name is louis. he is not nearly as big as mac's, only about 80-85 pounds -- >> still big with. cheryl: he also weighs almost as much as you do. [laughter] >> there he is. my lazy lab. cheryl: as our viewer s know, i'm the outnumbered cat person on the program. but you know what? milo 's a cool dude, and i am very lucky. and that's probably what he's doing right now on that exact window sill staring at what i call kitty cat television which is the streets of new york city when you're a cat. anyway, guys, great show. it was great to have you both here. >> thanks for having me. chr cheryl mark if tepper, kaylee mcgee white, that does it for us. you know what in don't go anywhere? guess who's up? stuart varney hey, stu. stuart: mark tepper, that dog's a monster. [laughter] good morning, cheryl. and good morning, everyone. it's a critical moment in the

mideast. america issues a final warning to iran and its proxies, hey, stop attacking shipping and destructing world trade, assassinations in lebanon, shipping lines abandoning the red sea, on the brink of a wider war. oil moving up a little because of this. now you're at $73 a barrel, 73.23 to be precise. the market though, as in stocks, doesn't seem to be responding that much. a mixed picture this morning after two days of very heavy selling. the dow likely to be up about 80. s&p though down again, off 3, and look at the nasdaq, down 75 points. that's premarket activity. big tech really beaten up and sinking several percentage points from late last year. this morning look at those levels. apple at 181, amazon 145. meta, 334. etc., etc. all down. slight gain for alphabet this morning. the 10-year treasury is again threatening to hit the 4% mark. it's right there, 3.99. that's a problem for the market. the 2-year coming in with a

yield of -- sorry, 4.38. up again on that yield. doesn't help stocks. a small gain for bitcoin. we're back to $43,300 this morning. no change for gas. national average is $3.09 for regular. diesel, though or down one cent. coming in there at $3.97. all right, politics. claudine gay resigned as harvard's president tuesday. today she writes an op-ed in the new york times. she claims he was driven out by ray is schism -- racism. donald trump wins the endorsement of the entire with republican leadership of the house. the iowa caucuses, 11 days away. a change in the order, however. nikki haley, long number three, has jumped ahead of ron desantis. so it is trump, haley, desantis, in that order. on the show today, greg abbott, the governor of texas. he wants to criminalize illegal migration with. the justice department is suing him for that. republicans want immediate if action to stop the migrant flow,

and if they don't get it, some are threatening to shut the government down. on the hoe today, usa boxing has a new transgender policy that allows biological men to compete in the ring with women. however, they must have completed gender reassignment surgery. we cover it all on this thursday, january the 4th, 2023. "varney & company" is about to begin. ♪ ♪ i love you, baby. ♪ and if it's quite all right, i need you, baby ♪ stuart: love it. that goes back 50 years, doesn't it in. >> well, you know, oldies are goodies, stuart, and, you know -- stuart: you're so right. >> right? [laughter] no, i shouldn't talk. it takes one to know one. i'm getting there faster -- stuart: ladies and gentlemen, adam johnson will be on the show just a little later. it's thursday morning, i'm going

to start with claudine gay. hours after resigning as president of harvard, she wrote an op-ed in the new york times. lauren, what did she say? lauren: yeah. i was so excited to read what she had to say, and all i heard was i. i was attacked. my character, my intelligence were impugned. and then she blamed an organized campaign to discredit her. here's a quote9 from that op-ed. at finance moments, every one -- tense moment, every one of us must be more skeptical of the loudest and most extreme voices in our culture. however well organized or well connected they might be. too often they are pursuing self-serving agendas that should be met with more questions and less credulity. stuart, she played the victim. she didn't apologize to any of the students. she was the victim. she wrote that she was taken down because people are uncomfortable with a black woman leading a prestigious university, so she says they worked to discredit her and public faith in high her education. and i found the title completely

ironic and arrogant. what just happened at harvard is bigger than me me? yeah, claudine, your whole piece was about yourself. stuart: i don't think that op-ed is going down very well in many circles, and we'll pursue it late ore on. many thanks, lauren. adam a coleman is with us this morning. adam, gay has resigned. do you think she was the victim of racism? >> no. i think she was a victim of her student the body who have been indoctrinated who decided to show with how they really feel about a israel and how they feel about jews, and the reaction from the public, the people who are outside of academia who saw this behavior. and so she is held responsible for the behavior of the students when she failed to convince congress that she actually cared and she felt that hamas was a terrorist organization which now she acknowledges within her op-ed piece that hamas is a

