is covid. 2021 began with a vaccine rollout, still has ended as the deadliest year of the pandemic and misinformation has proven dangerous to people's health. we have been talking to dr. fauci across the pandemic learning about his guidance and what to do if the facts change and new variants emerge. >> the best way you can prevent the virus from evolving and mutating is to prevent it from replicating because it is an interesting tenet of virology. the only way a virus can mutate is if you allow it to replicate. so when you have a lot of infection in your country, when you're getting 3 to 400,000 new infections a day, the virus has an open playing field to replicate so much that it starts to mutate. that's when you get the dangerous mutations. so one of the best ways to prevent that from happening in this country is to double down on the public health measures to prevent the virus from going from one person to another. the masking, the distancing, the avoiding congregate settings. on the other hand, please go out and get vaccinated. the combination of vaccination and public health measures will bring the level of virus down so low, you won't give it a chance to mutate. that's what we need to do. >> right. >> and then there's the other side of the vaccination coin, a contentious policy that stirs all sorts of controversy that's larger than what you think about covid itself or even the vaccines because it comes back to people's idea of liberty and balancing your own choices with your obligation in the social contract. i'm talking about the mandates. >> one of the things that people should realize, ari, the idea of mandating a vaccine is not something new. that is done all the time. how about schools. i mean, we've been doing this for decades and decades and decades. if you want to go to certain schools. >> can i press you, doctor? sir, i'm not saying i think this, but part of my job, what people who object to this say as you know is those other mandates have much longer periods of time, you're familiar, and they say it feels unfair to them to demand them try something so new. >> well, you know, i'm not so sure again, you know, you could have arguments all the time. i'm not so sure that that argument holds water. this is the most devastating disease of infectious disease from a respiratory virus that we've had in 102 years. you know, times change. sometimes you've got to say liberties aside. and i'm not an anti-libertarian person where you want to take away everyone's liberties, but sometimes you have to face the reality of what you're looking at. we have this ongoing now for a year and a half, killed more americans than any other infectious disease in such a very long period of time. sometimes you've got to do more. >> well, doctor, when you put it like that, the answer sounds better than the question. it is no secret, dr. fauci has been at this work a long time across administrations in both parties, but it is his only in this divided particularly polarized era we have seen him become more attacked than any other time in his career. it may tell us more about the rest of us than him as some tried to make fauci the face of the controversy surrounding the virus and many on the right targeting him. >> i think he now is destructive. i think he is dishonest. >> he decided to unilaterally end christmas. >> we want to take fauci down, put him in an orange jumpsuit. >> in a reasonable society, fauci would be gone. >> we'll give you the last word of any thoughts how you're playing across the internet again this year and i promised you, you had a question. go ahead as well. >> ari, i'm not in it for a popularity contest. i devoted my entire professional career of 50 years to try and essentially safeguard and preserve the health and lives of the american people as an infectious disease doctor that deals with outbreak, that gets really extended to the rest of the world. that's what i do. the praise or the arrows and slings are really irrelevant. i do what science drives you to do and that's what i do. and you know, i'm not in it for a popularity contest. i'm trying to save lives. the people that recognize lies are killing people. the only question i have is when you show tucker carlson and peter navarro criticizing me, i consider that a badge of honor. >> that's just some of what we have all heard from dr. fauci over the course of this pandemic and like it or not, much of it remains very relevant as people plan for a new year with the pandemic still a part of our daily lives. now we turn to another big story of 2021 which was the launch of a new presidency, a very familiar figure in joe biden, trying to turn the page. here on the beat, we went inside the biden white house, this is back when they were just getting started. it was a really interesting time to see new staff turn the page, new vibes. we had reporting inside the west wing because the president was preparing for his first address to congress. joe biden has given many speeches, this was his first as president in that forum. it is a process that will be coming again this january. president biden is about to deliver his first speech to congress and final preparations are under way at the white house where we got a rare chance to report from behind the scenes of this address, with key staff prepping in the west wing during the pandemic as others work remotely. >> there's a huge amount of energy around tonight around the building because of the pandemic, of course, we don't have the full staff on site that we would normally have in a normal year. we have grown accustomed like everybody in the country doing office jobs, we've grown accustomed working by zoom. >> kate bedingfield and general psaki expect a historic speech, including the empty house chamber. >> the empty room is about