-Our next guest is
an Emmy-winning journalist and MSNBC's chief
legal correspondent. He hosts "The Beat" weekdays
at 6:00 p.m. on MSNBC. Please welcome back to the show
Ari Melber. ♪♪ Hello!
-Hey. -Welcome. Ari, it's so lovely to have you.
-Great to see you. -You were here in December,
the last time you were here. You had just done I believe
five hours of coverage because the IG report, the inspector's general report,
had just come out. Do you even remember
what that was about? -I feel like that was a review
of the Russia probe? I feel like
there were lot of reports. -There were a lot of reports. And that both seems very distant
in the past, and yet it also -- you know,
certainly Trump's legal problems remain in the present,
and you were booked before we knew what was going to
happen today with Rudy Giuliani. You know, federal agents
going into his apartment. This is a big deal.
-It's a huge deal. It is the second time
that a lawyer for Donald Trump has seen his own place raided. Last time, everyone remembers,
it was Michael Cohen. He was raided. He was indicted.
He ultimately went to jail. So it's bad news
for Rudy Giuliani. And we'll find out if it's
bad news for Donald Trump. -There has to be a very --
The threshold, I would imagine, is higher when you're actually
talking about going into a lawyer's home
to seize material. -Yes.
-Is that safe to say? -Very safe to say.
So, "The New York Times" reports that there was enough evidence that prosecutors wanted to do
this last year. Then they wanted to do it again
while Rudy was leading his increasingly bizarre
and baroque challenge to the election
on Donald Trump's behalf. Both times Trump appointees
in Washington stopped this move. So it's with
a new administration, and the reason they were able
to stop it is that you actually have to
get higher clearance to go into a lawyer's home
or a lawyer's office because, yes, they do have
confidential information. -Now, would it have been maybe
better for Rudy if this had happened
when Trump was still president so that Trump
could've pardoned him, which is no longer
a possibility? -This is the most Trumpian
of questions, right? If you're surrounded by people
who are indicted criminals and then you just
schedule your pardons the way other people schedule showing up
to your friends' birthdays, you want to get your crime done really early
in the administration, if you're going to do it all,
legally. And so people like Steve Bannon
and others, obviously, did get their pardons --
Roger Stone. If Rudy Giuliani runs into
future legal problems -- I'm not saying he will or not,
but it's bad. -I will. I think he will. [ Laughter ] -But it's bad to be raided
like this because an independent judge
has signed off on the idea that there's evidence of crime
in your home, so that's a bad thing. And if he runs into future
problems, Trump can't help him. -President Biden
speaking tonight. We don't know --
We're on after he speaks, but we don't know
what he's gonna say yet. How do you feel his agenda
has been executed so far as we hit 100 days? -One thing that almost everyone
agreed about Joe Biden in Washington and in the country
over the last 30 years is that he was nice and boring. And now, he's had this exciting
start to the presidency, and the type of money
he's spending makes him look more like someone who just
signed his first record deal than the moderate,
boring president that many thought he would be. -And yet he also might be
ticking some boring boxes in that the press doesn't have
to sort of breathlessly report on things he says
and does every day. -And I think
it's a deliberate strategy. We'll see what happens
in the years to come. I got to go to the White House
earlier this week, reporting on the speech,
as you mentioned. And the whole mood and vibe
is, "It's different now. We can all be adults
and calm down." And there seems to be
a political benefit for that. We've heard so much about
how polarized everything is. Joe Biden's first bill
had more Republican support than what most people expected for a big "liberal"
spending bill. And I think it's partly people
welcome a change of pace. -I want to ask
about your reaction to the Chauvin guilty verdict. Obviously, there was
video evidence that, to a lot of people's eyes,
seem very clear that a crime had been committed. But were you surprised with
the guilty verdict insofar as we so rarely see it
in cases of police violence? -Seeing a U.S. police officer
convicted of murder is a complete and total rarity. The United States has one of the
highest rates of police killings in the world and then they're
also racially discriminatory. But just to put a point on it,
from 2006 to 2015, with thousands of killings, there were zero murder
convictions of police officers
for on-duty killings. So it even happening is rare. Whether this means
it may happen more often and there may be
a deterrent or not, I just think
it's too early to tell. -We've often talked about
your love of hip-hop when you've joined us, and you
posted this photo recently. I would say, if I didn't know
this was you, I wouldn't be able
to guess it was you, but I would know
that was 50 Cent. -I think 50 Cent is the more
identifiable and famous person in a mask in the photo. -Yes. How is he doing? -50's great.
-Yeah? -I mean, 50 is
a busy rapper and entrepreneur, and he's producing television. And he's actually much warmer
and more cuddly than the kind of bullying
persona he has on the Internet. And we're living in
a time of still debates over facts and science,
and I do think -- I didn't know
you had that photo handy -- but I do think, you know,
50 said, "I hate a liar more
than I hate a thief. A thief is after my salary. A liar is after my reality." -You know what? I would let you talk again but how are you going to say
something better than that? [ Laughter ] "The Beat" airs weekdays
at 6:00 p.m. on MSNBC.
