keeping this chair warm in my absence. i do miss you all so. i see some of your messages on twitter and i miss you right back. so happy to be back with you today, to have my hair brushed for the first time in three weeks. the good news is "the beat" with ari melber starts now. before i get weepy. >> i have such mixed feelings. i have my feelings and news feelings. congratulations for you and the family, which i can say now, we love having you back, even though i know it's just for today. the mixed feelings is the seriousness that you were discussing with congresswoman cheney is part of why you were back today. so i did want to say all the things and let you respond to any and all of the above and again, our thoughts and happiness for your family. >> i'll start with the first things and i'll be brief before i get weepy. i feel like we tv people can be quirky, but we've worked out the family dynamic on all of our big nights and i'm so appreciative for the kind words and love and support. and izzy and liam have aunts and uncles here to turn to. on the story and the decision to not miss the opportunity to come back and talk to liz, i said it to her right here -- we've covered -- i've covered the demise of the republican party with a mixture of rage and despair, and so to me to see someone like liz come out and arrive at the same -- i won't describe it as rage, but disgust and dread, really, about what has become the republican party is a mile marker. and to acknowledge she's not sure where we're going, to acknowledge she regrets the vote for him in 2020 was -- real leaders and the ones that sort of change things are the ones that have the humility to go look and new information and new facts, and so much of what defines the republican party, the party she loves and helps build, it's allergic to facts. it is allergic to morality. it is rejecting the constitution and endangering our democracy. the book is important. i guess my enduring fear is those of us who will consume it are already at the table to protect and conserve democracy and the people who threaten it may still be allergic and immune to the facts. >> expertly put, even amidst everything going on in your life. >> sleep deprivation. >> i'm literally just listening. only point i'll echo, we're tested not by the easy things -- whatever that is, public life. you served in government. you serve here. ms. cheney is interest for precisely what you say, stepping up when it's not easy, and we all rise and fall at different times and all do our -- whatever our work, for some that'sing with a citizen, voting, going out when they can. different people do it different ways. but the idea we can still take motivation or leadership from people who are doing great things is an important point tonight. glad you're here today for that, and we hope to see you soon when you do come back. thank you my friend, and you can come visit for, you know, bottle time or burping or feeding or all these things that fill up my days now. >> amen. thank you for the invite. i'll do that. nicolle wallace, good to see our friend tonight. as we were discussing, liz cheney is speak out about donald trump's past coup and future plans, and we are tracking tonight, among other stories -- our lead story is the largest law enforcement scandal to hit the republican party's new house speaker, mike johnson. when we do the news around here we try to start with the direct, clear, simple facts. the new republican speaker is taking a hard public stance against police. full stop. the new speaker admitting he wants to hide evidence from the justice department in its pursuit of rioters and insurrectionists who attacked police and stormed the capitol, speaker johnson's workplace on january 6th. this is new. this is the current republican speaker who is saying and doing things and using his power on this issue. that's why it's the news tonight, and you're about to see what the new republican speaker said. but i'll tell you up front for context, it is rare to hear a high government official take such an anti-police stance, to admit in public his intent -- what he says is his intent, his motivation, his goal to hide evidence of possibly alleged crimes, depend on which people you're about to see, but to hide the evidence of these anti-police crimes from the doj itself. that's what johnson is doing, and the reason he's making these remarks is his effort to continue the past speaker's project, what kevin mccarthy and tucker carlson and others cooked up, the idea if they release enough extra videos from january 6th it might somehow, some way feed conspiracy theories of attempts to minimize what is now a convicted sedition that occurred that day. here's how johnson explained why they're trying to hide the faces on video of those potential defendants. >> i think prime minster netanyahu probably said it the best, this is truly a battle of good versus evil, light versus darkness, civilization versus barbarism. the fact this is happening on college campuses across the land is unconscionable us to. it's coming to violence in some of these places and the idea that university administrators who would not speak out, who would not take care of this problem is just beyond comprehension. we're going through a methodical process of releasing them as quickly as we can. as you know, we have to blur soft faces of persons who participated in the events of that day, because we don't want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the doj and to