Summary
A group of "alternate electors" and the Trump campaign`s coordination with them is one of the latest areas of focus for the House January 6 committee. A bill pushed by Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis that would prohibit public schools and private businesses from making white people feel "discomfort" when they teach students or train employees about discrimination. In Netflix`s most recent film, "Don`t Look Up," Leonardo DiCaprio plays an increasingly frustrated scientist who realizes that, even though he`s discovered that an oversized comet is heading towards Earth, the general public and the authorities won`t do anything about it. FOX host Tucker Carlson aired an opening segment Tuesday sympathizing with Russian aggression that is now getting broadcast on Russian TV.
Transcript
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NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC HOST: Thank you so much for letting us in your homes during these extraordinary times. We are grateful. THE BEAT WITH ARI MELBER starts right now.
Hi, Ari.
ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: Hi, Nicolle.
Welcome to THE BEAT, everyone, I`m Ari Melber.
We begin with breaking news.
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MELBER: The Justice Department has just spoken out in the most certain terms to date at the highest levels on the Giuliani-led fraudulent electors scheme, which MSNBC`s Rachel Maddow and here on THE BEAT we`ve been reporting on extensively. Here`s the news..
The deputy attorney general, saying in a new statement to CNN, they are formally investigating the fake elector certifications. That would appear to be an escalation, at least according to what we know in public. We`ll have more on that in a moment. But that`s brand new. That is the news leading the hour. We`ll get into the context.
Meanwhile, the other developments that relate to all of this January 6th business is the committee now scouring those Trump documents that he failed to hide, losing at the Supreme Court. It was just last week.
It was just last week that the Supreme Court handed down that big 8-1 decision, a stinging rebuke for Trump.
For people who say how does this all work, does anything matter?
Well, the rule of law is holding. The Supreme Court made that ruling and now here, days later, the committee is receiving and processing what looks to be about 770 pages of once secret documents from inside the inner sanctum and the upper levels of the Trump White House.
What`s in there?
The short answer is we don`t have all the texts yet. But we do have reporting here on some of the examples, the categories: Meeting notes at that time, when they were preparing for January 6th; drafts of the actual January 6th speech, which could be incriminating -- we know Trump wanted to hide it -- as well as high level correspondence.
That could be emails, notes, communications from then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. The Meadows notes are believed to include information about the high stakes briefings, calls and Oval Office meetings at that time.
I want to be clear. Stay with me for a minute when you think about Oval Office meetings. I don`t say it as disrespect to the president at the time to note that, unlike other presidents, basically every other president, there`s really no supposition or evidence that he was doing any governing work at that time.
If there were Oval Office meetings, they are believed to have focused on his obsession at the time, which was trying to still steal the election and illegally stay in power after January 20th.
So when I say Oval Office meetings, if that was about President Bush or Eisenhower or Obama, could be about anything, maybe a national security meeting. There`s a reason why the investigator believe these Oval Office meeting notes, which we in the media don`t have yet, contain information about the contemporaneous state of mind and planning about stealing the election.
We`ve also reported on the MAGA world witnesses who have tried to duck or resist these subpoenas. We`re also seeing, though, the way that the process is working against the vast majority of people contacted.
Today a conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, admitting he went in. He was deposed by the committee, pleading the Fifth almost 100 times.
Another loss for a Trump ally, lawyer John Eastman who was part of the memos, the paper trail, that was trying to make these quasi legal arguments that there were ways to stay in power, for example the memo to Pence, outlining what he thought would be some sort of method to overturn the election through Pence, we was also at the Willard Hotel during those key leadup meetings, a judge ordering him to respond to committee`s subpoena for his emails.
So that`s an evidentiary request. He`s also pled the Fifth separately to about 150 questions. But you see that lawyers can`t just walk away, even though they do have legal, valid privilege claims. Some are dodging and weaving, some are giving testimony, some are giving a version of testimony and television interviews.
But they will be held to the same rule of law standard and they all need to keep their bar memberships. That brings us to a Trump aide and lawyer, who was subpoenaed by the committee and he also appeared on this program on Friday, Boris Epshteyn, admitting he was involved in the fraudulent electors plot.
He called it alternate electors. Headlines discussing whether he was busted while he continues to insist that whatever he wanted to do would be legal.
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BORIS EPSHTEYN, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN ADVISOR: Everything that was done was done legally by the Trump legal team, by -- according to the rules and under the leadership of Rudy Giuliani. We fought for the truth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: That`s his view. He has every right to share it.
