisite health, that is to say the least, but he was there and you could almost feel the pain of her loss radiating from him, but it

was extraordinary to see president biden in attendance and mike has just spoken to their close relationship, do you have any idea the extent to which these two communicated over the years? >> if you mean president carter and president biden, yes, and mike spoke to their relationship with was very important. but he was the first president, the first sitting president to pay a visit to the former president after taking office which he did shortly after his own inauguration in 2021. no other president since carter had paid him that respect, he had been shunted aside by his successors at times and in fairness to them, he made himself a nuisance to them on behalf of issues that he

thought were important, he didn't think they were necessarily concentrating well enough on. so there was always a fraught relationship between carter and his presidential peers, joe biden is the one more than anybody who brought him back into the fold and basically paid him the respect that he believed a former president deserves, especially one who had accomplished what jimmy carter had accomplished. >> it is extraordinary frankly because he was only public service with regard to politics, a few years, just over a decade before he became president, we should note in 1962 he won election to the georgia senate then ran unsuccessfully for the governor of georgia, four years later. but then he became governor in 1971, from there he became the chairman for the 1974 congressional gubernatorial elections and then goes on to announce his candidacy for the presidency, and he wins in 1976, against some great odds.

it was a very close race for him. mike, can you talk about his foreign policy achievements, and i'm thinking mostly about panama canal, the treaties, i think about it in light of the fact that some of the work that he accomplished as president, potentially could be undone if incoming president-elect, donald trump has his way with certain facets of the pembina -- panama canal, how much of his legacy could be undone? >> alex, it is so striking and i'm sure peter feels the same way as the ways in which history doesn't necessarily repeat itself, but it rhymes and to have the incoming president talking in the last several weeks about the panama canal treaty, which was very controversial when president carter worked very hard and

expended a significant amount of political capital to get that ratified by the senate to hand over the control of the panama canal, resident carter traveling to that country like a hero for taking that step and now to see president-elect trump talking about doing that is really remarkable and i think as far as his broader foreign policy record, he invested so heavily, significant political capital as well, something that he continued to be engaged in long after he left office. and that respect, it is striking to think of the parallels between the presidencies of these men, president biden and president carter. president biden has been even to this day working significantly to try to bring about a resolution to the crisis in gaza, he has been working for years before even the october 7th attacks to lead

to the normalization of relations between israel and its neighbors in much the way that president carter was able to achieve between egypt and israel. and that was a hallmark of his time in office but ultimately the economic conditions of the country, the overwhelming inflation, the difficulty he faced in writing the ship economically that led him to be a one term president. these two men also, you think about the circumstances in which they came to office in the first place as well, of course watergate, such a moment in our nations history, president nixon leading the way for a newcomer, a fresh face, somebody without a long record of time in washington that was so appealing to americans that helped president carter when his election and of course president biden running into 20 in response to what he saw as president trump dereliction of duty in leading the country, ultimately taking office after the january 6 insurrection.

i think these are the thoughts that would certainly be going through president biden's mind at this time, as he is likely to be preparing to deliver that eulogy and thinking about his legacy of service to this country. we have not received any indication from the white house of whether we might hear from the president tonight, there's always the opportunity for the president to speak to the cameras, and to be summoned at short notice but we have not gotten that indication just yet. >> mike and peter, please standby, i want to bring to the conversation our good friend and colleague, chris matthews, joining us by phone, a former speech writer for president carter. i imagine this is a somber day you, a day that you knew was coming. >> i think we all did, he made it to over 100, his birthday was important because he was

outliving roslyn, and i think he didn't want to live too much longer than her, he certainly had a hard time since that. he has been in hospice care for a couple of years now, which too many people was a sign of mortality writer. i just want to say, when i think about president carter, is his ability, his willingness to do for himself, he was walking down pennsylvania avenue and he told me with great pride, he didn't ask for permission from the secret service, i just told them what i was going to do and he and rosalynn really set the pattern for independence, and for being a maverick in many ways, and of course he followed up with his greatest accompaniment in

