Welcome to the beat, everyone. I am Ari Melbert. We are doing a lot. First off, when you try to make sense of big events, as a lot of people are doing this week, you think about what you know and information and what you've learned, but you also turn to people who not only have a track record, but have been through a lot. And we're going to be able to do that tonight. Nicole just said we have a little bit of a privilege here sometimes in these jobs in these newsrooms.

Well, legendary Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Bob Woodward is my special guest tonight.

We've set aside some time for that conversation. He has interviewed President Biden and President Trump.

He is someone who knows all about the arc of history and also how, and at least my experience

with him, how to really stick to the facts, be calm even amidst crises. And we're going to hopefully

benefit from his views tonight. So I invite you, of course, to stay tuned for that. Later on,

we're going to fact check some of the Trump claims about the mandate he has.

If you've watched this program, you may know we've set aside time to actually pay attention to,

fact-check, and have discourse with Donald Trump's aides, former aides, MAGA leaders. So we've been

talking to them continuously, and we'll continue to do that as we do with all of our coverage.

But one of the things we've heard throughout from them is that he has more support than you'd

think. We've heard that. We discussed that with them. That was part of, I think, what some

people saw on Tuesday, but he doesn't have as much support as he and many of his allies are now

currently claiming. And that's an old game that goes well beyond our current era. Everybody likes to

sell a mandate, and it does affect public opinion, the courts, and other parts of government and

public life. And so we're going to take a look at that tonight. But we begin with a tradition that

the president is carrying out. President Biden making these first public remarks since this election.

He had a big job to do. He also was

standing on the very ground. He vacated in a sense, the late exit in the race, what everyone knows

about him. And so he was doing more than one thing. He was very responsibly continuing to uphold

the traditions of democracy and a peaceful transfer of power, despite the known record of the failed coup leader

Donald Trump coming back into office through a lawful democracy outcome.

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