will be someone of extraordinary qualifications, character, experience, and integrity. and that person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the united states supreme court. >> i'm announcing today that one of theirs in my administration will be filled by the most qualified woman i can possibly find. >> well, law turns on precedent, and that is a very prominent precedent for how presidents can mix qualifications, you heard them both reference that, with an eye on diversifying the court. it's a comparison rachel maddow reported on amidst some conservatives now claiming that these reagan esque pledges have suddenly become suspect. >> when the conservative media and republicans today have been pounding their chests and screaming about how wrong, just how wrong it is that joe biden made a pledge during his campaign that if he were elected, he would put an african american woman on the supreme court, they really ought to be asked if they were that mad about ronald reagan making that same kind of promise in 1980. >> indeed, if you want to take a note of optimism that transcends the rank hypocrisy she diagnosed, let's just say that ronald reagan and joe biden have one good thing in common. they took the power of theirefu underneath the representation of the rest of the nation. so that's what the white house is focused on today, with breyer making that official appearance. now, there's also some interesting signs out of washington, d.c. which is so quick to tear presidents down and build them back up. the washington class has gone from slamming biden's position last week, especially at those press questions at the press conference, to now almost frothing over new signs of life. one nonpartisan "washington post" writer capturing the mood by saying the court pick can help biden draw clear contrast with republicans moving off the focus on democratic infighting associated with the spending battles and tee up a much needed biden victory in congress. now, that's a projection. it's a long ways from naming a nominee to getting to that victory, but others are also pointing to a very real-world victory that's already happenin in decades amidst biden's stewardship and the economic packages he already won and pushed. we quoted rachel. on this story, we're going to quote another colleague, joe scarborough, who this morning was reporting on the economic numbers and saying that biden can excel by focusing on this more than endless internal negotiations in congress. >> he overperformed on job creation, record job creation in the first year. 5.6% growth for our economy. that's an overperformance. 3.9% unemployment. again, incredible job there. he's sitting in a pretty good position right now, if you look at the basics of this economy. >> well, class is in session, and we have two professors. morgan state university professor jason johnson, and nyu law professor melissa murray. welcome to both of you. jason, i want to start with that point about the economy, because as joe scarborough, a former republican congressman, was just saying, and others are looking at this, it seems like a great result for a first-year president to hit at the time where he also has the wind at his back on these other stories. >> usually, cash rules everything around a president, ari, but not in this particular case. people may not feel this economic growth the way the numbers seem to be playing it out right now. look, you can have all sorts of great things happening in the stock market. you can have all sorts of fantastic things happening with large businesses, but on people's day to day lives, they're still seeing gas prices go up, foodup, and they're still concerned about the safety of their job. this is no longer a raw numbers situation. joe biden's responsibility in part is to give people a sense of comfort and money alone won't do it. i can tell you quite frankly that most people who i speak to, including some of my students who i just talked to earlier today, they're worried about the safety of their jobs and their overall safety during covid. >> yeah, well put and fair. before i get to the meat and potatoes, professor, did you want to give a grade to jason's wu-tang reference? >> c.r.e.a.m. cash rules everything around me. well done, jason. >> the c in this case, the c is not a report card c, just a cream c. for that reference. you know, you grew up on the new york crime side, staying alive was no jive, jason. staying alive, as you say, when inflation is eating your wages. we could go on. we won't. i'm going to hand it over to the professor. she mouthed don't, which is fair. take a look at our law professors as we turn to law, this is justice breyer back in the day with the president who appointed him briefly on a jog, bill clinton. take a look. >> faster, the judiciary or the executive? >> judiciary lasts longer. >> they're both decent with a quip. we cued that up to show you how much time has gone by because here was breyer speaking today back at the white house at the end of his career with the new president. >> and we are now engaged in a great civil war. to determine whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. see, those are the words i want to see, an experiment, that next generation and the one after that. my grandchildren and their children, they'll determine whether the experiment still works, and of course, i am an optimist, and i am pretty sure it will. >> professor. >> well, he said it himself. justice breyer has been the court's cockeyed optimist for a varlong time. he's always had faith in institutions. always tried to be a consensus builder between the left and the right, on a court that has moved very sharply to the right. one can't help but wonder if this decision to retire, not just because of the looming midterms but because perhaps he sees the writing on the wall that this might not be the time for consensus building. there might be no opportunity for consensus building on a court that is clearly tilted toward the right with a 6-3 conservative supermajority. >> yeah, that's fair. you look at this pledge, i showed what rachel and others have said about it, to diversify the court, and professor, i'll remind viewers, you're raising the next generation of legal thinkers here. law is a profession that relates to who runs the country, if you look in the congress, it's the most overrepresented profession. we know the power judges have. we live under these rules whether that's ultimately who decide who has the right to choice. yet that remains incredibly imbalanced, unrepresentative system. aba says under 5% of lawyers are black, for example. very expensive these days to go to law school. the judiciary, even less so. even obama who talked about diversifying and did it in certain ways but on federal judgeships overall, i'm going to put it on the screen, just how few black women are on the federal courts writ large. all of them, not just the supreme court. obama put one black woman, partly because there were so few around at the time who were in lower courts. trump did zero. here's what biden has done in one year. of course, those other comparisons, they had more years. he already put eight on the court at the federal level and he said he would do that on the supreme court. could you talk to us for those of us who may not be aware of those disparities what that means. >> there's a huge disparity. women, of course, have been matriculating in law schools at the same rate as men for some time, but leaving aside the whole question of intersectionality and race and gender, even women are not reaching the top of the profession, the highest echelons of the profession. for black women, it's even more acute. we are starkly underrepresented in the ranks of general counsels. starkly underrepresented in the ranks of equity partners at large law firms. we're starkly underrepresented in academia, and i can say that from personal experience. so there is room to diversify at all levels of the legal profession. i feel like i need to call out one of my fantastic nyu students, tahliah scott, who founded her own nonprofit, legally black, to help young women, young black women going to law school to prepare for that process and to be successful in it, and she's absolutely phenomenal. we're very lucky to have her doing that kind of work. >> well, thanks for telling us about that, too, that's at a very individual, specific level. shout out to that. jason, your thoughts. i emphasize this because there's a thing in life and definitely in policy where people think they know something, and then they start talking based on what they think they know. i always would say respectfully, cool, let's make sure you know what you think you know is right or not. and i think i'm going to put that chart back up on the screen one more time because this is the news and these are facts. even recent history, even president obama not able to really dent this. clearly, both joe biden and the people around him in the white house counsel's office and the other places doing the vetting, it would appear they care about this, jason. >> yeah, they care about it. and they should, ari. look, the practicality is, if you want a judiciary that is remotely reflective of the country that we have, you should have more black women on the judiciary. you should have more black men on the judiciary. you should have more people on the judiciary that didn't come out of top five law schools. these are all things that are necessary. if the people who are facing crimes and facing our criminal justice system, heck, people who are just dealing with fraud cases and environmental cases, they're all coming from different kinds of backgrounds, so we should have a judiciary that is reflective of that. i have to make this point because this is the thing that concerns me. as much credit as we want to give joe biden and as great as it is he's put these women on the bench, the fact of the matter is, we're still facing a situation with a supermajority on the court. even if he puts a black woman on the court, it is still 6-3. unless he thinks in a much more expansive way about maybe expanding the court or changing some of the processes for how you put people on the