coverage now. >> thank you so much for you and everyone else on the front line fighting for criminal justice and racial justice. good evening. if you have been spending thanksgiving break avoiding political arguments with family, it may not help. for the first time ever the u.s. was added to backsliding democracies. there are some reasons for that. plus a new travel restriction as a new covid variant emerges. and all three men were found guilty of murder in the killing of ahmad arbery this week. how it is changing the

accountability in this country. let's get started. america, the land of the free and home of the brave. is it also now the home of a backsliding democracy? a report this week labeled the united states as undergoing a severe and deliberate form of democratic erosion. in joins countries like india and brazil and a quarter of the world's population that fall under the backsliding category. the democracy report says they are seeing an increasing number of democratically elected with tactics. some think the pandemic has made it easier to take this course of

restricting civil liberties. and the partisan politics crippling our country. the republican controlled gerrymandering puts them in position to win big in 2022. and president trump is looking like he will be running with a new list the ability to overturn election results. only 35% of democrats say they feel democracy in america is facing a major threat. how can that be possible? maybe they are exhausted from everything we have lived through after a long and arduous four years. the 2020 election was supposed to be a new beginning, but as

new presidential ratings show, discontent is far from over. some voters are responding by withdrawing from the process all out. in "the new york times" this week -- it's a fine line between convincing voters that american democracy is truly at risk without filling them with a sense of despair. however, there is some good news in all of this. and some progress sparked a little bit of hope. it is noted that civics action is alive and well with global movements like tackling climate change and fighting racial

inequalities is coming out strong. and they conclude that democracy remains resilient. >> joining me now -- it's great to have both of you with us. michelle, i will begin with you. as you have written, there is a lot of despair, a sense of exhaustion, perhaps a sense of defeat among some that things are not improving. you write in a piece for new york times that we need leaders who can -- >> i think the problem is not

that things aren't improving. even if democrats win back public sentiment, it won't be enough. key electoral offices necessary to throw an election into chaos if not overturning the will of the voters. the structures are being rigged or disassembled. it means if we don't ask soon, if this congress doesn't act, which so far they haven't been able to do because joe manchin and synema aren't willing to override the filibuster.

>> to that point, how aware are we as a country of the moment that we find ourselves in. because you write -- and i think it's interesting, that you are not sure what is more troubling about the latest polling numbers, that so many republicans believe it's at risk. i think 71 to be precise. or democrats, close to 30% view our democracy at risk. >> we are in a difficult situation. many republicans who followed donald trump believe that the 2020 election was stolen and it means they might be willing to cut corners or do things that might lead to a stolen election for 2024. after all that would be payback for last time. democrats seem to be asleep at the wheel. we are coming up on the anniversary of january 6 and

this is forgotten. it was republicans who followed trump. well over 100 members of congress who voted not to certify the results out of pennsylvania after a violent insurrection. it is a hard story to tell. people are exhausted. i am worried by the time people wake up, it's going to be too late. it's going to require concerted civic action, cooperation among business, civic groups, universities, all people, democrats or people of free faith. >> it wasn't long ago we were considered a world leader in democracy. you would think covid has been a triggering mechanism for

authoritianism with vaccine mandates and mask mandates. but on the other side it appears to be republican controlled state legislatures trying to impede our access to hold and vote freely and being able to overturn an election. where do you see our biggest difficulty? >> i think it's too fold. at a certain point it will be impossible for democrats to win. and the gerrymandering gives them the ability to reject the results in 2024.

all of our government is becoming less responsive to the will of the voters. i don't think there is anything authoritian in the covid. but people are being broken. so much social pain. so much dislocation. so much fear that i think fundamentally it has shaken people's faith in the institution. >> when we talk about what the president has delivered in the first 11 months, record spending, pieces of legislation, impact helping the american people. we are doing better on so many different fronts, economically, even a pandemic perspective.

why is this not translating to a favorable polling for the president and this administration right now? >> i am not an expert on polling, but i think there is an exhaustion and the fact that we are still living with this pandemic, as things have gotten better, people don't feel like we are moving in the right direction. that is something closely related to the president's approval. if you think things are going the wrong way, even if they are okay personally for you, and the strife and constant bickering and polarization i think convinces people. when they don't see things looking like it did before donald trump, that's a big part. and although joe biden has

delivered somewhat, there was a lot promised that has not been done, including voting reform which was at the top of the agenda. >> a promise to black voters. michelle, is there a concern that this will spell doom for them in 2022 if they don't get any liberals in a meaningful way. the democracy, administration, are not meeting the moment, so they throw their hands up and turn out not to vote. >> i think you are likely to see that on two levels. turnout is likely to be high. people are engaged in politics because we are in a time of

extreme strife and polarization. but i think you could see a falloff between the activists and those critical of turning out the marginal voters. >> thank you for starting us off and spending a bit of your holiday weekend with us. >> what to know about the new variant. and the spread of viral disinformation among latino and hispanics. when did they know it? next. they know it? next