responsibility. interacting with people for him is a huge part of how he draws energy. so it is a challenge. >> how do you convey energy through a speech like this to a room that's mostly empty because of safety protocol? >> you know, we never experienced anything like this before. neither have you, right? none of us have. he is going to do the walk down the aisle, wearing a mask, he will take it off when speaking. there will be about 200 people in the audience, but it is not going to be the same size. he knows he is speaking to the audience of millions watching at home, too. >> psaki, a familiar presence behind the podium and she's been working on the big speech. >> how many drafts would you say have been through the computer of this speech? >> couple new every day. >> several a day? >> sometimes, yeah. >> as top spokesperson, psaki tapped into a familiar theme for anyone working with this president. make it clear. >> it takes enormous prep and grappling through, is this the right language. a lot of it is listening to him talk. is this how he would talk about this or think about this. >> how do you know when he likes a line. how does he engage with the process? >> i can tell you how when he doesn't like a line. >> the type of thing he is likely to strike is what? >> an acronym. don't give him an acronym. >> there will be no acronyms in his speech. >> aides say that clarity takes time. >> he started on a draft probably two weeks ago. he has been working on it almost every day with mike donlin. >> he goes through drafts, asking for clarification. wanting more information. >> he is a night owl. likes to work in the afternoon and evening. >> he is a details guy. sometimes he wants to bring in a policy person, ask more about what to put in the speech. that's the process. speeds up on the way to the speech. he looks at the country, sees 10 million still out of work, the fact that we still have people dying every day of covid. we made a lot of progress, part of what the speech will focus on is all the work ahead. >> biden has seen his share of the addresses. >> he served 36 years in the senate. attended the speech as vice president for 8 years. of anyone, he knows what the opportunity is. >> this time is moving a few feet forward to center stage, and two spots behind the president, top officials in the line of succession, will be filled for the first time ever by two women, a historic moment aides say biden will formally mark on the big night. >> this speech is the first time we see both seats behind the president, line of succession, filled by women. >> it is about frigging time, isn't it? amazing. i think the president will certainly note that in his speech as everyone watching at home will note as well. you have a female speaker of the house, female vice president. these are two of the most powerful people in our country. you know, i have a daughter. i hope she will look at that and say wow, look at those two women behind the president sitting there. hopefully it sends that message. >> pandemic or not, these nights matter because the nation is watching, stakes are high, and while the speech itself may finally be done, how america rebounds from this tough time and its future are yet to be written. >> madam speaker, the president of the united states. >> we have a lot more coming up on tonight's edition of "the beat." a veteran of the obama administration and the man that took google public, eric schmidt, talks about social media polarization, why he thinks barack obama was so far ahead of the technological curve. and later, a report on law, justice, civil rights in america. looking at the reform movement to deal with police brutality. i want to share some thoughts with you and what we've learned. stay with us. you and what we'v. stay with us home premium won'p just because of this. 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[echoing] get a quote today. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ my hygienist cleans with a round head. so does my oral-b my hygienist personalizes my cleaning. so does my oral-b oral-b delivers the wow of a professional clean feel every day. hi susan! honey? yeah? i respect that. but that cough looks pretty bad... try this robitussin honey. the real honey you love... plus the powerful cough relief you need. mind if i root through your trash? now get powerful relief with robitussin elderberry. unleash the freshness... ♪♪ still fresh ♪♪ in wash-scent booster ♪♪ downy unstopables when you have xfinity xfi, you have peace of mind built in at no extra cost. advanced security helps keep your family protected online. pause wifi whenever for ultimate control with the xfinity app. and family-safe browsing gives parents one less thing to worry about. security, control and peace of mind. with xfinity xfi, it's all built in at no extra cost. now we look at the ongoing debate over policing in america. george floyd's killer was convicted and cuffed. some claiming that the justice system now works. >> right now, what people need to understand is that the american justice system works. it works. >> i think it is a celebration of our justice system. >> it is important that we also push back against the notion that all police officers can never be trusted. >> that's the promise of our justice system, that it is impartial. >> how many black unarmed people were killed by police officers, and it is a massive distraction. >> citing a single verdict to pretend that verdict automatically reveals anything about every other case is misleading at minimum. let's look at the evidence. the data shows that consistent discrimination continues and shows a system that does not work to use the term you just heard in some of those clips, doesn't work for everyone because people brutalized and killed by police rarely get