To paraphrase "A Few Good Men," the witness has rights. But you heard him there, part of the claim that he is making and that Peter Navarro has made.
[18:05:00]
Who is also admitting plots to try to stay in power and overrule the election is that they see as somehow valid according to the rules or somehow provided for by various statutes or constitutional measures. They`re entitled to that defense.
The news tonight is the Feds are investigating this as a criminal matter. They will have the last word at the prosecutorial level about whether this was according to the rules and if anyone is further charged, well, then, it goes through our court system. Presumed innocent but you get your day in court and a trial will decide.
So I want to give you a little bit more of that news that was breaking at the very top, what we`re learning today that we didn`t know yesterday about how the Feds view that plot.
There were these fake or fraudulent or forged elector certifications. Rachel Maddow has done a lot of reporting on this, as I mentioned here as well.
And you go up the line, we`re talking about the number two in the Justice Department, deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco, who has now said -- and this was reported first here by CNN, quote, "We`ve received those referrals. Our prosecutors are looking at those and I can`t say anything more on ongoing investigations."
I can tell you that is a standard and proper statement when there are matters of major public interest. As you probably know, all the way back to James Comey and the Hillary emails or any number of stories, it will be practice to sometimes confirm a probe without giving more information.
But confirming a probe is bad news for anyone who is worried about being a person of interest or a target or a defendant of a criminal probe. Mr. Epshteyn has said on this program and elsewhere that they were doing it according to the rules. We have Congress looking at whether the rules were broken.
And now the DOJ, a federal probe as well into the actual rioters. That brings us to the Oath Keepers` leader, Stewart Rhodes, as well as nine alleged coconspirators, back in court today, pleading not guilty to that serious charge of seditious conspiracy.
And the judge is setting trial dates for later this spring and summer.
It`s a lot. Let`s get into it. I`m joined by "The Nation`s" Elie Mystal as well as Democratic strategist Juanita Tolliver.
Elie, your reaction to the DOJ confirming this is under federal investigation.
ELIE MYSTAL, "THE NATION": In the words of Dave Chappelle, one, two, three, four, Fifth.
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MYSTAL: Because that is interesting, right. Like if you`re a lawyer, you want to plead privilege. For your lawyer to go in 176 times and plead the Fifth, that`s an interesting piece of information.
In terms of the other thing with the Monaco confirming that these potentially fake electors ballots are being investigated, that`s the first indication -- one of the first indications we`ve gotten that the Department of Justice is listening to Congress.
Congress has asked -- politicians have asked the Department of Justice to look into that. That`s not mainline part of the January 6th committee investigation. The fact that Merrick Garland is at least doing that, is at least kind of looking into this issue, speaks well for, I think, going down the road --
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MYSTAL: -- the January 6 committee is done with their work, if Merrick Garland will then take up the baton.
MELBER: Let me jump into that. It`s very interesting and I think viewers have followed this because it`s been a big news story. Now it is a big investigative story. So Elie, I think you`re speaking to something that is the inner branch activity here. And I just want to be really precise about it and let you respond.
There`s two ways that Congress can engage on these things. They can do work and provide information or evidence that can form the predicate of an investigation. That`s OK.
They can also just demand political things like, gosh, it would be great if their opponents were under investigation. That`s not OK. And I draw that distinction because we`re living in this era, where there`s been a lot of pushing on the DOJ and all these pressures.
Walk us through what you`re seeing as the legal predicate. At the end of the day, a lot of investigations start with leads. They can come from a random person. They come from sometimes independent journalism. We know when we`re working on stories, gosh, this could lead to something.
They could come from someone in a position to know, someone who`s a congressional investigator. The only place they shouldn`t come from is a bias or political targeting. Speak a little more on that and then I`ll bring in Juanita.
MYSTAL: You don`t want a politician to say, look, I`ve got to run against this guy in the fall.
Can you look into this guy?
That`s not what`s happening. What I read is happening is Congress has information and they`re like here, Department of Justice; here, other branch of government, here is information we have found. Perhaps you would find it interesting.
What Monaco is confirming is that the Department of Justice is finding information and is conducting an appropriate investigation to see where that information leads. That`s what we want.
[18:10:00]
We want the government to be able to talk to each other. We don`t want the government to pressure -- inappropriately pressure each other.