court, we will still face this supermajority, because everybody that trump and republicans have put on was a second-year law school and those guys are going to be on the bench for the next 40 years. >> they are young. that's definitely true. i appreciate both of you giving us perspective and widening some of the perspective because this is a heady time as we look at the future of the court. these seats come up rarely. really interesting to see the push for change. jason and melissa, my thanks to both of you. let me tell folks what's coming up. i have a special report going in deep, fact checking fox news and explaining how even some democrats have underestimated the factual issues and the lies. we have been working on this. i'm going to share it with you coming up. >> later, a new twist in the matt gaetz sex crime probe, and a new study about covid and cbd oil, and we have one of the researchers involved. that's later in the hour. stay with us. later in the hour stay with us quickbooks can help. an easy way to get paid, pay your staff, and know where your business stands. new business? no problem. success starts with intuit quickbooks. your plain aspirin could be hurting your stomach. vazalore... is the first liquid-filled aspirin capsule clinically shown to cause fewer ulcers than plain aspirin. try new vazalore. aspirin made amazing! why does walgreens offer prescription copays as low as zero dollars? ♪ ♪ so you won't have a medicare in the world. ♪ ♪ plus, 90-day refills and same day delivery. larry? that's even less to medicare about. fill your medicare prescriptions with walgreens and save. ♪ ♪ like pulsing, electric 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evidence for years which shows fox routinely broadcasts misleading and false information, which is different than most news organizations. more on the details of that in a moenlt, but if you're on the receiver end of that misinformation, if it's designed to take you down, you wouldn't want people to just take at face value the fox materials they're getting treated as if it's totally comparable to any other channel like abc or nbc or what you're watching, n msnbc. what i just said does sound obvious e, but at the big press conference president biden said, he casually propped up and legitimized fox news by likening to another news channel. >> american public are trying to sift their way through what's real and what's fake. the choice of what political coverage the voter looks to has as much impact on as what they believe. they go to get re-enforced in their views. whether it's msnbc or whether it's fox. >> that was the press conference by joe biden last week. it's not just him. other top democrats have used their mega phone to push virtually the exact same equivalence. let me show you a perplexing riff from barack obama where he basically used that same sentence structure, treating fox and rush limbaugh, which talked up racist birtherism against him as part of a larger media polarization. >> there are a couple things that in my mind at least contribute to our politics being more polarized than people actually are. the balkanization of the media means we just don't have a common place where we get common facts and a common world view the way we did 20, 30 years ago. and that just keeps on accelerating. i'm not the first to observe this, but yeah, you have the fox news rush limbaugh folks and then the msnbc folks. >> the way he puts it, his assertion is all those different folks can't agree on common facts. that's a false equivalence. you're witnessing those powerful democrats minimizing fox's factual problems which are different than, say, observing that there is opinion media out there. it weirdly legitimized fox news through that false equivalence. it's one more polarized source. now, is this the whole story? is this public concern about polarization in general a kind of political signal, perhaps, to swing voters and others, a district way for someone like a biden or obama to argue they're above the fray? or does joe biden really believe this about box? does he really believe that it's most viewed anchors like tucker carlson and its reporters are just one more comparable source on a polarized spectrum? and will we ever know? i mean, we can't read minds, right? but we can hear hot mics, which is why this story tonight is actually extra interesting, because on hot mics, of course, the mic catches something that a speaker meant to be private. and that's what happened to joe biden at the same presser where i showed you him making those remarks after getting a question from a fox news reporter, whom he later called after the hot mic moment to try to make it right. >> do you think inflation -- >> that's a great asset. more inflation. what a stupid son of a bitch. >> stupid son of a bitch, mr. unity strikes again. >> within about an hour of that exchange, he called my cell phone, and he said, it's nothing personal, pal. >> did he apologize? >> he cleared the air. and i appreciate it. we had a nice call. >> that's not an answer. did he a -- that doesn't sound like an apology? >> he