justice. that brings us to tonight's report, about facts, not opinion or ideology. the protests were largely against police brutality and force and we have now tonight for you the latest data on the use of force since then, since the protests last year. police are shooting and killing americans at roughly the same rate this year as last year on pace for the same aggregate toll of police killing about a thousand people per year. you can see the number. this year, 2021, basically matching what people were protesting against, the rate of killing, last year. this is from "the washington post" data. this shows you something that everyone needs to know in america. all the protest and heat and scrutiny and video evidence and even the murder conviction i showed you, take it all together, it is not even budging the rate that police use lethal force. as the killings have gone on, police departments themselves don't claim that they're all okay with all the use of force. we have since last year documented situations where they admit mistakes, put out statements regretting loss of innocent life. they also oppose investigation or prosecution of the officers that created that situation. i want to tell you something else. the protests have got people's attention. most americans are aware police violence is a serious problem. the consensus is stronger than a few years ago. but numbers which are part of evidence also only tell part of the story because when you look at the chart of the killings each year, every point on it is a dead person and family grieving. now, these tragedies play out across the entire country here. and sometimes we don't have a lot of details, other times we get some clue of what happened. we get grim videos that tell an all too familiar story, police shooting jacob blake in the back seven times, paralyzing him for life. or california police confronting an unarmed man over alleged jay walking. that's how the interaction began. we brought you this story earlier this year. they then shot him to death over a jay walking stop. he was unarmed. or go back to george floyd's community where minnesota police killed another unarmed father, daunte wright. there was some video of that. or police shooting andrew brown to death as he tried to drive away from police, video showed him fleeing, not attacking. just the last two videos you see were part of six police shootings that came within 24 hours of the chauvin verdict in the floyd killing. this is not some massive attention grabbing issue constantly getting people's attention and certainly not getting the powerful people's attention or the corporations who influence so much policy in this country, no. the truth is most of these incidents on the endless chart don't make the national news in the first place. take another story within the past year. police went to the home of 32-year-old isaiah brown for domestic disturbance call and killed him right by his own home. why? he was holding a cordless phone that they, the police, wrongly thought was a gun and they demanded he drop the gun. warning, the video is disturbing. >> show me your hands now. show me your hands. drop the gun. he's got a gun to his head. drop the gun now. stop walking towards me. stop. stop. shots fired, shots fired. one down. >> eight of the bullets entered brown's body. he did live through it. charges in these cases are rare. there were no charges related to the shooting or aassault and battery there. the officer was indicted for reckless handling of a firearm. these stories are all from the past year since the protests. you watch the news but if you don't know some of them, if some of the names and details that are unfamiliar, that may be because so much of this is treated by our system even after all of this as normal. if we stay on the facts, even when not trending, what does this period show us about solutions? that brings us to the final part of the special report. first, this reason activism and scrutiny alone are not bending the curve of police shootings in america. that's just a fact. not talking about whether we like it or not, but that's what this year and that chart shows. now, an observer might have thought or hoped that a year like the one we just lived through would impact some officers' conduct. when it comes to shootings in the aggregate, it did not. second. some valid policy reforms are failing to bend that curve. we should know the evidence. there are more body cameras that can add to the type of mechanisms that law enforcement oversight needs, but in this past year, they're not reducing shootings. tonight among some of the few examples out of many available, we saw stories where police unilaterally turned off body cameras. part of my job on the news is to be straightforward. have you ever seen surveillance video at a bank which could be flipped off by any visitor or bank robber? that would kind of defeat the point. so when videos incriminate the police, what happens? even when they exist, the departments often hide them. in one study, majority of incidents caught on body cameras were never released by police. some of the reforms won't work well if they still depend on the original issue in american policing, which not every country does it this way, on the premise police should just police themselves. that brings me to a third and final point. some reforms do have impact when they assert truly independent authority over police. reforms that patrol the police work better if someone other than the police have control of what happens. the video of george floyd's murder went viral swiftly, so fast the police were still stupidly falsely claiming that flied died in a medical incident, a cover story shredded by the public video. people forced facts in the system that otherwise would never come to light. same