israel, to come together for those two weeks, 13 days, and camp david, and he told me wonderful stories about that, he said the egyptians were all military people because it was a military regime, it was pro- american but it was military and they knew about the civil war, they went out to gettysburg, and all the military guys loved it because it was their own education as military men. and at one point, they got to the place where he gave his great gettysburg address and out of nowhere, he began to recite by his memory, verbatim the gettysburg address for everybody to hear and he said to me, i was choked up just

thinking about it, the guy from israel who gave the most greatest american address in real time, so he's very proud of that at camp david, even to this day, israel and egypt, it is a peace treaty that marks the ages, in the middle east to have a peace treaty like egypt and israel, even today the greatest arab threat to israel is egypt and he has never done anything to that treaty, even to this day and i think that is great. and the panama canal, he was able to bring about a real justified arrangement with the governor of panama. and the human rights campaign,

in 89, the human rights figures praised it, the people of russia and the mayor of moscow heard all the time, they said wait a minute, we don't have human rights and that became a big issue. >> you know, it is extraordinary, you briefly mentioned china, he was the one who was given credit for savaging u.s. diplomatic relations with the people's republic of china and that is something that often times people think about president richard nixon who was the first one to open the door, but really, it was jimmy carter that walked through it. i'm curious, when it comes to having worked for him, writing his speeches, what was he like as a boss? >> well, you know, it's funny, i have this memory, i was talking about with my family at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, walking through the west wing

to deliver the speech where he would read it at about 5:00 in the morning, and you could smell the coffee, the aroma of coffee percolating through the west wing and i go, carter is up already, he is already up in the morning. he likes to do things himself if he can, and there he is going over the speeches and checking off the briefing memos, it's like he was an engineer. one of the things he didn't really succeed politically, like herbert hoover, he was an engineer, he liked to answer the intricate questions. there are a lot of presidents like roosevelt that are very broad in their thinking, very big picture. kind of like, he had a memo with urban policy with 80 questions in it, he said that is my kind of president, i want to answer 80 questions, or

something he would check every box, every question, he wanted to deal with the intricacy, the specifics. and he was an engineer and from the time he was in the navy, he wanted to use his ability to solve problems. and of course he got into the iranian hostage crisis and he couldn't solve it. he would try to understand it, he would try to figure out the country and what they are angry about, i think he did understand it against the people, but when the 50 hostages were taken, he said on the last sunday before the election, he went on national television, and i'm sure we will play that tape again, and he said i wish i could tell you when the hostages are coming home but i can't.

he was the crowning death sentence to the imitation, to not get the hostages home. >> but, when it comes to the hostages and certainly regret while he was president but the fact that his admonition had to work on that whole transaction on the diplomacy of that, of getting them out, because weren't they crossing out of the iranian airspace moments after ronald reagan was inaugurated? so he didn't have to do the work on that. >> i think a lot of the geopolitics was to hurt him effectively, i think we had high inflation, high interest rates, it was the crowning problem for him, the symbol of the emerging people.

a great line from somebody in the polls, i will go with the cowboy with reagan. so partly it was his students, but i always wonder what reagan would have done, i think about the air traffic controllers when he came in, they were probably very important. you want to scare your opponents to some extent, but i think you are right, the decision to release the hostages, the minute he was inaugurated basically was the story of this whole episode. but jimmy carter going back to the presidency, i think, i can do this myself, i remember getting a letter where i read the crime rate in 74, i got a nice letter from him and he said it was from the chairman

of the democratic campaign committee, he created himself and he said, i want you to keep helping us in pennsylvania and the rest of the country. he was building his campaign team all by himself back in 74, to use in 76. he wasn't relying on the dnc or anybody else, he was putting together himself, and a lot of people join his campaign because of that kind of solicitation. and he slept on people's couches and as ted sorensen once said, how do you vote against somebody who slept on your couch? it was very personal, basically the key point to run for president, he would not stay at hotels, because he said i couldn't put my entourage up. the next day he would have a cup of coffee with the guy running for president, and sometimes he would stay up