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monday morning travelers around the world will wake up to new restrictions. the biden administration announcing they will limit travel from seven south african

nations. the w.h.o. calling the strain a variant of concern. but is limiting travel the best solution at this time? those eight african countries have vaccination rates of less than 30%. and it is warned that unvaccinated populations can serve as a breeding ground for new more dangerous variants. would the world be better sending supplies to these countries instead of shutting the door. doctor, it's good to have you with us. how do you pronounce the omicron variant? is it om or ome? >> omicron. these are named on the greek

alphabet. it skipped too letters about whether the latter was about to avoid any offense to the chinese president. they said they felt that nu sounded too much like new. and that xi is not a common name. why does this latest strain have people to worried based on what we know so far from the medical science. >> the concern is that they have had -- south africa has excellent surveillance. they noticed a detail on the delta wave that started today

see a huge surge. looking at the genetic code, a worry that this has a lot of mutations we have seen in other variants that can give greater transmissibility where people can pass it on more easily to one another. and then there is the vaccine effectiveness and monoclonal variant. we can also get a better sense of how it appears in the patient. we don't know more than the delta or initial strength we have been dealing with. >> the travel ban has been imposed on south africa can't

travel to western countries i think starting as early as monday if not already. you have already had strains of this virus pop up in united kingdom, belgium, germany, none of which have travel bans. they could get on. those in south africa cannot travel. smart move? >> i think you painted why travel bans have little effect on fast traveling virus. there are probably cases in the united states we haven't discovered yet. you want to be consistent not just internationally, but may i point out, also domestically.

you want to put in sensible travel measures such as making sure everybody has been vaccinated and tested. it has limited perspective. as you said at the beginning, one way to stop the spread or decrease new variants is to increase the amount of vaccine we get to undervaccinated parts of the world. >>. >> as you indicated, it doesn't mean it necessarily originated in south africa. and i want to read this --

>> messaging has been a huge hurdle. send it to other countries in the fight with us and try to contain these. will they be fearful about releasing information about a new strain if they feel they found it. >> south africa is being punished for being the country that found the strain. identified it and raised the alarm. i completely agree with you. there is this variable response even though the strain is seen in many parts of the world. a science approach that we might

have caught it early and want to identify travelers who have it. it is going to discourage other countries who discover this may be reluctant in sharing this. >> an interesting dynamic with south africa. they did not have a problem with the supply of vaccines, but it seemed to have a problem with distributing the vaccines internally within its own country, whether because of vaccine hesitancy or didn't have the ability to distribute the vaccines. originally there were blood clots with johnson and johnson

and astrazeneca which was the bulk of vaccine for south africa. how do we make sure they have the resources they need to get shots properly in people's arms. >> let me sagan what we said earlier. we don't know where this virus originated. the concern is that in areas undervaccinated, there may be higher rates of transmission. the challenges are different. in some it is the supply, greatly the supply. in others it's the ability to try to get it to the last mile particularly with some they have pulled. and the best way, the quickest way that richer countries can help is pull back utilities put together to try to get the

vaccine out. they have a funding gap of billions of dollars and part of that money is that it's supposed to help. that's the way to quickly help. the other is to make sure donations that are current current, only one-third of the donations get to where they need to be. >> doctor, always good to see you. thank you so much for answering some of our questions. switching gears, all three men were found guilty of murder. but what will happen to the prosecutor who discouraged the arrest of the officers in the beginning? e officers in the beginning?

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>> there was shock and relief as the verdict was delivered for the three men who killed arbery. they face life in prison. if you will remember he was going for a jog when the three men chased him down in their vehicle. a scuffle ensued where he was shot at point blank range with a shotgun. it is shocking and even borderline miraculous that the three white men were found guilty. as the trial of zimmermann would highlight. there the /* --

charges were filed against the original district attorney in charge of ahmaud arbery's death on the charge of violating her oath of office. the charge was that she discouraged arrest of the three men who killed arbery. there is still so much work left to be done. let's talk about this verdict. what was your reaction to the guilty verdicts for arbery's killers? did the verdict surprise you and bring you a sense of release, as they did for me? >> it surprised me because we never see verdi like this.