said it's nothing personal, pal. i told him that i appreciated him reaching out. >> now, this whole exchange could be something small, a gaffe over language, but it's actually perhaps a window into biden's private thinking. that maybe he actually thinks fox is not the same, which is why he had those harsh words. but he has other reasons to echo a kind of conventional wisdom here. and this is a common refrain from certain voices. take bill maher, who is often on the left on many issues. he said msnbc's coverage of chris christie meant it was time to look at yourself, msnbc, you're turning into fox news, bridgegate has become your benghazi. this conventional wisdom keeps on cropping up, and yes, full disclosure, this is an msnbc segment about the topic. but other independent journalists have roundly rejected that kind of claim. "the washington post" said bill maher misfires on saying msnbc equals fox. they went into the facts, notice that key fox claims about benghazi faced a punishing year and a half of challenge and debunkment, so the story itself was off base, while writing msnbc reporting on bridgegate used on the report allegations of public officials, a core journalistic responsibility. and that's the point. this stuff matters. it affects politics and democracy. and i'm not here tonight to tell you what we think of our own work at this channel. and that wouldn't be evidence. i am here to report that this biden/obama/mahr equivalence does falter in the face of actual independent reporting. take independent researchers. they found fox is so routinely misleading that just watching it would make you less informed. and not just on hot political topics or your shoes of, say, donald trump, they accept falsehoods about covid more than people who got their news from literally anywhere else. hmm. i wonder why. >> unless you have an immune system that's compromised and you're older and you have other underlying health issues, you are not going to die 99% from this virus. >> the experts still think that parents should trust them and inject their kids with an environmental drug. >> these are, after all, experimental drugs. >> the cleveland clinic said if you had covid-19, you don't need any vaccine. >> no one should get boosted. no one should get double boosted. they're a dangerous and ineffective product. >> maybe it doesn't work and they're simply not telling you that. >> we picked those misleading claims precisely because they're not even about politicians and because this is much larger than one media company and another, which is kind of how biden put it, or me talking about somebody across the street. we're talking about information that affects what happens to people, including their own viewers, whether they get sick or potentially die in ways they didn't have to. those were misleading claims pushed over and over, and recent studies found that kind of repetition made those fox views more likely to be misinformed and act in ways that were dangerous to themselves and worsen the pandemic, or how the science on human activity is making the world warmer, it is, but if you watch fox regularly, you might not, because about half of fox viewers falsely think the earth is just getting warmer by itself. >> they want you to be really afraid of climate change. >> climate change, they said, caused these fires. they didn't explain how exactly that happened. >> using the deadly tornado tragedy across the midwest to push their far-left climate alarmism agenda. >> we're not seeing any significant increase in extreme weather events affecting people's lives. >> the severity has been on the decline. >> i think it was the coldest july we have had in a while. global cooling. >> climate change panic is so overblown that it's hyperbolic and silly. >> kids have a lot of things to worry about. climate change should not be one of them. >> fox has been doing this for years. in a way that is fundamentally different from other media and other even opinionated media. now, there were those public service announcements that said the more you know. remember that? back in 2012, a while back, a study showed fox viewers were also less informed than people who literally said they consumed no news at all. think about that. you spend your time watching something called fox news. and you end up statistically less informed than people who don't watch the news, period. this is not journalism. what they're doing. what those results show. it's different than most other outlets. take the independent pointer institute, which found fox and msnbc were not the same thing, while both did have strong view viewpoints, it was fox that spun its own reality. many media outlets face all kinds of lawsuits. we report on them. fox, though, tends to lose or settle quite a bit of their lawsuits. they had to settle with the family of a former democratic operative, seth rich, because they had falsely linked him to a wikileaks email dump and falsely suggested that somehow democrats or the clintons' leaks would have been linked to that tragic death. it's a specific example, i'm sure it was based on what we have