Welcome to the beat. I'm Ari Melburgh, and later tonight we turn to new reports that Rupert Murdoch may be setting people up to take the blame in this Fox News scandal over lies.

It's a prospect we've raised in our reporting. We have Andrew Weissman here. It should be interesting. So that's coming up in this hour. Also later, new clues on where COVID really came from and what it means for safety and geopolitics.

We do the facts here with an open mind, and we will try to bring that perspective to a very

important story for your life, even if we're over talking about some aspects of safety policy.

We're going to get into where this virus came from.

That's later tonight.

But our top story right now is really this once-in-a-year moment

for conservative politics. And here's how the late-night comics are raising the curtain on this

CPAC conference in today's real news. It's basically Coachella for people who post on Facebook in all

caps. CPAC stands for clowns periodically assembling in convention centers.

After each speech said there will be a Q&A.

I'm sorry, Q&A.

Q&A.

After the Q&A.

Q&A, Q&A.

Q&O, you get it.

Part of the joke here is that this fairly influential conservative political action conference has become, in some

ways, more bizarre than conservative. And while many political gatherings have all kinds of characters,

I have been to all kinds of conferences across the spectrum, you see all kinds of stuff.

We will show you right now, before we bring in our guests, what the actual programming is,

and you could judge for yourself, because they have sessions on the Biden crime family. We will show you right now, before we bring in our guests, what the actual programming is,

and you could judge for yourself, because they have sessions on the Biden crime family,

...