until 2:00 in the morning talking to people. it was very interesting, he also had a lot of presidential candidates come down and visit him in atlanta at the owner's mansion and he decided to meet everyone of them. he said i could beat everyone of them, he was a very ambitious guy. >> chris, stay with us, i have in studio, jonathan, a historian author of the carter biography, and also nbc news political contributor. as you listen to chris and his stories about working with him as a speechwriter, he spent a lot of time with this man in his later years, tell me about the man that you got to know and his leading up to his reputation, the moniker of being the greatest living former president, given all that he did to champion human rights around this world.

>> well, i think that he didn't love that reputation if it was standing by itself, he thought it was incomplete, so essentially, there is kind of a lazy shorthand which if you ask anybody, walking on the street and you said jimmy carter, what did they say? mediocre president, inspirational former president, that cliche is only half true. so he was an inspirational former president but he was also an outstanding president if measured a certain historical yardstick. so, as journalists, we look at presidents by how they are doing politically, they are up in the polls, are they good communicators? historians have to look at how they change life for americans and change life for people

around the world. so, carter was a political failure, but he was a substantive and a visionary success, and much of what he did, much of the many bills that he signed were partly the product of this attention to detail that people laughed at over and over, but that got the bill through, which double the size of the national park system, that was very important, at camp david, that attention to detail, normalization of relations with china which carter told me he thought would be his longest lasting accomplishment, human rights, basically almost everything except the iranian hostage crisis. benefited from that tremendous attention to detail and also to his willingness to pay a political price for doing the right thing. and he did that over and over

again and looked to the future, even when he knew that things like the panama canal treaty with president-elect trump bringing up now, was a huge success. he would have had a festering vietnam style war in panama if carter hadn't gotten us through, two thirds of the country was against it, it required a two thirds vote in the senate, reagan came to national prominence on the panama canal issue, but when i talk to somebody in the reagan white house after reagan became president, he said because carter was right. it was a good treaty. so, reagan administration kept it going. that is just one of many examples, and the environment, which is a classic long-term issue that we need to look ahead. so i found in his files in the

carter library, and had some really interesting conversations with him about climate change, in 1971, when he was governor, he was underlying scientific journals, other presidents, carter was more interested in figuring out these public policy problems. and when he became president, as everybody knows, he put up the solar panels, that reagan took down, that was just symbolic. there were 15 major pieces of environmental legislation that changed this country and cleaned up the environment, and at the end of his time in office, he became the first leader anywhere in the world to say that climate change was called global warning or carbon pollution, was a problem we were going to have to grapple with. and he wanted electric cars by the mid-1980s, he was 30 years ahead on electric vehicles, so

when he issued that report about climate change not long before he left office, and he started to address it in a second term, that lands an almost tragic dimension to that 1980 election. >> peter baker, i want to bring you back, with regard to the legacy of jimmy carter, listening to jonathan describe him, he was nearly prophetic, he had a way of looking into the future. is that kind of legacy what ricochets around the white house today, is that how he is viewed by those who occupy the white house? >> i think there is some revision in terms of their feelings about president carter and his time in office, books have come in recent years that made this point, there was a lot he did well in office and i think resident biden in particular and his people

around him appreciate that, also appreciate the notion that you may not be rewarded in your own time for your accompaniments but the over passage of time, history comes to recognize them. that is a theme you will hear today from biden's most supportive allies, maybe he is not remembered today as fondly as they wished he were but over time, eventually he like carter will be appreciated for all he did for the country. >> yes, 100%, but as i speak to you, the historian, how common is that, sometimes through the prism of modern day, you think about failures and what somebody didn't accomplish but in retrospect, i know i have asked historians over the years, how will this presidency be viewed in 20+ years and they give a different answer than that they might have reviewed that day. >> jimmy carter is not going to