terrorist outer organization. she failed to do these things in public, in front of congress, and that brought on scrutiny. it brought on scrutiny from everybody including the two journalists who looked into her background to figure out who she is exactly and was there any sort of discrepancies with her academic achievements. stuart: what do you think should happen now? she's resigned, but what's next? >> well, what's next is that she's going to stay at harvard, she's going to make nearly $900,000 a year, and they're going to likely put somebody in that position who is just as ideological, who falls boot status quo of harvard -- into the status quo of harvard, and nothing will really change for that institution. the amount of pressure that they received forced her to actually make some sort of change, but it's as much of a pr stunt. there's not going to be much of a difference. the student body that hates jews, they're still going to be at that a school. nothing's going to happen to them, and they're going to hold on to this idea that threatening students and threatening the safety of students who are

jewish at the school is part of free speech. stuart: adam, you are a political columnist, so i'm going to turn to politics, pure politics. trump has secured the endorsement of all members of the house gop leadership. he's running away from the mom in addition, so it seems to me -- nomination. what say you? >> it looks that way. i've been predicting that this is likely going to happen. trump is running away with it. and i think what you're seeing is the endorsements coming from the republican party basically just -- it's really because of fatigue of the primaries, in my opinion. this has been going on for about a year. it looks like nothing is changing, and so everybody is just saying we're going to put all our chips on the table and go straight for trump. stuart: adam coal banker thanks very much for join -- coleman, thanks for jumping in at the last minute. [laughter] >> no problem. stuart: see you again soon, sir. back to you, lauren. we know trump is far and away

the favorite for the nomination. how's the race for second place going? lauren: well, haley and desantis are neck and neck. if you look at the real clear politics average of polls, haley is up by .1 at 11%. so she's going to debate ron desantis next week to try to widen that gap. trump's ahead -- look at that. i mean, trump is far and away the front-runner. he's got 63% support. he's ahead by over 50 points, but they're duking it out for second place and maybe, stuart, for who is trump's number two on the ticket. stuart: i got that one. who is going to be number two. lots of speculation, i'm sure. lauren, back to you in a second. i want to turn to the markets right now. we've had two days of heavy selling. this morning dow up maybe 70, the s&p and nasdaq down again. adam johnson with me this morning. okay, the selloff. has the selloff to start 2024 changed your outlook for the year in. >> absolutely not. stuart: not? >> stuart, the nasdaq was up 22% in two months, right in november

and december. that's blowout. it's wonderful. and those of us who were long these tech names did very well. but it's never a straight lineful there's always a little giveback. in fact, i actually am glad there's a little pullback because it means we still have our sanity, right, and we're not running away with it. up 22%? if great with. we've now given up, what is it, 4, 5%? if fine. that is a natural pullback, it's healthy. stuart: are the second and third tier stocks -- not the magnificent seven -- >> right, right. stuart: are they going to start rallying? >> yeah. and, again, in fact, actually if you look at some of the names that started to see some green yesterday, it was, yeah, that second tier. you also saw all the normalization names, you know? consumer type stocks, travel stocks. you know, you would expect in a down market those names to start to turn back up because fundamentally the economy in spite of inflation, it's still higher than we like, in spite of

chaos at the border, etc., the economy from a stock investor's point of view is actual better than many believe. stuart: they put out some strong numbers on private sector employment this morning, adp, 164,000. >> think about that. adp, these are the guys who basically process paychecks. well, 160,000 new jobs created in the past month? if that's incredibly strong. and, stuart, that gets to the whole thing i've been saying, the two es of earnings and employment. if people are employed, they are making money, they are spending money, we know that from the holiday sales, and that come by combination is good for earnings because consult is two-thirds of our -- consumption is two-thirds of our economy. stuart: what's wrong with gold? >> it just won't go up. all-time new high deficit spending in the u.s., chaos at the board, an inability of this country to lead, etc., what will push gold to a new high? you've had four times in the past five years gold go to