What it looks like right now is a sharing of information, not a politically pressured investigation. And I think that`s a good thing and I think this is the first indication we have that that kind of intergovernmental cooperation is happening.
MELBER: Let me take that to Juanita on the political side.
Whether people like it or not, we live under the rulings of the Supreme Court in this country. The Supreme Court has found politicians have a right to lie. They can literally run on lies. They can run around and tell lies. That is not something that sends them to jail.
Whether people like it or not, that`s the law. What we`re not allowed to do in this country is you cannot lie in a voting booth. That`s called voter fraud. You can`t lie when certifying electors. That`s a government abuse of power to try to steal an election.
It seems, while there`s many lies that I think people know about, there`s at least an investigation -- I don`t want to prejudge anything, not my job -- but there`s at least an inquiry as to whether the lies were made in forums, where they could be criminal.
JUANITA TOLLIVER, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: That`s exactly right. I appreciate you establishing the lies, Ari. I`ll also add that`s also illegal to obstruct the certification of those votes, which is another major question of the select committee.
But this signal from the DOJ is showing that they are looking at documentation that is available, now that those archival records have been released. This is all about these falsified materials and the push that was potentially coordinated through the White House to get these electors to even step forward.
What we`ve heard and what the gentleman said, that you interviewed last week, OK, we tried to do this just as a backup, just in case those votes weren`t certified, just in case those electors weren`t certified.
But what they did, there`s a chance that organizing at these statehouses, which is where they did this action, in different states, organizing at statehouses across the country, in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, could be criminal activity.
And I`m thinking also politically in the narrative that this shapes for the public, that is paying attention to this and how it could potentially have an overshadowing effect of the upcoming midterms and notifying voters that, hey, the DOJ is paying attention. The DOJ is acting on your behalf.
And as you and Elie have established, that is the right thing for the DOJ to do. And it`s a sharp departure from what we saw the DOJ do under Trump, where they accessed members` phone records, like Representative Schiff and Representative Swalwell.
And they are not behaving in that way. So I think keeping that dividing line in communication is essential here for the public paying attention. And I appreciate you and Elie for raising that.
MELBER: Juanita, also there`s this other headline about who was pushing what. This is Bernie Kerik, a Giuliani figure and then a Trump figure, also a convicted felon, by the way.
He told the January 6th panel that it was this army colonel that came up with this, quote, "idea," I would call it just a coup -- idea is a strong word -- "to seize voting machines" by the military.
Kerik said "Phil Waldron originated the scheme, which would almost certainly have been illegal."
I will go farther than "Politico." They`re journalists; so am I. Having the Pentagon try to seize voting machines is indeed illegal. Now in fairness, this was so wacky, that even the wacky people were like, that`s wacky.
And I just want to be clear about the facts as we follow them. There`s no yet public evidence that, for example, Mark Meadows or the president signed off on this military idea.
But I`m curious, Juanita, as a student of the era we`re living in, of what you think of people like Kerik and Waldron were even getting an audience at the highest levels of government. We can only imagine what the military thought about this kind of meddling.
TOLLIVER: Let`s think about the context of the moment. The date of the draft of this executive order shows that Bill Barr had already resigned. I think you also had White House counsel also threatening to resign if they were going to replace acting A.G. Rosen at the time.
So Trump was looking for anybody he could lean on, anyone. And cue these players, who as you said, probably shouldn`t have had audience with the president or access to classified materials that are referenced in that draft executive order.
And it just shows the desperation of Trump to do anything, because what was outlined in that draft order was a military coup. That is what is striking here. I think that is what should be emphasized.
And you`re right, there is not evidence yet that Meadows signed off on it or Trump signed off on it. But as the select committee digs through these documents, there could be something in handwritten notes. There could be something in other type of draft materials, draft speeches, draft talking points.
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TOLSON: That starts to point in this direction or something that signals Trump did sign off on it. So that`s something I`m keeping my ear to the ground on, as the select committee goes through those 770 documents.
MELBER: Exactly. Juanita and Elie, thank both of you.
Coming up, we`ll dig into how some state Republican officials want to create a police state of informers. It`s not conservative but it`s happening right now.
Also Tucker Carlson going pro-Russia again. How it is getting boosted in Moscow.
Then you might have seen on your screen, Neil deGrasse Tyson is back on THE BEAT. He`s here live after this.
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MELBER: The government can just make anything illegal that it doesn`t like. That`s a quick joke on the perils of government overreach from a comedy, "Pirate Radio."
