carter has sadly died. she was 96 years old. she was widely credited for expanding the role of first lady to an open partner both in policy and international travel. becoming a trusted advisor even in an era where the press would call her, solely mrs. carter. and president biden said time and time again during the four decades of our friendship, through rigors of campaign, we always felt the hope and optimism of rosalynn carter. she will always be in our heart. joining us by phone is washington and foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell. it's great to have you with us. i'm sorry it has to be on such a sad occasion. i know we have had an opportunity to interview rosalynn carter as well as jimmy carter on a multiple of occasions. talk to us about her before the white house, during the white house and after the white house. >> thank you for this opportunity to celebrate a life of service and love. great compassion, great love for humanity after the white house waged what they called a war on peace. traveling the globe. going to africa, doing their best to cure river blindness and habitat for humanity. i interviewed them when they were mid-project for habitat for humanity. rosalynn carter has known jimmy carter since birth. because her mother was the midwife. they married shortly the dale after his graduation. he has been in the submarine force. and served under admiral rick over in creating the nuclear submarines that are now the mainstay of our nuclear force. submarine force. but all along she was the wife, the mother, the grandmother, the great grandmother. partner from a peanut farm business that dove right into politics when he ran for office. and then became governor then president. they had ups and downs in the white house as you know. their presidency was haunted in the final years by raging inflation. by the iran hostage situation. and still she felt very stropblgly that she was a great president. the work he did was just ground breaking. people didn't talk about mental health problems. especially not people in politics. and she just dove right in and made it a signature issue. she also created really the whole profession of care giving because until then, people would be care givers for hire. but there really wasn't a profession. she professionalized it up until now. all through life they were just a devoted passionate couple. passionate in their 77 year love affair. having last celebrated their anniversary publicly and their 75th anniversary with big celebration plans. but in returning home, being home from hospice which they announced just days ago she was really in declining health. she had announced her dementia. he issued a statement that president carter will be devastated at the loss of his life partner. >> it's definitely going to be a massive loss for him and the country. and how she redefined that role. andrea mitchell thank you so much for your thoughts and insights on this. i'm joined now by kate anderson broward. the grace of america's first ladies. and gil who was named to the carter cabinet. jill, i will start with you. can you tell me as women were becoming more vocal. you yo about her activism surrounding the equal rights amendment. >> it's one of the things i remember her best for is fighting for the equal rights amend. i'm wearing a # jill's pin honoring for that activity. which never came to fruition, not yet. i'm still hopeful. she also changed the role of the first lady. she's the first one who had an office with a staff. she actually left the residence with a briefcase and went to work. andrea said many times partner. she was not just his life partner. she was his political partner both in the white house in the gubernatorial races, but also after the presidency when she really worked with him on has -- on habitat for humanity. and carter for peace. she really was a definite partner for him. she was much more political. she really had political instincts and he really didn't like politics. so she gave him advice on politics. i think she will be remembered for changing the role of the white house of the first lady. and also for all of her activities. mental health was her major cause and she made it something we talked about. she fought to make sure that it was an insurable illness in the same way that other illnesses were covered. i think she deserves credit in her own right. not just as the first lady, not just as mrs. carter but as rosalynn. >> kate, you have spend years studying and writing about first ladies in this country. one of the foremost experts in the country about first ladies and the role they occupy both in our public and political spaces. reflect on what you learned about the remarkable life that rosalynn carter lived and her inprint on the role of first lady, imprint on the role of first lady. >> one of the things i loved talking to her about is the criticism she would get for sitting in meetings. and she told me, i realized i would get criticized for everything i did, so i might as well do what i wanted. she was called the steel magnolia. she said she didn't mind that nickname because steel is tough and magnolia is southern. one thing that surprised me when i interviewed her and president carter this was in 2018 about president trump. he said reagan lied to us too. i'm not sure this is much different. and rosalynn just kind of teasingly hit him on the elbow and said, you know this is very different than what ronald reagan did. i kind of loved that, that she could be herself. and just speak forthrightly. be honest and that's one of the great things about rosalynn carter. >> reporter: jill, the carters they've always been considered ahead of their time in so many ways on so many issues in this country. whether it was climate change, mental health. justice, prison justice and social justice. you were the first woman to serve in your role. talk to us about the significance of carter appointing you and do you think rosalynn carter helped that move with her husband skwr-tz i don't -- >> i don't know that but i deeply believe it. he was terrific about women. he appointed a lot of women to high level positions in the administration and to the courts. he was very, very good about that. the women in the administration formed something called the old girl network to complete with the old boy's network to give ourselves some support in a time when, women were very, very few and far between in high level positions. it's certainly opened a lot of doors for me. i love the position, i loved the military officers that i got to know and the issues that i had to deal with. i do think that women sometimes bring a different viewpoint to it. and so i think this is all really important and i do think that, rosalynn had some impact on her doing all of this and i'm very grateful for her on that. they also had a son who lived in evanston where i am and so i got to see them many many many years later. at the wedding of their son. and they were so much in love. they were so happy together, and they really brought a new definition to partnership in a marriage. i know that president carter is going to be devastated but he is surrounded by his loving family right now. and i know they will stay with him. >> reporter: let me pick up on that point. their partnership and marriage. shortly after rosalynn died this is what the former president said in a statement. rosalynn was my equal partner on everything i had ever accomplished. of course they're the longest married couple in presidency. they were inseparable in every sense of the word. >> inside the white house, i was told when they would want to talk about something that was kind of controversial they would speak in spanish to each other around their chief of staff and their director because they didn't speak spanish. so they kind of had this private