the beat with ari melber starts right now. it is friday. i appreciate you sharing that story and i wish you a great weekend. thank you. and it is friday and one of the fridays with a lot of news. there is even more fallout from the scandal engulfing fox news and rupert murdoch. my colleague chris hayes is here with us his fellow author, one place and one show and stick with us, you ll hear from them by the end of the hour. we begin with the political heat emanating from the cpac gathering in the beltway and it upd scores a dilemma for republicans in realtime. after the midterms where they recoiled from the big lie and the trumpy obsession with the party, and this gathering is televising the out right domination, sometime even self-parity of once fringe figurers in charge. candidates who may run against trump decided to cut and run from even trying to make a cpac appearance leaving to to leaders doubling down on things that turned off many voters in november. the far
president, take him at his word and again, it is like, which former president? because there might be people in a different environment who would say, bush senior, or obama, you might take them at their word. but not this president. and this is washington port reporting as well, i believe, smith imposed strict dead lines for responses in what could be a push to reach internal charging decisions this spring. say people familiar with the investigations. and that relates to the time line, joyce, about having a deadline but also not necessarily getting caught up in things that could take a lot longer. when you see that, given your experience, does that scam to you or does that feel right or does he have to have an open mind because he doesn t know what he will find and it will take longer. think consistent with what we know about jack smith. he s linear and moved ahead and not seeing unnecessary delay and
candidate to beat as the four emerge in the democratic race. welcome to the lead. i m erica hill in for jake. we begin this thanksgiving eve with new details about rudy giuliani s efforts to help his number one client donald trump. the washington port reporting president trump s attorney was in talked to represent a prosecutor who giuliani was also working with to dig up dirt on joe biden. and it comes on the heels of another revelation about the timeline. we now know president trump was aware of a whistle-blower complaint against him when he released the aid to ukraine. that is after he withheld the nearly $400 million aid package for nearly two months. that revelation coming from the new york times. as cnn s alex marquardt reports, the new developments are poking holes in president trump s adamant dependence of no quid pro quo. reporter: new revelations deflating the white house s and republican allies defense over the president s actions with