Now there are an increasing number of moves by local and state governments that go kind of down that road. For context, let`s just remember. Say you`re a traditional conservative or libertarian. That means you believe government power should be used sparingly.
So many of the moves are fundamentally anti-conservative. They reflect something different, a more inconsistent and nakedly political approach that`s fixated on trolling your opponents and the outrage politics of the MAGA era.
Take the brand new governor of Virginia, who ran on the phantom issues of banning a curriculum from schools that was not being taught in schools. It was called critical race theory. It was not in Virginia.
But he talked about it as a way to inject race in the campaign and in schools and he`s now launching a tip line so parents can narc on public school teachers that they personally believe are somehow behaving objectively by teaching divisive subjects.
The context there is partly racial, just as another MAGA-style governor, Ron DeSantis, is urging a government ban on certain topics from schools. It`s a mix of the scare tactics about critical race theory with a separate attack on just anything that might make certain people uncomfortable.
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GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): We are going to be including in this legislation giving parents a private right of action to be able to enforce the prohibition on CRT and they get to recover attorneys` fees when they prevail.
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MELBER: This is a real thing, even if the posters look like a kind of self-satire -- the Stop Woke Act, the child who`s a minor, been put up to hold up the anti CRT sign, something he`s never been taught, according to what we know about middle school curriculum.
DeSantis also saying that that way parents might sue their schools if critical race theory is even alluded to. CRT is not taught so that`s unlikely. It`s more of a collegiate level lens when it arises. And there`s nothing wrong with it, by the way. But again, we don`t even get into it if it`s not on the table.
So these bans are being pushed in at least 10 other states. And it`s part of a wider movement. Texas Republicans trying to direct schools to identify books that could cause students guilt or anguish that they might be racist or sexist or oppressive. It is seen as something for white students.
Meanwhile, there have been over 150 recent incidents involving the attempted censorship of books in schools and libraries, many from the same right wing frame. Taken seriously, all this reflects a twist on conservative cancel culture, that you have to insulate certain people from the opposing views they abhor.
But apparently you have to insulate people on the Right. Reporter David Corn calls it the snowflake-ization of the Right, suppressing ideas that challenge conservatives` views. It`s the kind of government censorship identified in many, many classic warnings about political dystopias.
(VIDEO CLIP, "FAHRENHEIT 451")
MELBER: Get rid of all the ideas, all the books. That`s where book burning leads in "Fahrenheit 451," the suppression of ideas on a road to the suppression of far more than ideas, a road to ignorance, the suppression of human rights, a police state.
It is worth being vigilant when you see politicians taking steps toward these things, anti conservative moves, like trying to dictate factual history or this Republican, pushing parents to snitch on their own teachers.
Do we really want the government stoking this?
21 Savage discussed some of these matters in "Snitches and Rats."
Quote, "He told on his brother, his brother told back. They say they`re twins. We call them Siamese rats (on God)."
We are living in a strange time when it`s Republican politicians pushing snitches and rats in our own schools.
[18:25:00]
We turn now to the author of that piece I quoted, Washington bureau chief for "Mother Jones," David Corn.
Welcome back.
DAVID CORN, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "MOTHER JONES": Good to be with you, Ari.
MELBER: Snitches and rats, banning books and history.
How seriously do you take this?
CORN: I take it very seriously. For years, conservatives and Republicans have made fun of liberals on the Left saying you need safe spaces, you talk about triggers. Don`t you want to have a marketplace of ideas?
Are you afraid to face the harsh realities in life?
That was always I thought an overstated criticism. But now they`re rushing in here to protect their people from being discomfited by conversations about history, about race, about gender inequality.
Look at the definition that Ron DeSantis is pushing in Florida. It`s not just for schools; it also covers the workplace, that people are prohibited from doing things, saying things, teaching things that make anyone, quote, feel "discomfort, guilt, anguish" or any other form of psychological distress on the account of his or her race, color, sex or national origin.
So if you`re in Florida and they teach you about the forcible relocation of the Seminole Indians and you live on land that used to belong to the Seminole Indians and you feel guilty because of that, well, then you can say no, you can`t do this. I don`t want to feel bad. Don`t teach me about the history here.
And of course, this applies to teaching of the Holocaust and slavery and everything else. And the question -- I think one of the many problems here is the definition.
Who defines what makes me feel uncomfortable?