language, literal private language together. they would read the bible every night to one another. he had said, president carter said marrying her was the pinnacle of my life. then to her honesty, they talked about hard times in their marriage. when he made the decision to move from new york to move back to plains to take over the peanut farm after his father died. he didn't ask her for her opinion. she sat in the car the whole ride from new york to plains and didn't say a word. and he said that was the last time he didn't take her into account. and she would have a list of suggested questions for them to ask her. this is a woman who was shy. she was nervous when she was public speaking. she took classes on how to improve. so she really blossomed in the role of first lady which was beautiful. as jill said she became the political power house. she's the one who wanted to have this meeting at camp david. that was so very successful and important to this day. she deserves a lot of credit not only for the softer things that we think of the east wing. you know. the christmas and the easter rolls and all of that. she was actually a political partner to him. and she insisted on weekly lunches in the oval office so she could go over the things she wanted to talk to him about. so she could be a voice to him from the american people. she was incredible. >> she was incredible and it was a beautiful partnership both in politics and most importantly in the journey of life. thank you so much to the both of you. i greatly appreciate your thoughts and reflection on this. ahead, we're going to shift gears for a moment and talk about the political headlines in in country and the far right conspiracies leading to real life. to real l ♪ control is everything to me. ♪ feel significant symptom relief at 4 weeks with skyrizi, including less abdominal pain and fewer bowel movements. skyrizi is the first il-23 inhibitor that can deliver remission and visibly improve damage of the intestinal lining. and the majority of people experienced long-lasting remission at one year. serious allergic 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(♪♪) (♪♪) the new festive family meal. starting at $24. now celebrating at el pollo loco. i've said it before and i'll say it again. words have consequences. it's an old saying that have become more important. depape an confronted a sleeping pelosi asking where's nancy. thankfully the speaker was in washington at the time. in his testimony, losi recounted those early morning hours from the moment depape barged into his bedroom to his call to 911. his opening the door to police just before he asked depape and then saw him get hit by a hammer. when the prosecution asked pelosi what he remembered next, he said, quote, waking up in a pool of blood. and depape said he had spent hours listening to you tube videos from right wing figures. it was that diet of right wing conspiracy that depape -- that led depape to violence. depape's testimony offers a chilling reminder of the real life impact that the far wing media ecosystem has. it often serves a conspiracy theory petri dish. and professor at all legal analyst and cohost of the strict scrutiny podcast. it's great to have both of you with us. melissa give us your thoughts here. both of the counts that depape was convicted on, required depape to prove that his intent included pelosi's position in congress. and depape's lawyer argued that his intentions were holy unrelatable. although he targeted her as a leader of the democratic party. are you shocked that the defense didn't pan out as they thought it would? >> well, this didn't go very well for the defense at all. ismael ramsey from california made a pretty clear case. this was about the fact that no -- that pelosi was the head of the democratic party. they only spent about six hours deliberating about this. which is pretty quick work all things considered. again this is a northern california jury. i lived in northern california for a long time. it's not the case that jurors are inclined to spend a long time deliberating. they came back quickly. >> after his attack, you still have lies and conspiracy theories about pelosi. now that there's a conviction and those lies have been debunked in a court of law, will those conspiracy theorists finally learn their lesson. >> i wish i could say i believe they will learn their lesson. as we saw after january 6th. even people after the election were certified for joe biden that people continue to believe these conspiracy theories. they believe that they're after certain folks. it's really discouraging because i don't know what act of violence i hate that we have to say that will have a wake up call on a lot of these people that are very much influenced by the dark web. by these conspiracy theorists that they are actually committing acts of violence against the speaker and they're still not learning their lesson. they're still holding to that and these websites, beyond the websites, some of the right wing media including fox news continues to skew these conspiracy theories that they know ratchet up the space. has already been researched that it will be even more violent than what we saw in the past. we're concerned these aren't telling people to stop. they feel more emboldened. >> we're still grappling with it, melissa. this brings up a question for me about these conspiracy theorists that led depape to violence. is depape solely responsible here or can they be brought to law. >> there's already a lawsuit that's been filed against members of fox news on the ground that during the election. when one fox news operative tried to push back on this idea that there had been rampant electoral fraud, he says he's retaliated against in his job. and that the company was so intent on pushing this narrative in order to resinate with their viewing base, that they ignored what he viewed as the truth and all evidence suggesting that any kind of voter fraud was glancingly rare in that election. we're going to find out. we've already seen some of this. fox has been held accountable for defamation. but obviously this is a bigger problem. a bigger problem of a really polarized media topic. >> it's one thing to talk about media and conspiracy theory. as we enter the final year before the presidential election. including from some of the parties leaders, including the potential front runner could lead to more violence of this nature. >> i am extremely fearful. especially as someone who travels throughout the country and i go to places that you know these voters are never going to get that information on television. how violent they can be. how much they believe it is their quote unquote duty to act out whatever it is that they're here donald trump and beyond donald trump. there's members of congress who are members of the republican party they are seeing other people who had different opinions as their enemy. and instead of having a civil conversation, instead of actually letting the ballot box where they decide issues different. they are taking the law into their own hands. atz we -- as we see it, as donald trump continues to rise in the polls and as the justice system is trying to hold him accountable. he for some reason gives this base even more of a feeling that they should take justice into their own hands. i'm very concerned. i know the people who are going to be engaged in the election cycle next year are also very concerned as well as the news media. >> all right, we're going to have to leave it there. appreciate your time this evening. new details on a possible deal to release hostages from gaza as called for a cease-fire grows louder. my conversation with chris holland after this break. uniquely designed with carbsteady. glucerna. bring on the day! 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