for reforms where prosecutors investigate allegations against police instead of the d.a.s usually on the police's team. there's a plan that police unions are trying to stop, most cases against police are tossed before getting to a trial because of this type of immunity. the alleged victims don't even get a day in court. if police are caught in alleged misconduct, like the case we brought you, colorado police handcuffing, detaining unarmed women and children at gunpoint, unarmed in broad daylight, hard to know why the kids posed that kind of threat. the question is is there accountability for that conduct? >> i want my mother. [ crying ] >> we brought you that case earlier. it never gets easy to watch. police admitted it was a case of mistaken identity, apologized in public, legally that's where the cases end. police immunity prevents the family from suing. here's a model for change that occurred in real life in the past year. in colorado, it is one of four states that actually limited police and officer immunity. now the courtroom door is more open for that mother to sue in civil court which she did alleging racism among other things. the only reason she gets a day in court is because she lives in one of the few places with reform immunity. that's one of the huge sticking points for republicans opposing the george floyd act which passed the house but is stuck in the senate. those are some policy implications. what we do know is that the shooting rate remains steady with disproportionate number of minorities shot and killed by police. that's the same as last year. if we want to change this which a lot of people and companies claim they did last year, then again, my job as newscaster is simple. i can report as policy by definition, we have to do more as a country than what's happened in the past four years, excuse me, the past year, because this whole thing is holding steady. while most of what we covered in the report focuses on the category of police killings, that's this chart, keep in mind there's the even more common issue of extensive and allegedly excess use of police force. our police officers sent over 50,000 people to the er on average, approaches a half million visits since 2015, according to a cdc count. i told you at the beginning of this, we were just going through the evidence and the facts. that's all this is. this is what's going on. these stories grind on whether they're covered or not, whether the system notices or not. and while the last year did provide some scrutiny and progress and change, any person or corporation that claimed to care then should logically care now because the numbers haven't budged. the killing rate is as bad as it was when people were passionate after the murder of george floyd. this is the same america with the same rate of police shootings and killings. these are real lives. these are black lives lost. and while the rare conviction of that officer for murder was significant and people saw him led off in cuffs to serve time, that rare conviction is not the goal of this blm movement according to many of its leaders. it is also not the goal of a functioning justice system. why do i say that? again, listen to the civil rights leaders. they've been telling us the goal is not to send more people to prison for the unnecessary illegal killings of innocent people. the goal is to stop the police killings of innocent people in the first place. and if those people's lives mattered last summer, then they matter now. and until we actually change this and keep up with the overall evidence, we'll be left with spasms of outrage for the very worst moments that are sometimes arbitrarily caught on tape. but you can't fix a problem like this in moments or hours. we're dealing with a problem of years, centuries. stories help people see the reality. but the reality is unfolding years and years of government conduct, and most of it not on tape. so you have to go back to the steady line. it is on the same pace this year. this is not a time for told you so but people did tell us, they did challenge americans at the time support us when it's not trending as one protester put on record on that sign. another, we are not a trend, black lives still matter. and that's right. it is not a trend. it is people's lives. human lives that matter. and this police epidemic is way worse than a trend and we can't begin to fix it until we face it. ace it ♪ ♪ it's a personal trainer that assesses your strength and adds weight as you progress. it's dynamic weight that adjusts for you in real time for a more efficient workout. c'mom and it's a roster of coaches that motivate you to get stronger, faster. the future is strength you can feel and results you can see. and you can only experience it... (sigh) ...on tonal. one of the worst things about a cold sore (sigh) is how it can make you feel. but, when used at the first sign, abreva can get you back to being you in just 2 and a half days. be kinder to yourself and tougher on your cold sores. superpowers from a spider bite? i could use some help showing the world how liberty mutual customizes their car insurance. ow! i'm ok! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ only in theaters december 17th. hey hun hey, get your own vapors liberty. liberty. ♪ relax with vicks vapobath or with vicks vaposhower. take a soothing vicks vapo moment wherever you chose. today, i am joined by entrepreneur and ceo who took google public. eric schmidt. thanks for being here. >> thank you. happy to be part of the show. >> right now, you're focused on artificial intelligence. you've been called on by the united states government, pentagon among others, to figure out how to make this a good thing more than a danger. i want to play for you some of the people at the top of the fields talking about ai. take a listen. >> punch a button and all the goods and services we get now turned out by robots. >> it promises to create a vastly more productive and efficient economy. the way we think about ai is colored by popular culture and by science fiction. >> the idea there's going to be in general ai overlord that subjugates or kills us all i think is not something to worry about. >> the advent of super intelligence is one that is symbiotic with humanity. >> what are you most concerned about and within what you can say, what are you telling the government and the pentagon to get ahead of or to avoid? >> from a national security perspective, ai will transform it fundamentally and all sorts of problems. we're not ready for this revolution and the revolution is that the scale of the age of reason, that's how profound it will be on society. >> one of the larger concerns is that if you mix this self perpetuating or self improving system, its information or processing, with some sort of vaguely stated creation, that it can then eventually do things on its own. how real is that, how much of that is from our movies? >> well, at the moment it is from movies. today the important thing about ai is it does not have its own volition. it still requires humans to tell it what to look for. in other words, it doesn't have its own independent creative judgment. can't say i want to study physics, i want to do art. it can be told to do physics, told to do art, but can't decide it on its own. many people think we will cross that boundary and at the point when the system can decide what it wants to work on, it is a whole new ball game. >> most of your background is in technology and sort of initial startup or early tech space. a lot of your peers are very proud of those results and tend to be quite dismissive of government or public sector or other older models. i'm curious your take on that and specifically is there anything positive that you saw working through bureaucracies or with the defense department as compared to the tech and business space or do you stay in that group that says hey, it works a lot faster and better on the private sector side. >> in my five years working for the defense department, i developed extraordinary respect for what i view as real heroes of our nation. i also developed an enormous distaste for the system that was erected around them. where they have very little freedom, very little opportunity to really drive things. the notion of innovation is sort of counter to the way their system was designed and they're stuck in it because they're not allowed to run the way we run, not allowed to run quickly, to innovate, take risk. if we want to reform the way government works, we have to be willing to take the following risks. you have to put really competent people in charge and let them run and make mistakes. if you make a mistake in government, you get fired. if you do nothing, you don't get fired. >> i mentioned barack obama. you interviewed him when he was a candidate before becoming president. let's take a quick look. >> senator, you're here at google. i like to think of the presidency as a job interview. also hard to get a job at google. >> obviously google is, you know, a symbol of one sector of our economy that's just been extraordinary, innovative, creative and lucrative. but there's a whole another part of america that's been left behind. >> what did you learn about him, what do you think of his ongoing concern about a digital divide, and how does he stack on tech compared to two presidents that came after? >> well, i had the privilege of serving as a presidential science adviser under president obama, my biases should be very clear. that president, president obama, understood the opportunity of the technology, he understood what we were doing at a level that was extraordinary. he is such a gifted man. with respect to the digital divide, i keep saying to my colleagues you're so good at building systems that do a, b, or c. why don't you build systems that lift people up. we tend to be the ones privileged, got into the best schools, got the best opportunities. what about everyone else. the president, that is president obama, cared a great deal about that. >> google provides a lot of informational value around the world, including to people that may not have much if they can access it and has done that in organizing a range of information over the years. social media which is very profitable, ubiquitous, seems to be more of an entertaining distraction. do you think it provides the same value at this point in tech? >> it may in the future, not sure it does today. the issue with social media is roughly the following. social media, these are businesses. their job is to maximize shareholder return and revenue. best way to maximize revenue is maximize engagement. best way to maximize engagement in social media is outrage, literally outrage on the left or right. these systems naturally push you to the extremes and do so for engagement reasons, not because there's some moral or social reason. that problem is an unsolved problem. we need to address it. we need to figure out a way so that these companies can be profitable companies without driving us insane. and furthermore, i will tell you that ai is going to make this much worse because if i were sort of an evil founder type, hopefully i'm not, what i would do is build a social network that knew so much about you by getting you to give that information that i could target the information precisely to your personal biases, political beliefs, and literally depolice tus strategies, it would terrify the world. that's not how human societies work. >> it is fascinating and horrifying as you lay it out. i hope people understand what you're saying and expertise behind it, and on