If you run around telling racist and sexist jokes at work, they make you go to a seminar, a training seminar, so you stop doing this.
And they ask, why do you think you`re doing this?
Might it have to do with your background?
Well, now in Florida, that might be banned because that would make someone feel uncomfortable or anguished. So this is really about saying you`re making me feel bad because I`m white, I`m a man, I`m this, that or something else. And I don`t want that to happen.
So it`s as if everyone on the Right -- everyone who they`re putting this in place for -- are gigantic snowflakes, who can`t have uncomfortable conversations.
MELBER: And it goes deeply to mind control. It`s very hard to care about something that you don`t know about at all. If you`re brought up in a world where you don`t know there`s a homeless problem in America, because perhaps you live in a place where you don`t see it and you`re not exposed to it, then when someone comes up and says, well, we have this tax to try to deal with the homeless problem, you say I don`t even know there is one and I don`t care about that.
So Axios has a report on this, "Book Bans Are Back in Style," and they say it`s almost immaterial what the books are. It`s about the readers, it`s about all the folks who are organizing our discourse."
This is the Annenberg dean, basically saying don`t be fooled into thinking it`s even about, quote-unquote, education. It`s about ruling certain parts of the discourse out of order by the Right.
CORN: Well, if you have conversations that are difficult about past inequities or current inequities, what does that lead to?
It leads to, what are we going to do about it?
If you talk about race and the history of race in this country, the next question is, what do we do about it?
That`s the question they don`t want to get to. That`s where they want to stop. So you take this out of the public discourse. You don`t let people have their own voices who want to talk about these things.
Think what it does for the teachers out there now, in Florida and Virginia and the other places. You don`t want to be caught in a cultural crossfire. So they`re going to start self-censoring themselves so that people don`t snitch on them.
(CROSSTALK)
MELBER: That`s why I`m glad you said snitch, because that`s why I quoted 21. It is that environment and it is a quasi attempt at a police state. Whether people ever sue or not, on a teacher`s salary, you can`t risk being sued.
David Corn, thank you for your breakdown.
People can check out David Corn`s piece on that.
Later tonight, we`ll show you Tucker Carlson going pro-Russia. Why?
As promised, the great Neil deGrasse Tyson coming up. We go into not only the war on science but what we can learn from political and a very interesting cultural commentary. Stay with us.
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MELBER: Now to something special we have planned for you. Let`s start it like this.
I think we know some of the most contentious political debates today turn on empirical science.
How is COVID transmitted?
Do vaccines work?
Is the Earth getting warmer?
What does 99 percent probability mean?
These are factual matters that transcend politics. But politics can go to war against facts, a theme explored in this hit new film, starring Meryl Streep as a Trumpian president, consumed by PR and operating a corrupt family empire, as they face an existential threat, requiring a scientific emergency response: how to prevent a planet-killing comet heading toward Earth.
(VIDEO CLIP, "DON`T LOOK UP")
[18:35:00]
MELBER: You heard them there, the political timing was bad.
You hear that?
The whole satirical plot probes how our society would respond to a science- driven wake-up call. And the film`s answer is really badly. This movie, "Don`t Look Up," follows some of the classic tropes of doomsday movies, a killer asteroid or alien invasion that requires your heroic leader and all of our collective action.
But then it points out how those fairytales might very well fail today if half the public doesn`t even believe there is a comet and if the few experts who have any experience in aerospace comet prevention are overruled by political idiots or insider billionaires.
Now what is the comet?
It`s an allegory about science denialism. So you the viewer, the citizen, can decide. Maybe it`s climate change, maybe it`s COVID, maybe it`s the next pandemic that could be more of an existential threat than COVID.
Are people getting the message?
Well, this is a film tackling big themes with serious ideas but also has these stars, like Streep, Leo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence. It has become a blockbuster hit, surging to be the second most watched Netflix film ever.
Hollywood often ducks movies with an overt political message. This movie I think has one. And that has people thinking and it is about politics. But it`s not just about politics. To go beyond politics and to get into a film that so many people are talking about, as promised, we turn to acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Welcome back.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, ASTROPHYSICIST: Thanks for having me back on. Thank you.
MELBER: Absolutely. We think of you as pretty scientific, pretty empirical. I`m curious how you think the film applies to scientific warnings, how we deal with science.
And is it hyperbolic for those who are likening climate change to a planet- killing comet?