learned, horrific for the family, and it was false enough they had to settle the case. at other times, fox's falsehoods affect the entire republic we're living through and its problems. there were a lot of misleading suggestions about the 2020 election. even though the network's own decision desk counted up what everyone else found, the ballots that biden won. >> some of the most brazen acts of voter fraud to date. >> there is evidence of fraud. >> sworn affidavits saying people are forging signatures. >> tampering allegations to the dead people voting. >> how many dead people voted? >> amazing. what freer and fair elections we all have confidence in. >> a corrupt, stolen election. >> the election was stolen from a president. >> another independent study found fox cast doubt on the results about 800 times, they counted, just in two weeks after the election. so that affects fox viewers as well. a poll found 82% of fox viewers falsely and wrongly believe trump won. that may be a contribution of both trump's statements, the republican party, and fox itself. dominion voting systems is currently suing fox for defamation because it says many guests were allowed to repeat blatantly false claims attacking their voting machines. this is not about opinion, which as a free speech person and a former first amendment practicing lawyer i will defend, including their opinions. this is about an entity that has news in the title but continues to make demonstrably false claims about all these issues. we have covered the covid angle before, and that is a danger to fox viewers. people who don't watch fox at all may have better information. when we report on that, we report on that because it's important and also out of direct concern about how a company that has its own vaccine policies and uses a lot of cdc style rules to keep its own workers safe is telling its viewers false things that might endanger them. and yet, we turn back to the news hook, as we call it in our business, of what joe biden was talking about. why so many powerful democrats would seve to give fox cover with that equivalence. even though its own viewers are more susceptible to believing false theories on all sorts of issues including the january 6th insurrection. there's a wider debate in the democratic party which did reject fox as a debate host in 2020 after having previously given the channel that honor to navigate and referee democratic party debates in previous cycles. this is a debate within the party. there are democrats who either truly believe or seem to accept the conventional wisdom that fox is like other media, or maybe they're trying to score some sort of centrist points by saying that. then there are others, including what we see in a newer generation that's so concerned about the cost real world of this propaganda that they see fox and other right-wing media as far more sinister. take the queens bridge artist nas, who wrote a whole long about this channel, lamenting, sly fox, cyclops, locked innen ann idiot box. censored misinformation over stimulation. and nas' advice was with fox feeding us toxins, quote, you better watch what you're watching. an interesting take from an artist who was clearly concerned about what he called fox propaganda. now, people can decide for themselves whether they agree more with that or with this recurring equivalence of two presidents. >> you've got the fox news, rush limbaugh folks, and then the msnbc folks. >> the choice of what political coverage a voter looks to has as much impact on as what they believe. whether it's msnbc or whether it's fox. >> why do top democrats draw this false equivalency? does it bolster fox's credibility, and is it something that the party should have further debate on? well, we turn to obama vet che koumen dura when we're back in 60 seconds. 72 7 ♪are you ready♪ one of my favorite supplements is qunol turmeric. turmeric helps with healthy joints and inflammation support. unlike regular turmeric supplements qunol's superior absorption helps me get the full benefits of turmeric. the brand i trust is qunol. ♪ when you have nausea, ♪ ♪ heartburn, ingestion, upset stomach... ♪ ♪ diarrheaaaa.♪ try pepto bismol with a powerful coating action. for fast and soothing relief. pepto bismol for fast relief when you need it most. we have been talking about truth, lies, and equivalence. now we turn to a special day here on "the beat." we call it chai day. it's when political strategist and this cartoon operative chai komanduri, joins us. thanks for coming back, sir. >> good to be back, ari. how are you? >> i'm great. we just walked through a lot of evidence which was not to offer my view of our own channel's work. but to look at why a president you once worked for, obama, and the current president, biden, draw this equivalence and whether you think they are correct. >> well, frankly, it's unfortunately conventional wisdom in the media, in d.c., in much of the country that fox is a legitimate news source like msnbc or cnn. the problem with this thinking is it's not true. and i would argue it is extremely dangerous. fox traffics in