Watch The Beat with Ari Melber Highlights: April 5

The ions are preparing for a rare total solar eclipse that will sweep across North America on Monday. The last one landed in 2017, but this will be the longest since 2009. NASA estimates that more than 31 million people live in what is known as the path of totality where the total eclipse will be visible. Millions more live in areas where they will be able to see a partial eclipse, and many across the country feel frenzied excitement building for Monday's total solar eclipse, which will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. About 4 million people are expected to travel there, there would be people traveling all over the country, a couple in Maine who say they wanted to get married during the eclipse, it felt like the biggest party in the world, how could you have your wedding in a bigger way?

School teachers have been creative in coming up with different Eclipse themed activities for their students. Don't look up without your glasses. Someone tells Donald Trump that the next total eclipse isn't expected to hit the United States until 2045. I have the perfect guest to talk to. All things Eclipse join me now: Bill Nye, the scientist. He's also the iconic cover star of the latest issue of Timeout New York, answering all of our burning questions. Bill, we'll get to that cover in a minute, but I want you to explain. us, the science behind an eclipse and what makes this one so special, well what makes it so special is that it passes directly over North America, through Mexico, the US, Canada, and I heard the number 31 million.

I think it's closer to 40. 45 million people. be able to see it then what happens? uh we have a moon we have a sun we have the Earth so the moon comes between us and the Sun and the extraordinary thing about being an earthling and living here on this planet is our s on the moon This is, I love this word that subtends, blocks the same width of sky as the sun, the sun is 400 times farther away than the moon, but the Moon is 400 times the width of the Sun, so this extraordinary event causes a remarkable posture to happen that causes this event. where this band of darkness crosses the continent faster than you think a plane flies, so it's really something spectacular and I encourage everyone, if you can, you know most of us live in the Eastern Time Zone here in America from North.

Mo, if you can enter. the path of totality now on both sides of the path uh there will be a partial eclipse but I can tell you from experience that a partial eclipse is not that different from a very cloudy day and that's why it's great and I enjoy it, but if you can take a path that it's cool and everyone please wear your goggles because what happens is this goes on for about an hour and a half the disk of the moon is blocking the disk of the sun and you just want to look you just want to see it and that's how you can get hurt the eyes.

You know, you know, probably everyone has looked at the sun. Have you ever tried to catch a fly ball in the outfield? You have looked at the sun for a moment, but I don't want you to look at it, so these glasses that are made only of cardboard and myar plastic are enough, they are absolutely enough, they are about 100,000 times darker than normal sunglasses, so which is a very important thing and They are available everywhere this year marks the first time we have seen Trump as a candidate who we already know has tried to overturn an election and who has been explicit about running as an authoritarian, anti-democratic threat who alone should have a big impact. difference, but many critics say press coverage has fallen back into a traditional horse-race mentality, simply doing its best to provide balanced coverage of Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

CNN recently asked if B Biden's age is now a bigger issue than Trump's accusations. I have to laugh. It's a ridiculous question, and last fall the New York Times offered this strangely lukewarm headline. Trump takes the veterans' speech in a very different direction to describe comments in which Trump used language that echoed Adolf Hitler. We promise you that we will extirpate the fascist Marxist communists. and the radical left bully that lives like vermin within the confines of our country who lie, steal and cheat in elections, the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and serious than the internal threat Trump promises to attack the vermin internal, that's the same. type of rhetoric used by fascists in 1930s Europe; the Times later revised its headline;

The Times also sparked outrage for its coverage of the Michigan primary in which Biden fared much better with Democrats than Trump did with Republicans. The Times said Biden was facing an appointment. significant challenge as Trump's quote moved toward Victory, so the need to find nuance in Trump leads to some very strange results, like an axios article that delves into the very important topic of Spotify's maralago playlist Trump. Axio calls it a Rosetta Stone that demystifies how his mind works and describes how guests compliment his musical ear and that Trump likes to marvel at the sound quality of his stereo system.

That image of Trump, by the way, is the image they created, so the question is how should we cover a candidate who has already tried to violently overturn an election and who is promising to persecute and imprison his political enemies? , joining me now was Molly Jong, quickly responded to the special for Vanity Fair and host of The Fast Politics podcast and Susie Benny Kareim, journalist and director of the Enemies of the People documentary about Trump's attacks on the media she also hosts the retrospective podcast ladies, it's good to have you here this is a really important conversation.

I'm so glad we're having this um Molly, I want to start with what is normal in election coverage? I don't think coverage in general has ever been normal when it comes to Donald Trump, but is there a rush to lean in so far to offset the fear we seem to have? this bias against it, that its normalization has now become a disaster, as we have seen well, part of the problem with traditional political coverage is that there is a traditional framing: you cover a campaign in a specific way, you cover a campaign, they have false equivalencies, they are built into the coverage and what happens when you do coverage like that is that you elevate the non-Democratic candidate because there is no room to say wow, because when you compare the normal candidate, the Democratic candidate, the candidate who follows all kinds of political norms, you elevate this other candidate, in a way you forgive his authoritarianism and that is the problem that you keep seeing over and over again, now there is another problem which is that the right has worked very hard with the referees, so every time I know a supposedly non-partisan journalist is writing a story, they're saying: Does it look like I'm leftist?