facebook, their vision of a more immersive digital experience, whether it is their meta brand, looks to be probable. >> it is likely and not in the way people like me describe it when you start. but the important point is will you stop spending your day looking around the room and spend your day looking at a screen in a world where you and your friends are younger, smarter, more beautiful, more handsome, faster, and will there be drama exciting that causes you to spend more time there than the real world. if you create a world so seductive that people stop doing essential things humans need to do, having families and all that, that's a big change to society. but that technology is coming. we don't understand, let me say it precisely. we did not understand when we started the social media activities the level of impact it would have on governments and on people, in particular, manipulating people against objectives of one against another, crisis, so forth and so on. we just didn't understand it. i don't want us to make the same mistake with ai. i want us to have teams that are more than just computer scientists. i want eth cysts. i want to know what are the right ethics. one ethic is to educate the world. another is to try to entertain the world. at the moment, what we're doing, what they're doing collectively is they're busy confusing the world because the incentives are not in alignment. the more money they make, the more they drive people crazy. we've got to get that fixed. >> lightning round, a word or sentence, go longer if needed. bill gates. >> brilliant. >> steve jobs. >> even more brilliant. of all the people i worked with, steve is the one that is the greatest sort of human achievement loss of all because of his early death. the fact that he could invent, envision, see the world at such a young age is extraordinary. he is missed every day. >> mark zuckerberg. >> i worry with mark that he learned the lessons from bill gates and others about the pursuit of his corporation and he forgot some of the other principles. we'll see. >> elon musk. >> maybe more brilliant than all of them combined. if you look at what elon did, he did everything right technologically, but he took enormous risk in a business that required billions of dollars of capital. remember, when tesla was near bankruptcy, now is near trillion dollar corporation, very, very few people in my entire life have been able to combine that amount of risk tolerance as well as technological brilliance. it is very rare to have both. >> and finally, a couple sentences. the wildest thing about this super successful widely believed to be intelligent person, eric schmidt, wildest thing about you that people would be surprised by. >> i go to burning man every year. >> failure means? >> in my world, failure means put your pants on the next morning and start again. >> success means? >> more success. people that are successful tend to create success around them. they do so because of uniquely human aspects such as drive, charisma, and luck. >> and finally, reaching the summit means. >> there's a point when you're successful when you realize you're at the top, i don't mean the tippy top, i mean the people you're with are also winners. it is incredibly satisfying when you are successful at the summit to realize there are other summits, and hanging out with the other summiteers is the most fun ever. >> you have been very generous with your time. you're a busy person. we learned a lot. thank you for joining me on the summit series. >> thank you, ari. look forward to seeing you soon. >> absolutely. appreciate it. catch the entire interview, my discussion with eric sh myth and other valued guests by going to msnbc's youtube channel. there's a play list of in depth conversations with ari. maybe it is time for some holiday viewing. check it out online. we have been working on something special to share with you this holiday season. stay with us. with you this holiday season. stay with us rollerball desig. because with the right pain reliever... life opens up. aleve it... and see what's possible. feeling sluggish or weighed down? it could be a sign that your digestive system isn't working at it's best taking metamucil everyday can help. metamucil psyllium fiber, gels to trap and remove the waste that weighs you down. it also helps lower cholesterol and slows sugar absorption to promote healthy blood sugar levels. so you can feel lighter and more energetic metamucil. support your daily digestive health. and try metamucil fiber thins. a great tasting and easy way to start your day. facing leaks takes strength. so here's to the strong, who trust in our performance and comfortable long-lasting protection. because your strength is supported by ours. depend. the only thing stronger than us, is you. all right. this is our holiday show. i appreciate you spending time with me and the beat team here over this holiday season and the new year period. as the year draws to a close, we actually did celebrate a big anniversary this year. four years of "the beat" which made us the longest running show at 6:00 p.m. in msnbc's 25 year history. now, that is obviously a credit to you. there's no-shows without viewers. we want to thank you again for sticking with us during the ups and downs and wild times and for the end of the year for something more fun because the news isn't always that, we gathered some of our favorite moments. yes, breaking news and big interviews, but guess who made us smile or think. and of course, my team told me we had to include it, we have some of the bad jokes. as always, the awkward silences. take a look. >> the premier of "the beat" with ari melber starts now. we are psyched. >> thank you. welcome to the beat. >> the first look at previously secret documents. >> did you speak to the