-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.