I have to do B and balance, so that's the problem. The reality is that we only have to cover what is at stake and not the probabilities we have to write about. what a triumph a second Trump presidency would be, jailing opponents, everything you know, the things we have to take seriously and literally, and Susie, that's threading the needle, that's so hard, right?, it's this idea what I think when you try to reverse it. an election, a legal election that in itself should be a disqualifier for you, yes, you should not deserve any space in mainstream media, but we somehow have an obligation to highlight to Molly's Point what you promise to deliver if you do so. to a second term in the oval, what will that look like under a second term of Donald Trump, yeah, that's really important because you don't need to have immediate access like you did in 2016, right, they don't need to put it online or on a front c to a camera and say just spend hours at a time, but I think the voting public deserves to see it and deserves to see exactly how he expresses himself, but you also know there's a lot of talk about Biden's age. and his verbal stumbles, if you

watch

a Trump rally, you'll see so many verbal stumbles and strange comments.

He'll call Nikki Haley Nancy Pelosi, he'll stop mid-sentence and he won't know what he's talking about, I think it's important for people to see that, but I do, but the decisions we make about how we show him, what context we put, how much we explain what's at stake while saying, that's what's really important here, but Molly. There is a difficulty in that sense because you don't want to amplify and that is something we are very aware of. I try very hard in my program not to show him so much in some unrestricted way, but how can I not?

Continue trying to show and amplify how dangerous you are as an autocrat, as a fascist, as someone who will commit Injustice if you return safely. The most important thing is that you say: A lie is a lie just when he says something that is not true and says it is a lie, you say it is a lie, then you make a truth sandwich, you have, you say, Donald Trump said that immigrants are vermin, we know that immigrants are not vermin, you know, that is autocratic and dehumanizing. a person to be able to do terrible things to them, I mean, we know what that word is, you know it, it never, never leads anywhere good and that's what you do, you tell them, you have to express every lie with the truth. it's his responsibility what I think is interesting is that in 2016 Trump ran something that had so much free media that he was right everywhere and he didn't even need to spend money because he got so much free media this time that he's not getting the same kind of coverage. media, but in a way it's also dangerous because you don't see all the mistakes and also all the really scary promises, so you have a really interesting documentary called Enemies of the People.

I want to play it quickly. clip for our viewers and ask a question from the other side listen quickly George Orwell said it is better to see what is in front of your nose It demands a constant struggle we are in a world of entertainment it is political entertainment the media during the campaign, everything they believed that it was wrong, it must be a ruthless telling of a story, if we are going to learn anything from it, it must be a ruthless telling, is what Susie says, and we have also learned from mistakes, has the media learned?

From the mistakes they made before, listen the documentary was an opportunity for me to talk to several prominent media figures and journalists about the 2016 elections and many of them admitted their mistakes, right, they trusted the polls too much, They didn't. take him seriously at the beginning, you know, they treated him as a fun oddity at the beginning, they gave him immediate access to airtime, so they admit they made mistakes and I'd love to say that none of those mistakes are happening this time. around, but as Katie Tur says in that clip, it's very difficult to see what's happening in front of you and, despite that reflection that they did in two in 2017 when I filmed those interviews, we're seeing the same kind of false equivalence if Watch the conversation about ages, it's very similar to the conversation about Hillary Clinton's emails and what happens when the media is desperate for balance, so they have to find something bad to say about the opposing candidate every time one comes up of the Trump scandals. is that the message sticks much more to the other candidate, the only thing you could talk about with Hillary was her emails, her emails, her emails, so that's the message that stuck to her and didn't you could understand what was supposed to stick to Trump and me.

Think about that happening again right now it's like you're being inundated with headlines Don't you know Biden's age is a problem? His memory is a problem and you are besieged by scandals about Donald Trump. You're not even sure how many accusations he has. has at this point, so it's our job to not just get carried away with the talking points, we're told the problem is age, we can't think about anything else, we don't want to be seen as partisan, so we just default, that is something we can't do this time well I had less than 30 seconds but I want you to say something for now um the age thing is so funny because okay so there was all this age hysteria and then it did this. state of the union where he was brighter than ever and he went off and on script and he was great, his age is fine and really Biden's world needs to do it and they do it, they have it out there and they are responding, but you know people you just need to look at it because it's really good and this is really kind of a made up fake equivalent and saying, you know, I think it's the same thing as the emails or even remembering when Hillary was sick and they did something completely funny about health.

I mean, he's just a straw man. Hello everyone, MSNBC has a new and improved app. They will receive alerts and analysis in real time. Live blogging. In-depth essays. Featured videos and the best 2024 election coverage download. the new MSNBC app, here's how: Tap the App Store on your phone,hit search on the bottom right corner, type MSNBC, click on the MSNBC app, click get or cloud icon and enjoy it.