fbi. >> yes, yes, yes. >> that is an admission of guilt. >> i am not a lawyer, thank god. >> is that ridiculous? >> it is a fundamental question, i don't know if what he is done is even legal. >> he knows he can't win. >> the united states faces a covid crisis. >> dealing with a formidable virus. >> january 6th we saw mobs storming the capitol. >> we're the aftermath, we're the casualties of war. >> we can't let trump play us off against each other. >> there's not a woman in america who isn't now reliving some experience. >> we're shifting the blame and shame to the actual harassers. >> what brings the tears? >> it was hard fight. really hard fight. >> it is important for us as culture to own the culture. >> it is important to be an artist and to speak truth. >> here we are, live in new hampshire on primary evening. >> here at the red rooster. >> trump finally left the white house since becoming the loser of the race. >> low key reference -- >> yes, it is over. >> i had a rap for here for you. >> let me say it the way biggie smalls would say it. even when i was wrong, i got my point across. >> are you majority leader if you're not running this like cardi. >> hip-hop said do the ladies run this, yes, we do. >> we run kings, kings not run we. >> yes. >> you in the street like sesame. >> you know it. >> the line from drake, which is a wise man once said nothing at all. >> you almost wonder if it's leading to an awkward silence. the awkward silences. >> oh. . >> what can you say? >> was it isn't push t i believe there is a god above me, i'm just the god of everything else. >> uh-huh. >> this is weird, right? >> it is super weird. >> i'm amazed that millions of people watch this show. >> there is a saying in television news of a hard turn. >> i know a hard turn and luckily, i can make one. >> for a dollar, define collusion. >> oh, god, it's when you collude. >> you're microwave dinners that we've heard about. >> very dry. >> it's like dangling shiny objects saying here, look at it. >> i'm stuck in an empty chair. >> earth is in empty space and we're all on earth. deal with it. [ laughter ] >> i don't always see these in advance. that's really funny. >> this is a disaster. >> it's dangerous for me to even step into the political arena. >> it's friday on "the beat" and you know what that means. it's time to fall back. >> i think you need to fall back and not give your guests homework before they come on the program. >> we have to recuse ourself out of this segment, legal recusal joke. big hit. >> classic joke. >> do you have time for a bad passover joke? >> lobbiest registration joke. >> do you have a favorite economists joke? >> you know the wrapper 50 cent, right? given recent inflation, his name is now 64 cent. >> oh. >> that's how you know you're watching "the beat". >> kamala harris is? >> almost done with this interview. >> remember that. >> i appreciate you spending some time on "the beat tonight". >> thank you so much. >> if you don't know, now you know. you know, we have fun. or we try to. it has been quite a year. when we come back, i've got one more thing to share with you. tu with a revolutionary, rollerball design. because with the right pain reliever... life opens up. aleve it... and see what's possible. don't settle for products that give you a sort-of white smile. try crest whitening emulsions... ...for 100% whiter teeth. its highly active peroxide droplets... ...swipe on in seconds. better. faster. 100% whiter teeth. shop crestwhitesmile.com. hey hun hey, get your own vapors relax with vicks vapobath or with vicks vaposhower. take a soothing vicks vapo moment wherever you chose. when you have xfinity, you have entertainment built in. which is kind of nice. ah, what is happening. binge-watching is in the bag, when you find all your apps, all in one place. find live sports faster just by using your voice... sports on now. touchdown irish! [cheering] that was awesome. and, the hits won't quit, with peacock premium included at no additional cost. all that entertainment built in. xfinity. a way better way to watch. if you want to keep in touch when we're not on the air, you can find me @arimelber, instagram, facebook and my name, new, you can go to tiktok. i have an account. it doesn't have a lot of followers. if you or your family orchids orchids -- or kids, you don't really see him on "the beat". anyway, as always, thank you for spending time with us. that does it for our holiday edition of "the beat." happy holidays and here is to an even better 2022. en better 2022 just because of this. (woman) wow, that's something. (burke) you get a whole lot of something with farmers policy perks. [echoing] get a quote today. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ new vicks convenience pack. dayquil severe for you... and daily vicks super c for me. vicks super c is a daily supplement with vitamin c and b vitamins to help energize and replenish. dayquil severe is a max strength daytime, coughing, power through your day, medicine. new from vicks. a must in your medicine cabinet! less sick days! cold coming on? zicam is the #1 cold shortening brand! highly recommend it! zifans love zicam's unique zinc formula. it shortens colds! zicam. zinc that cold! hate to have to do this, but we have sad breaking news from hollywood. the associated press is recording legendary actress betty white has died at the age of 99. she was the longest running woman on television but there was so much more than television. she began her career on the radio in the 1940s, then tv in the 1950s, starring in more shows than i have fingers on my hands. her most famous, though, "rose" on the golden girls that ran on nbc from 1985 to 1992. then there were the movies, so many movies. just the other day, her proposal co-star ryan reynolds joked he was sti