howard: joining us now to analyze the coverage, mary katharine ham, co-host of "getting hammered," and meghan hays, former official of the biden campaign and the if white house. mary katherine, why did the judge not just say, case closed, he's not going to impose a jail sentence on the guy who's being inaugurated in a week? >> well, i think he felt like he had to finish this job even though, in my opinion and many american voters' opinions, it was kind of a sham from the beginning and quite a reach when you're talking about cobbling these charges together that were past the statute of limitations and were not felonies finish do. howard: alvin bragg, and many if liberallals thought it was a partisan case. >> both in the way he's doing it and giving this unconditional discharge and in the coverage of it by much of media, there's a sort of donation that we're just making the doughnuts here. we're just finishing this thing. the point actually wasn't the verdict and the justice, the point was to impede him becoming president of the united states. i believe that that was -- [laughter] the ob

mary c katharine ham joins me n. california appears to be turning on its leaders, is that right? reporter: well it should, because this thing is far from over as we heard in that report just now and i think these kinds of leaders who have not acted before a disaster happens to mitigate it for their citizens need pressure to do the right things moving forward, so there's a reason to be mad. there's a reason for citizens to get upset with them. i liked by the way that the owner of the l.a. times is noting his mistakes from the past. that's something a lot of media could learn from and regaining trust with folks, but look. thank you first to all of the first responders on the ground doing the hard work. the hard work became more dangerous because the people in charge of the levers of all of these resources did not plan for an event that they knew could happen, right? disasters are disasters. you'll have disastrous results. however, in a place like florida, where desantis is very good at emergency planning, you have a situation where you know what assets you have. you know where to p