$2100, and every time it goes down. gold doesn't do anything, it just sits there. there's no compelling reason to own it. i would much rather own stocks. especially when you have that combination of earnings and employment. stuart: good stuff. adam, stay with me for the hour. coming up, governor of texas, greg abbott, the justice department is suing his state over or his new law which allows texas police to arrest illegal migrants. the governor will be on the show today. look at this, migrants from venezuela trying to cross the border just steps away from the republican delegation in eagle pass. man pat fallon was there. -- congressman pat fallon was there. and moments ago, a new migrant bus arrived in new jersey. they're about to unload right now. more on that. more "varney" next. ♪

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stuart: dow can up 100, nasdaq down 68. i call that a conflicted market. nasdaq's down primarily because interest rates on the 10-year treasury a are approaching % again. -- -- 4% again. the suburbs are feeling the pinch and consequences of migration. ad addisonal worth -- madison alworth with us in new jersey. how many have come in in the last few days, can you tell us? >> reporter: yeah, i can, stuart. a bus did actually just arrive, we're seeing the migrants move from this bus which took them from virginia here, they started at the texas border, and they -- the ones that i've spoken to in this line are headed to new york city. spanish e. [speaking spanish]

spanish -- >> reporter: i asked him where he's from, ecuador. where is he going? new york city, which is what we've been seeing. so there have been 24 buses since this weekend, now 25 with this one. the reality is just one of the stops. stuart, i'm going to move off this way so you can see the bus and the migrants. it's over 20 buses since this weekend, and this is happening because new york city has a new executive order. they're limiting when migrants can arrive to new york on these charter buses. so what these -- what the governor of texas is doing and what nonprofits are doing instead, they're having buses like this one show up in new jersey, towns like secaucus which has seen 11, now 12 buses. they show up, they get on the bus, they hand out tickets to new york city. we're at the bus junction. they get on a train and head right into new york city if, and that's something that's been happening since this weekend. it's made it very alarming for the new jersey mayors. they were not really given any heads up that this would be

happening although mayor eric adams did say that they've been in communication with new jersey towns in order to let them know this might happen as a result of the executive order. but something we've been hearing from if all of the mayors in new jersey is that they don't have the capacity to take on these migrants. so for now, the migrants are showing up and are being taken -- taking trains to new york city. but they're worried if they actually decide to stay. that's something we've heard across the board. i do want to bring you some sound from the mayor of trenton, they had five bus loads tuesday night, no warning, and that was very alarming for him. talk a listen. >> it was done in the darkness of the night. we're not given any advanced warning. thankfully, they have, the part of them have boarded trains bound for new york. but no indication of whether there'll be continued buses and whether that, they'll be given the train fare up into the city which would then become our

problem. >> reporter: okay. so to sum it all up, stuart, the start of this weekend, saturday is, since then there's been 24 plus buses that have arrived to various towns in new jersey like secaucus which has now seen 12 buses arriving with migrants from the southern border. they're handed tickets to take the train into new york city, and almost all of them continue on there. local leaders including the mayor of tren torn, the mayor of edison as well as the mayor of secaucus all saying they do not have the capacity for migrants to stay here and for now they're not. they're heading on to new york. back to you. stuart: one of these days i'm going to hard one of these mayors complain and criticize biden's open border. i'm still waiting. madison, thank you very much is, indeed. over 60 republican members of congress visited the texas border yesterday. texas congressman pat fallon was part of that this delegation, and he joins me now. what did you see? you went to the border, what did you see? >> stuart, i saw a calamity.

i saw an open border. i saw an administration committed to amnesty. we talked to local sheriffs, we talked to discuss toms and border patrol -- customs and border patrol. actually, you should call them cuts customs and border processing right now, that's what they do. what smocked me is a couple -- shocked me is a couple of weeks ago in the del rio sector, there were no border patrol agents out in the field. they were all processing migrants which is precisely what the mexican drug cartels want them to do. because they're behind this. and joe biden, they don't is have -- the best friend the cartels have is a fella named joe biden from delaware. stuart: congressman, your fellow texas congressman, chip roy, he's not ruling out a government shutdown to get the border under full control. just watch this. roll it, please. >> so i was on a phone call this morning with sheriffs and border patrol coalition forces and ranchers this morning, and they said to me, congressman roy, you know, we've got to shut down the