TYSON: It was clearly a documentary based on life experience, interacting with the press, with social media, with the political landscape. Everything there just felt like a dose of reality that scared me, actually.
I thought to myself -- yes, it`s -- there are exaggerated dimensions of it. But those exaggerations don`t come from nowhere. They come from actual conduct by actual people in actual positions of power. That`s the scary part.
Back some years ago, there was the science march. Why science should have to march, that`s a whole other question to be addressed. But during the science march, one of my favorite posters I saw someone hold up was, every disaster movie begins by someone in charge ignoring the warnings of a scientist.
So this movie -- allegory I think is too soft a word. Allegory is, usually, there`s a hidden message. There`s nothing hidden about this movie. A comet is going to take us out.
And how are we all going to react?
MELBER: Too soft. Well, it`s like the diplomats say, you`re terry cloth, that means you`re very soft. Maybe they were too soft on some of the problems. I want to look at another aspect of this. So Neil stays.
In the film, even when the warnings arrive, they have to fight through muck of our superficial ADD-style discourse, weighed down by the selfish consumerism of late-stage capitalism.
(VIDEO CLIP, "DON`T LOOK UP")
MELBER: Did it make you laugh or cry?
TYSON: Both. I didn`t know I had those two emotions simultaneously within me, ready to burst forth.
[18:40:00]
TYSON: I thought Leonardo DiCaprio did a great job just as the frustrated scientist. He has a job to do and that is to understand what is objectively true in the world. And usually it doesn`t matter to the public what we do when we look up at the night sky.
Occasionally, when it does, you kind of maybe should pay attention to that. And no one did. And he wasn`t media savvy on purpose, just to show -- we`re not rewarded for that as scientists who work in labs.
So I think the director, Adam McKay, was right on -- the director and writer and producer. He captured all of the tropes of modern life, from the social media to the political mayhem to the cultural -- the tribalism, as people gather together and then have group think, without regard to what role an objectively true bit of information might have on how they`re thinking.
So, yes, it`s all there. If you compare it to other films, not to get too inside film on you, but there`s a film some years ago called "Idiocracy," which explored a future where no one valued being smart and nobody was smart.
And what world is that.
So this is, for me, a modern version of that except more real, because we`ve all seen and felt and maybe even participated in the elements of this storytelling and how it all just implodes by the end.
MELBER: Yes, you talk about how, quote-unquote, "tribalism" can be fused with willful ignorance, denialism. And that just resonated exactly with right now, a denialism that can put your own adherents in danger.
I want to show everyone, Neil, this part, where it really echoes the COVID era. They`re very clearly MAGA-style crowds, literally chanting in the face of this potential comet, "Don`t look up," which I got to say, is just a horrifically stupid way to avoid even using your own eyes to find out if there`s a comet about to kill you and your family and everything you love.
(VIDEO CLIP, "DON`T LOOK UP")
MELBER: Neil, I just got to tell you, I really felt that. I cover a lot of things, try to do the job. But that really hit for me, the idea that you could literally tell people, don`t look up, don`t use your eyes. It didn`t feel like a big reach to me.
TYSON: Yes, so that was my actually favorite -- the most intriguing part of the entire film for me, how you can gather that many people outdoors at night, while the comet, predicted to be there in the sky by the astrophysicist, predicted to eventually hit the Earth shortly in their future hit the Earth and people are taking what is objectively true and creating a political message that is not true and getting people to then believe that.
It`s like, oh, my gosh. It`s all compressed into just a couple minutes of that clip. And I think, we`ve seen this happen. And I don`t even know if I have a solution for this.
I`ll offer one. Here it is.
In school, we are taught that science is this satchel of facts. You learn it and regurgitate it for the final and then you go home. Later on, you learn that one of those facts got modified or discarded for some other fact.
You say, well, science doesn`t know what it`s talking about. It`s because you didn`t learn science as it should have been taught, as a way of querying nature, as a means of decoding what is or is not true in this world.
[18:45:00]
And there is no enterprise humans have ever conducted that rivals its ability to establish what is objectively true and not. If you don`t see that, we`re all in trouble.
MELBER: You`re talking deep, no surprise. We know you. But you`re talking deep. You`re talking about the epistemological level of how we know what we know and whether we`ve been given the tools or been given some of the wrong premises, which then later people say, oh, the CDC updated its guidance.