-- verdicts like this. it is very rare for justice for black people shot out in the street. i know the governor said he hopes the results of this case can allow us to be on a path of healing. what we should know is that trials like this, even when they go in the favor of justice like arbery, the fact we are having a trial shows there is a lot to do. black men in the streets are being killed by men like these. their lawyer said they thought this was a hard day for them because they thought they were doing the right thing. that shows there is a huge goal for people to connect in america. just because you see a black man

running down the street doesn't mean you can kill him. >> i want to play some of the arguments made by laura hoge, the defense attorney for one of the mcmichaels. >> turning ahmaud arbery into a victim after the choices he made does not reflect the reality of what brought him to the shores in his khaki shorts with no socks to cover his long, dirty toenails. a disturbing moment. she was playing on racist tropes. what do those type of racest -- racist comments say about our system? was she thinking if she played

this racist stereotypes she could evoke something out of this mostly white jury. >> that was a dog, i heard it to california. it was a terrible thing she was doing using racist tropes to the white jurors and even the black jor. -- jur or. we saw zimmerman over a decade ago where they brought in a black man they said robbed her house which had no connection. we see dog whistles to wink to jurors saying this is america, we have to protect white people by sometimes hurting back

people. >> last week the verdict in the kyle rittenhouse trial came down. you wrote that you didn't bother watching that trial because you knew how it was going to end. tell me how you reached that conclusion. >> i was a chicago reporter for the guardian covering crimes. i was watching it in the news. i did not want to watch the trial because it felt quickly how this was a trial where you were seeing a young white boy being treated like a child while black people, even the white people who did eventually die -- this trial was built for kyle

rittenhouse to get off. so for me as i said in the column, i felt errant to watch it. we are seeing a case that is incredibly bipartisan to say that we as white people who don't believe black lives don't matter, that we should be protected, but black people don't have the right to jog or walk down the street. so this is a good moment to look at the symbolism of this american moment. >> speaking of how and where we began this. can you believe it has been ten years since the killing of trayvon martin? you could argue that was the beginning moment in earnest of the black lives matter movement. what message do you have for people after the arbery and

rittenhouse verdict. are you finding reason for optimism? >> i am. ten years ago we couldn't have had this conversation. mike brown was called a thug. i do see an evolution how we are seeing more compassion, how ahmaud was murdered. i think people should remember that the march towards justice in america and the world isn't something we have reached. we fight for justice. the arbery people talked about it after the trial, that people showed up. that's why i am hopeful. people showed up and that is great for the family and america.

>> i wonder how many ahmaud arberys were not captured on verdict where the police convinced there not to be any arrests made. that's just a reminder how much harder we have to work harder so things like this don't happen. zach stafford. thanks. one colorado newscaster didn't mince words when it came to congresswoman lauren boebert. . ? reduces inflammation? thank the gods. don't thank them too soon. kick pain in the aspercreme. (vo) t-mobile for business helps small business owners prosper during their most important time of year. when you switch to t-mobile and bring your own device, we'll pay off your phone up to $1000. you can keep your phone. keep your number. and get your employees connected

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online information. a huge platform for that fake news is facebook. now it is being uncovered how much the company knew. an advocacy group spent months trying to set up a meeting with facebook. when gonzalez finally had the meeting, she left with more questions than answers. she told l.a. times she was left with a bunch of empty promises and lack of detail. but what she didn't know was that behind the scenes facebook employees had been sounding alarms of their own. jessica gonzalez, co-ceo of free press joins us.

you had that meeting with facebook just before the 2020 election. with the release of these documents, they clearly knew more than they were letting on. do you feel like you were lied to by the company when you met with them? >> yes. i feel like we were repeatedly lied to by facebook or they are failing to disclose all of the information they knew. we asked basic information about how spanish language disinformation was working. where do the moderators live. we are also told they were doing their best. they knew exactly how high risk the problem was, how low their readiness was to address the problem ahead of the 2020 elections and they decided to do nothing. >> bear with me because i want to show our viewers how play