be on mount rushmore, we could talk about his awards, in a book that i wrote, but there is a long overdue reappraisal of his presidency and it is very similar what happened with his favorite president, who was harry truman and carter actually put truman's famous sign, the buck stops here at his desk in the oval office, and you asked about my conversations with president carter, we had a couple of great sessions where we mostly just talked about truman. at the time truman left office in 1953, he was deeply unpopular and for the next 30 years, people just assumed that he was a pale shadow of franklin roosevelt and made a lot of mistakes, and in the 1980s, truman is basically

building the postwar world which has kept us from having another world war all these years. he built those institutions, nato the most prominent example. carter's accompaniments are below that but much more significant than the conventional wisdom would suggest. >> chris is no longer on the phone with us, we hope to have him later, but with regard to the way he was brought up, this is a man who has talked about never wearing shoes growing up in georgia, he would go along the dusty roads, even when he was going to school, the difference between his upbringing and rising all the way to being the most powerful person in the world as president, did he ever reflect on his own personal trajectory? >> yes, after leaving office, he wrote about this and we talked about it quite a bit, his was an epic american story.

so, he didn't have any indoor plumbing or electricity in his house until he was 11 years old and when they finally did get some indoor plumbing, the shower was a flower pot with holes punched in it so the water could come out. >> i remember something you wrote, he was someone who lived almost across three centuries because it was so antiquated when he was born in 1924, the circumstances under which he lived were almost like late 1800s. >> he was from one of the wealthiest families in the whole area, but his life on the farm, it could have been in the 19th century or it could have been 1000 years earlier, they did have a car and a party line, phone line that they shared with many other people but other than that, they didn't have any mechanized farm

equipment, and it was the jim crow south and his father was a white t, his mother was a nurse, miss lillian, she used to go on johnny carson, really funny. so, she gave him his interest in global health, made a huge cut vision as -- contribution as a former president. and his parents were so busy, rachel clark, a black woman who carter considered to be a parent, so much of his upbringing, it might have been the 19th century, he was obviously involved in all the major movements and connected to the women's movement, he was the first person to really integrate the federal government beyond tokenism, and he appointed more women as

judges than all of his predecessors combined times five. >> and he always accredited his wife. >> that was the 20th century and as a former president, he was involved with global health, democracy promotion, all of these issues, conflict resolution, all of the big issues of the 21st century, the carter center has touched on. i can't think of anybody else who effectively lived in three centuries. >> an extraordinary observation. so, peter, with regard to what will happen now, of course there will be a state funeral, no doubt, and president biden and mike said he will be paying tribute to him, but it's the kind of thing you have to wonder, will trump show up? and i know you can't know right now but, the likelihood of all these people coming together in this very exclusive club, what

are your thoughts on that? >> this has been planned for many years, there will be a state funeral, there will be a service at washington national cathedral where presidents are traditionally honored, he will lie in state at the capital and of course buried in georgia where he was born and grew up and spent most of his life. you are right that these moments are often, an occasion where the two sides put their weapons down for at least a day or two to remember a fallen leader and a bipartisan sense. the last funeral we had was george h.w. bush, i remember being at the national cathedral for that and president trump did show up for that, he was not invited to speak but he was invited to come. we don't know for sure whether

president-elect trump will come to this service, i don't think he had a good relationship with president carter obviously and in some ways it is convenient that it has happened now as opposed to 20 or 30 days from now because there won't be the question of the incumbent president having to come or not come, president biden obviously will be delivering the eulogy. >> yes, good point. peter, thank you for your time for joining us, also chris matthews who was on the phone, and our friend, jonathan alter , it has been extraordinary news but this will conclude our nbc news special coverage of the passing of jimmy carter, we will have a lot more on his remarkable life and legacy with our continuing coverage with reverend al sharpton on wednesday right here. right here