Yes, it`s a process. It`s a new virus. No, they don`t know what they`re talking about. We
No, that`s the process. You`re thinking about it that way. Now I will say, we happen to be talking through the TV media. I did want to say, while the film deals with all this other stuff we just showed, politics, et cetera, it has several legitimate critiques of media, TV print and online, and how sometimes we all come up short on science stories or putting personality above facts or, as we`ll see in some of these clips, sometimes having a scientific illiteracy.
(VIDEO CLIP, "DON`T LOOK UP")
MELBER: Neil.
TYSON: Only silence can follow that clip.
What else is there to say?
Oh, by the way, the science that is infused in those story lines, as a friend and colleague of mine, Amy Mainzer, who was retained as adviser to that film, for him to say a comet the size of Mt. Everest, that`s not a random choice of size; that was the size comet that took out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
So there`s a lot of authentically informed commentary when it comes from the mouths of the scientists in this.
But as you went into that, you were talking about the culpability of perhaps some media. The fact is, when we know something with that level of certainty, it`s not up for you to take the 1 percent or the 1.5 percent and make that half of your rebuttal.
Right?
It`s not how that should work. You don`t say -- oh, let`s have equal sides give the view -- and, no, no. Scientists are being authentically -- we`re being genuine when we say we make a measurement and measurements have uncertainties. And so you work with that. So you don`t say anything is 100 percent. You say 97 percent, 98 percent.
But if someone told you don`t cross the street because there`s a 97 percent chance you`re going to die, are you going to cross the street?
No, you`re not. You`re going to wait until those odds improve. So here we have scientists putting out these kinds of numbers. And we have people saying, oh, you don`t know at all. And with someone -- if someone reverses their guidelines, OK, because we learned more information.
That`s a feature of science, not a bug. So this is how we need to think about what --
Are you going to judge a scientist by how long they never update their outlook on the state of the world and the better ones never change their mind?
No, that`s why we make measurements continuously.
MELBER: This is why we had you on. We`ve gone from "Don`t Look Up" to look both ways before you cross the street, if you learn nothing else from Neil today. Thank you, sir. I appreciate you coming back.
TYSON: Thank you. Always good to be here.
MELBER: Absolutely.
I want to mention Neil`s latest book, "A Brief Welcome to the Universe." You can get that right now.
We have a quick break. When we come back, the Tucker-Putin connection. Stay with us.
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[18:50:00]
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MELBER: All eyes on Russia and any possible invasion of Ukraine. Pentagon has put over 8,000 U.S. troops on standby for any possible deployment in the region. This is the context, the anxiety about what Putin will do next. For Tucker Carlson, pushing this kind of Russian message on FOX News.
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TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: The fact is Ukraine is strategically irrelevant to the United States. No rational person could defend a war with Russia over Ukraine.
Why is it disloyal to side with Russia but loyal to side with Ukraine?
They`re both foreign countries that don`t care anything about the United States. Kind of strange.
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MELBER: Tucker Carlson there may be pushing a dovish message and it may be the foreign policy many would agree with. But it is a little different than what he said. The reason NATO and the U.S. and other groups are involved is that Ukraine remains a democracy; Russia is ruled by a dictator.
And Tucker Carlson has been on this for months. It actually plays well over in Moscow. In fact, Tucker gets approvingly replayed sometimes on Putin`s state-run TV.
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CARLSON: You have to ask yourself why --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): (Speaking Russian).
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[18:55:00]
MELBER: Back here in the U.S., there are impacts. Democratic congressman Tom Malinowski tweeting, "My office is getting calls from folks who say they watch Carlson and are upset we`re not siding with Russia in its threats to invade Ukraine and they want me to support Russia`s, quote, "reasonable" positions.
That from Tom Malinowski.
Tucker seems to have some sort of larger pattern here with tyrants who lean to the Right. He famously went to Hungary last year and then had a fawning visit with the strongman there, Viktor Orban. He suspended elections in his own country.
Now there are, as I mentioned, valid debates about overseas interventions. And this may be a time many people want to stay away from any reactionary hawkishness. That`s what a good foreign policy debate is.
But to continuously, seemingly echo the views of dictatorships by Mr. Carlson, that may be revealing, especially as American democracy, its traditions and its commitments are under assault right here at home, right now.
We`ll be right back.
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MELBER: Thanks for spending time with me tonight. As we learned, if they tell you don`t look up, consider looking up. That does it for us, since "THE REIDOUT WITH JOY REID" starts now.