have other, you know, concerns and problems. >> we don't want the people on the january 6th video tapes to be charged by the doj. we're going to blur the faces, the speaker says, of the people on those jan 6th tapes so they don't get charged for what happened be their crimes. now, the beginning of that quote was the speaker making some other remarks that day, and then this is the news he made. speaker johnson referencing interfering with potential investigations by a lawsuit agency and vowing to use his power and access to what is potential evidence to hide those would be fugitives. how do you know this scandal tonight is already hurting johnson, a conservative trump ally who's gone out of his way to emphasize what would be this potential interference an open doj probe? well, in typical washington fashion we already have an update to the story, which is after making that statement that i just showed you, johnson aides are trying to minimize what he said. they're admitting in a way that the words were political pandering because the doj does already have those tapes. they have been trying and convicting the seditionists for years now. aides are saying, quote, the doj already has access to raw footage. meaning what he said, don't take it seriously, the blurring weren't to interfere with the doj. that statement goes to the prosecutor's evidence. they have the raw tapes, not to speaker johnson's apparently anti-police motive that held hide fugitives, which is what he said. >> we're going through a methodical process of releasing them as quickly as we can. as you know, we have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don't want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the doj and to have other, you know, concerns and problems. >> those people broke into the capitol, attacked police, many officers -- several officers as you know were brutally attacked. some later died by suicide in the days after. and johnson says quite blithely, quite passively, we don't want them to be charged for storming the capitol, indeed saying he would hide it from the doj, which to be fair as possible, his office is walking back that part. we've seen police trying to fend off that mob of rioters. that's why there were so many crimes charged. now speaker says he doesn't want them charged by doj, likening that potential justice process to what he calls, quote, retaliation. you can imagine the responses to this. one boston newspaper writing, law and order? not for these guys. blue lives don't matter if it's just trump people doing the attacking. we turn to the january 6th committee leader who actually led the house probe into those crimes and who nicolle and i were just discussing this earlier. liz cheney took a very different approach than speaker mike johnson who's out there now saying he basically doesn't want to people who broke into his own workplace to face any justice. this is the next level of thuggery coming out of the house speaker's office. cheney has a contrast, and she is saying this. >> mike johnson has continued to claim that he's for transparency, that he's releasing the videos from that day. he had to release them. he's suggesting every day that goes by -- this suggestion that somehow he's going to release something that will change what happened that day, that will change the facts, and there is nothing that will change that violent assault, so i call on him to release them, do it now. >> cheney, who knows all about these issues from the jan 6 committee basically saying she calls his bluff. this is about propaganda, the dog doesn't want to catch the car, the car is just all the evidence and they want to make like there's some secret thing that's going to drop out of the sky and undercut what happened. in her book, she writes about the surprise of the johnson. when i confronted him with flaws in legal arguments johnson would concede or say, we just need to do this one last thing for trump. they also says he misled republicans with bait and switch techniques to get them to sign on to one of those briefs. also suggesting a second trump administration would be worse with someone like this as speaker. >> if donald trump is elected again we can really don't have to worry, because the institutions of our government will prevent, you know, the worst that he will attempt to do. nothing could be further from the truth, because those republicans -- a house with republicans like mike johnson, a senate with people like josh hawley and mike lee, they won't stand up to him. >> they won't stand up to him. far worse, mr. johnson, who used to criticize trump before he came into office, is doing exactly the type of things that the old mr. johnson would have opposed, giving in demagoguery, lying, abusing government power and in this case today, if you take his office's walkback statement at their word, their best version of a defense is, don't believe what the republican speaker says, doesn't really matter, wasn't really trying to hide evidence from doj, because what he says is just for political pandering purposes. of course, the deeper and important question, which comingles with liz cheney's warning, is why does mike johnson think it's in his interest, politically and otherwise, to blatantly oppose justice for people attacking police, including the capitol police that protect him to this day? how did we get to this low point, and where do we go from here? it's a question of ethics, a question of law, but also a question of raw politics, as liz cheney says, this is not the election to sit out. we turn to chai komanduri when we're back in 60 seconds. n 60 ss [dog barks] no it's just a bunny! only pay for what you need. ♪liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty.♪ after advil: let's dive in! but...what about your back? it's fineeeeeeee! [splash] before advil: advil dual action fights pain two ways. advil targets pain at the source, acetaminophen blocks pain signals. advil dual action. ♪ ♪ ♪ we're building a better postal service. for more on-time deliveries. and easier, affordable ways to ship. so you can deliver even more holiday joy. the united states postal service. delivering for america. there are more people -- republicans, democrats, independents -- who we have the make sure they understand he's not a choice, he's not an option, he's not fit for this office. and i think that those are the people who are listening, those are people we have to mobilize and motivate to stand against the danger that he presents. donald trump is not an acceptable alternative. he is not the lesser of two evils. he is a completely unfit man for office. he's already shown us what we would do, and he can never be near the oval office again. >> new warnings from liz cheney. i'm joined by chai komanduri, obama campaign veteran. when i know look at liz cheney's warnings, and what you see coming out of the house speaker, which we just emphasized as our top story, he wants to be seen as hiding these fugitives, interfering with the doj, whether or not he has that evidentiary power. what does that tell school bus how seriously do you take liz cheney's warning in. >> i think we should take it very seriously. look, ari, by all appearances, our country is in the midst of a mass movement that could be upwards of 40% to install a full-throated dictator into the oval office. donald trump is an authoritarian. he doesn't hide it. he talks at about it on a daily basis. he is discuss his authoritarian policies on a daily basis. nothing is hidden. everything is there for the american public to see, and it's important for the made why to make this the central issue for the 2024 campaign, it's important for democrats to make this the central issue of the 2024 campaign. >> when you say the media or free press that's a different role than an opposition party, and yet many smart people with independent and even conservative, old-school conservative credentials discussed the fact that against certain stories and threats, there is a difference in how do you make sure people understand the facts and scale and scope of this. i want to play the johnson clip again women played a longer part. i want to play just that shorter part, where you talk about wolf in sheep's clothing and all the other analogies people make, you have to look past his visage and speaking style to hear the words. the statement he makes is thuggish. it is out of a mafia movie. we don't want the prosecutors at doj to have the facts and go after the people who attacked the police. that's what he's saying. he says it a certain way. says it different than trump, who you mentioned. take a listen. >> we're going through a methodical process of releasing them as quickly as we can. as you know, we have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day, because we don't want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the doj and to have other, you know, concerns and problems. >> he wants to hide the identities of those suspects, he says, from the doj. now, i have been careful to emphasize as a factual matter, the doj already has a lot of this material. so he wants to play this role, whether or not it would actually interfere with the probe. that's actually legally relevant as well. he probably has less exposure than if he took the only copy of something and destroyed evidence that was subject to a criminal probe. but is this in your view a scandal? is this outrageous? is it a problem if this type of thing becomes normalized and cover as more partisan chatter? >> it's completely outrageous, and it is at this point unfortunately completely normal. i mean, that is a challenge that everybody who was opposed to trump and those who want to have a transparent, open discussion of ideas and policies face. donald trump is very much out in the open with this, and he's done it repeatedly to the point that it has become normalized and it cannot be normalized. what mike johnson is doing with the january 6th stuff is very important to the trump project. it is important that trump's claims that the 2020 election was illegitimate be seen as completely legitimate, that those questions he has raised, which are not really questions, they are complete fably -- fabrications, be taken seriously so his voters will feel, we don't have a democracy. 2020 was stolen, so we might as well go with this guy who says let's get rid of whole provisions of the constitution. >> yeah. big stakes. chai komanduri, thank you for being our leadoff guest. we mentioned liz cheney who's made news with her book. she's our guest here. we have a lot more to get into here. our guest tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. eastern. later in the show, skeptics questioning tech titans like elon musk as we look at the rising punchback with labor organizing and rights. there's some interesting include diet energy here we're going to get into. first, andrew weissman on jack smith's new blueprint, next. 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