disinformation and dishonesty about climate change, democracy, and covid. if you took the advice that fox hosts were giving to you about covid, you could have possibly died. and i do think a lot of the anti-vax people, hundreds of thousands of them who did die, did exactly that. so the stakes are extremely high. this was a movement that fox cheer led. this was something that was hypocritical on the part of fox, considering that fox itself has a vaccine mandate. it all makes fox, to me, much closer to alex jones and infowars than it is to msnbc and cnn. >> so when joe biden says that, why as someone who is so integrated into the democratic party as you and you have worked these campaigns, why does he say that? is it because it's kind of a sop to centrism and he's playing in what exists while privately trashing peter doocy and other fox news reporters or do you think he believes it? >> i don't think he necessarily believes it. i think he was saying that to appear more centrist, to appear more moderate. there is a bias in our culture in the media, in d.c., toward covering the two sides here, the democratic side and the republican side, the fox side, and thelegitimate news side. they cover them like a bickering couple in a romantic comedy. think of tom hanks and meg ryan in "you got mail." i was going to say sleepless in seattle. it was "you got mail." the theory there is, oh, can't these folks get along? can't they get together? can't they work things snout that's very much the media narrative. it's also the media narrative that tends to root for bipartisanship, regardless of the policy consequences for the american people. so i do think that is a major problem. the reality is, when you talk about fox, you're not really talking about a romantic comedy. you're talking much more about a slasher film. you know, fox's information is out to kill democracy and it does and it has killed americans. you know, fox news in my opinion is much more freddy krueger than it is tom hanks. >> fair. and then you look at the way they have covered recent events, which biden's got to be aware of. here was their coverage of the insurrection. >> it does not appear violent. it's not like it's a siege. it seems like they're protesting. >> an overwhelming majority of them, 99%, more than 99% had to be, were peaceful. >> it's a constitutional right to engage in peaceful political demonstrations. and it's wrong to go after law-abiding citizens who were engaging in their constitutional rights. >> reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd. >> so fbi operatives were organizing the attack on the capitol. >> all of that is misleading, much of it is directly false. whether it was defamatory is a higher legal bar. i mentioned lawsuits against them. what do you think at the political level, which is the other part of this, the democratic party needs to do? >> i think we need to really push back on the idea that conspiracy theories are somehow equivalent to conservative opinion. they're not the same them. a lot of people wis listen to me and say, hey, you're a democrat. of course you feel this way about fox news. think about this as a thought experiment. imagine if we had bill kristol or george will running fox news. they would not run a single segment that i as a democrat would agree with. however, it would be nothing like the fox news that exists today, the fox news of marjorie taylor greene, the fox news of ivermectin enthusiasts, as the favorite news channel of vladimir putin. that is what fox news has become. that disinformation is very dangerous and it's necessary that democrats really push back on the idea that fox is peddling conspiracy theories, not conservative opinions. i think democrats have done this on some level. nancy pelosi by bringing in liz cheney, someone she probably doesn't agree with on any issue except the fact that america should be a democratic country, has begun the process of distinguishing conservative opinion from conspiracy theories, from the things we're seeing on fox news. >> when you put it like that, it's a much clearer contrast. when you listen to obama and biden, it was a warmed over beltway noodle cougal that made the argument you would have to get back to common facts by having less of fox and a bunch of other types of media. the evidence we just showed and some of what you said is actually, no, to get back to common facts, you have to remove the conspiracy theories wherever they are. if the studies show, don't take my word for it, i quoted pointer, wash po, quantitative research. to get rid of them, you have to go there, and you may not sound like you're matching the conventional wisdom, the koogal, as i call it, you just have to be clear about what the recipe is and bring people to that with the facts. so it's really interesting because biden said that, it caught our ear, but we had a lot of other news but it made for a good chai day. thanks for being here. >> thank you, ari. coming up, we know biden called it the bfd, a new obamacare record, but first, this bombshell revelation from a new witness appearing in the matt gaetz sex