-- blatant this disparity is -- the very same post with hundreds of share is still on the website today. what message does this say. does this say that to latinos that information matters less if you are consumers of their platform? >> yes. they have seriously underinvested in keeping nonenglish speakers on the platform. that's what the documents that have been revealed show. facebook underinvested in all

nonenglish languages. it's incredibly offensive. i am here in california which is a high population of latinos. facebook has headquarters here. they were on notice. we kept not just with voter suppression campaigns, but also with efforts to undermine the census. >> speaking of that, frances haugen, the whistle-blower, i want to play a section from the senate hearing last month. watch this. >> based on what i saw nefrmsz allocation of integrate spending, one of the things disclosed in "the wall street journal" was that i believe it's, like, 87% of all the misinformation spending is spent on english and 9% of users are english speakers. seems that that facebook invests more in users that make more money, even though the danger may not be distributed evenly on

profitability. >> that is absolutely mind-blowing. it's just staggering to think 87% of spending is being spent on just 9% of users. and the truth is facebook is a huge company. this is not about a lack of resources in a company like facebook. why do you think they are allocating so little attention to languages outside of english? i mean, what is the danger that poses with only 9% of users are getting 87% of the spending on this kind of fact-checking? >> the simple answer they is they haven't been forced or held accountable, right? in germany they passed a law that required 3,000 content moderators be located in germany. i'm not saying we need such a law, but we do absent more accountability. i think the danger here is that there are very targeted efforts to disrupt democracy, to undermine our basic rights to

vote. and facebook has not done enough to protect us here in the united states, but abroad as well. the u.n. found that facebook played a contributing role in the genocide in myanmar. that does have a lot to do with facebook's underinvestment across language. so the threats here are many. it's a threat to our democracy, it's a threat to public health and safety, covid disinformation, vaccine disinformation is rampant in non-english languages across facebook and its platforms. and genocide, all these other mass atrocities that are happening around the world, facebook has to take a really good look at what role their underinvestment across language is playing in those atrocities. >> seems like it's something congress is still grappling or struggling to grapple with in terms of what role facebook is playing in our democracy. jessica gonzalez, thank you so much for your time. we'll continue to follow this story as it unfolds. still ahead, less than six

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they called him the french donald trump, eric zemmour, a political commentator and who don't know provoke tour is test known for weekly columns in the rights-wing french press where he rails against immigration and political correctness. by now he's taking his political

views to a new platform. nbc's matt bradley has the story for us. [ cheers ] >> reporter: he's been called racist, sexist, and anti-semitic. he's also been called the french donald trump. it's a comparison eric zemmour seems to savior as he prepares to run for the presidency next year. >> translator: i was very impressed by trump's campaign in 2016. i appreciate it as a connoisseur the technique that donald trump has with the media to not accept the rhetoric that the media imposes. >> reporter: zemmour has never won an election, nor held public office. instead, he's marked as a television pundit, railing each night against france's woke political elites, the immigrants he says are destroying french civilization, and recalling a time when france was great and how it could be made great again. >> he just turn around the words. that can be shocking because we're not used to that in our time where everything has to be

nice and cool and not -- not bullying anybody. >> reporter: the rhetoric seems to be working. his show is watched by millions, his books are best sellers. and he's surging in the polls before he's even declared his candidacy. this might look like a campaign rally, but officially it's a book-signing. france has always had a far right, but with zemmour, it's going mainstream. zemmour is far from universally loved. just last month a protest against his visit to the western city turned violent. but his popularity surged past old far-right stalwarts like marine le pen, and he's even more extreme. he's yet zemmour himself is the

child of north african jewish grirngts an irony not lost on many jewish leaders. >> what he said concerning jews is less important as to what he says about muslim. speaking of muslims, he speaks like hitler in what he says is either them or us. >> reporter: he says he's not against immigrants per se, but demands that immigrants assimilate, that they become french the way he believes husband jewish algerian parents did. like trump, one of zemmour's new gripes is wokism, that distinctly american export. >> translator: this is what we have to fight without hesitation. >> reporter: he's the first to acknowledge the limits to his likeness to trump. zemmour styles himself an intellectual. he writes his own books, some of them scholarly works on french history.

from there you see, it's not the same world, trump is very american and i'm very french, almost to the point of being a caricature. >> reporter: both larger than life personas who use division as a path to power. >> while being bigoted and using that rhetoric is surging in france thanks to people like zemmour, it's actually being normalized here in the u.s., and that sometimes it goes by undetected. the root of the latest problem, republican congresswoman lauren boebert. i'm going to dive into her derogatory and dangerous comments and what should be done to hold her accountable for what she has said. plus, the holidays are a time to be thankful and reflect on the past year. we'll take a look at what democrats should and shouldn't be celebrating this holiday season. when it comes to the economy, all the talk is about the inflation and how consumers won't stop spending. but a record number of americans say they won't be buying holiday gifts this year. so what's actually going on? we'll try to explain that.