crime probe and a special guest who knows all about florida law when we come back. a law when we come back really truly absorb the natural goodness. new chapter. wellness well done. ♪ ♪making your way in the world today♪ ♪takes everything you've got♪ ♪ ♪taking a break from all your worries ♪ ♪sure would help a lot ♪ ♪wouldn't you like to get away? ♪ ♪ ♪ sometimes you want to go ♪ ♪where everybody knows your name ♪ ♪ ♪and they're always glad you came ♪ to be a thriver with metastatic breast cancer means asking for what we want. and need. and we need more time. so, we want kisqali. women are living longer than ever before with kisqali when taken with an aromatase inhibitor or fulvestrant in postmenopausal women with hr+, her2- metastatic breast cancer. kisqali is a pill that's significantly more effective at delaying disease progression versus an aromatase inhibitor or fulvestrant alone. kisqali can cause lung problems, or an abnormal heartbeat, which can lead to death. it can cause serious skin reactions, liver problems, and low white blood cell counts that may result in severe infections. tell your doctor right away if you have new or worsening symptoms, including breathing problems, cough, chest pain, a change in your heartbeat, dizziness, yellowing of the skin or eyes, dark urine, tiredness, loss of appetite, abdomen pain, bleeding, bruising, fever, chills or other symptoms of an infection, a severe or worsening rash, are or plan to become pregnant, or breastfeeding. avoid grapefruit during treatment. ask your doctor about living longer with kisqali. turning to the matt gaetz sex crime probe. a witness saying they allegedly saw gaetz convicted ally greenberg told gaetz on a phone call that a tanjer that both men had paid to have sex with was actually, quote, underaged. two sources telling the daily beast this. nbc news has not matched this reporting. the witness is reportedly joseph ellicott, a friend of greenberg. investigators secured a plea deal from him in a separate investigation, but he's also required to cooperate, according to "the washington post," fully with the government. the florida congressman has not been charged with any crimes. he's repeatedly denied allegations of wrongdoing and put out a new statement rathering this development, reiterating his denials. this is a story brewing for some time, and we turn back to an expert who knows the law of the land. dave aronberg is from palm beach county. what does this mean? >> bad news for matt gaetz. i think he thought because it was a delay in this case, it was taking forever, that there was light at the end of the tunnel, but it turns out the loit was on an oncoming train. this is bad for him but worse that the ex-girlfriend testified before the grand jury. she's really the linchpin between matt gaetz and child sex trafficking and the mann act, which says you can't transport individuals across state or federal lines for purposes of prostitution, and witness tampering. when it comes to big joe ellicott, he's more of a corroborating witness for that phone call that greenberg made to gaetz in a panic because he had just found out that one of the girls that they were with from the seeking arrangements website was underaged. >> now, all of that sounds really bad on the evidence and the underlying potential offense. gaetz's side not only have denied it, as i say, but they tend to argue that the evidence, though, is not as bad if it has to hang on a phone call or a second-hand account of a phone call. why would that kind of information you called it corroboration, matter if investigators have underlying better actual evidence rather than just discussion? >> the feds don't want their key witnesses to just be joel greenberg, who is a walking criminal enterprise, and the then-17-year-old girl who lied about her age and had a profile on seekingarrangements.com and became an adult film star. not to bash anyone's choice of professions, but juries don't like that profile. they're looking for corroboration. that's why this whole thing has been taking so long. now they have someone who was in the room when the happened. at least the room in which the phone call happened and why is greenberg calling matt gaetz with mayday, mayday? because he just found out this girl was underage? well, you can then surmise it's because they both were with this girl inappropriately. but the key witness here is the ex-girlfriend, who has no ax to grind with matt gaetz. they had an open relationship. she doesn't have major credibility issues. she used to be a capitol hill staff. . she could be the key witness. when you go before a grand jury, it's not a case for minor details but it is a place for details about minors. >> you have really walked us through the exact legal nuance here, because as you mentioned. as we have reported, the underlying offenses are very serious. but whether some of the individuals that might be used by the feds to go at gaetz have their own credibility and criminal problems goes to how they may be trying to stack the evidence. you have explained that well. i'll reiterate because this is, of course, an important story. the gaetz side has denied all wrongdoing. we'll report out this investigation wherever it ends, including if it ends with no charges. dave aronberg, thank you so much. >> let me tell everybody what we have coming up because it is a very different look at a story that, yeah, we talk about covid and omicron all the time. what if i told you i had good news about new science and information you might hear people buzzing about? 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so she ordered sunglasses with prime, one day delivery. ♪♪ clever girl. people realized she's actually hilarious once you get to know her. eugh. as if. ♪♪ well, he was asking for it. prime changes everything. as a business owner, your bottom line we is always top of mind.t. so start saving by switching to the mobile service designed for small business: comcast business mobile. flexible data plans mean you can get unlimited data or pay by the gig. all on the most reliable nationwide network. with no line activation fees or term contracts... saving you up to $500 a year. and it's only available to comcast business internet customers. so boost your bottom line by switching today. comcast business: powering possibilities. turning to the latest on covid, there are signs that omicron is fading, infections are declining across the u.s., while deaths continue to rise. there is plenty of covid to go around. in fact, we continue to see different lab studies deal with learning about this evolving and mutating virus. there's a new one raising lots of interest. 33 scientists finding that cbd can prevent covid from replicating. they observed real-life patients. experts say a clinical trial could be needed to draw conclusions. this is a study about learning what's working, it is not advice about what to take to fight covid at this juncture. now, one of the researchers from the cbd study joins us right now. glenn randall is a professor at the university of chicago. welcome. >> hi, ari. nice to be on. >> what did your study find? >> yeah. so we started looking at cbd because it has some antiinflammatory functions and we thought it would prevent the later stages of disease where disease goes haywire. we tested it and to our surprise, it directly blocks virus replication among cells. and so we tested it in animal models with our colleagues at the university of louisville. and animals taking cbd had significantly less replication. and there are patients who take cbd. it's an fda approved version, not oils, to treat epilepsy. and comparing patient records of those with other epileptic patients not taking cbd, there was a lot less cbd in the patient population. with that, we thought interesting enough, to publish and to call for more definitive, well-defined human clinical trials to see is there some therapeutic potential. we don't know the answer to that question until we have those trials. >> right. a lot more that's not known yet. cbd is associated with marijuana, but it's not the thc that people think of that gets you high. your literature suggests you're dealing with people who were taking it any way. in plain english, if possible, can you tell us what sit about cbd that did seem to work? >> yeah. so our body has genes that fight virus infection. and cbd activated those genes. and additional, it turned off some of these bad players in the hyper inflammation. so it might be that cbd can work at both stages of the covid disease process. >> and finally, i just want to emphasis this, because there's so much information out there, and this is an interesting study. we talked to a lot of people. we were one of the people that tried the vaccine when it was experimental before all those studies. if someone reads about this online and says oh, that means they want to then try to take cbd or marijuana to deal with covid prevention, that's wrong because why? >> so two reasons. first of all, we showed that thc, the active component marijuana clocks cbd's ability to work. so marijuana and our results should not have any effect. and the second reason, of course, cbd is no substitute for preventative things that work like vaccines and masks and preventing serious disease. so it should. take the place of those better characterized approaches. >> got it. i've got to say, for a scientist, you're pretty understandable. that's a journalistic tip of the hat and i appreciate you walking us through your study, sir. >> thanks, ari. a pleasure being on. >> thank you. we'll be back with one more update on obamacare. update on obamacare. allergies wn overwhelming you? 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"the reidout" starts right now. hi, joy. >> okay, i want everybody, don't move too quickly. i have some dangerous items here on my desk. >> wow! >> we all know that books are extremely dangerous. >> you know, you might want to talk to people about banning them, i don't know, joy. >> i know, i know. i even have like this one. these books are terrifying. i'm a little nervous about this segment. keep me in prayer. i'm a little nervous. >> you got it. >> okay. have a good night.