board ore -- border or, yes, you should shut down the government. stuart: congressman, what about you? are you prepared to shut down the government if you don't get full border control? >> well, it's not us that's shutting down the gore government, it's going to be joe biden. we have divided government, stuart, as you know, and this should be about compromise. the number one priority right now is to control the southern border and secure it and not let the mexican drug cartels do so which is what joe biden has allowed them to do for three years. you can see it in the numbers. so i don't think we have any other choice. i also talked to sheriffs and local law enforcement on the border yesterday and for the past few days, and they -- i've heard that over and over again. if you can't shut down the border, please shut down the government because we have to get this under control. stuart: what is the one thing that you want to get out of this that would really seal that border and stop the inflow? what's the one thing you'd do? >> the very first thing the i would do is reinstitute president trump's policies of

you will wait in mexico while your asylum claim is adjudicated because we know that 99% of these folks are economic migrants. the folks yesterday that we saw overwhelmingly were from peru, ecuador and venezuela. which means they are transiting seven, eight other countries depending on their routes to get to the united states. that's not amnesty, stuart, that's economic migration, and they have no right to be here. so if you knew you were coming all the way from, say, ecuador and that you had to wait in mexico anyway, you wouldn't come in the first place, and you would call home, and there wouldn't be people that a followed you. joe biden and alejandro mayorkas have tuck stair concern stuck their head in the collective woke sand, and they're not doing, they're not acknowledging reality. or if they're doing it distributely to rememberingen -- deliberately to weaken the country. stuart: congressman pat fallon, appreciate it. >> thank you, stuart. stuart: how much the cartels are making poor week. give me the number, lauren.

lauren: $32 million per week from one sector of the border, the del rio, texas, sector. how they get this figure, i do not know, but it is a figure that republicans on the house judiciary committee say that they got from border patrol. it's so much money, and it shots that illegal emigration -- shows that illegal immigration is huge business for the drug cartels. they're smuggling humans and fentanyl across our border, so that's why they continue to do it, because they're making $32 million a week in one place only. the question that is so infuriating at this point all these years later is why do we continue to allow it. and i was reading some social media post on this, and and one guy said, well, maybe 10% of that $32 million a week is for the big guy, and i laughed and give that joke to you. stuart: careful with that one. lauren, thank you very much, indeed. i do see the dow with some green. i see red for the s&p, a lyttle bit of red e -- a little bit of red for the nasdaq too. we'll be back with the opening

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stuart: three minutes to the opening bell. dow's up 50, nasdaq down 90.

d.r. barton joining us now. did you expect the markets to get off to such a bad start for the year? is. >> stuart, after nine straight up weeks to close the year, there wasn't -- it wasn't unusual that we had a pullback. and i talked to ashley just last week about the possibility that we could have a softer first quarter because of the presidential cycle. the first quarter of an election year is the one of the three weakest quarters of the whole presidential cycle. so it's not unusual for us to be in this place. i didn't expect it to be the down quite so much though especially on tech, stuart. stuart: well, i'm not selling my microsoft. if or my blackstone. am i right? >> oh, absolutely. and i think this is a time, stuart, where we can start looking for things to buy on pullbacks all throughout january

perhaps if because i think we're going to get a better lift, a lot of the seasonals are really strong for the rest of the year. and also we've got lots of good things going on. right now we've got minutes yesterday, and it pushed the markets down a little bit just because people are a little less on the mix. that's a good thing -- optimistic. i think earnings strength is going to carries into the end of the year again this year. stuart: okay. you always bring tock picks. and i notice you often do defense stocks. today you like general dynamics. that's a theme of yours, isn't it? >> it is, stuart. unfortunately, we are living in a world where war is a growth industry. we have lots of conflict, active conflict right now as well as potential conflict all over the place. you and i talked in october about this very stock, general dynamics, when it was down in the 230s. i believe now that we're getting a little pullback off of the

all-time high at 2611 that we was -- 261 that we just hit, this is going to be a stock that offers a 2% dividend. they make so many strong defense systems that we use all over the globe. they are going to be a place that's going to continue to grow defense stocks are just a place i think we have to have a little money squirreled away. [laughter] stuart: not a bad idea. d.r., we'll be following the defense stocks very closely. thanks, we'll see you again real soon. 20 seconds to go before this market opens. we're expecting a modest downside move for the nasdaq again. been off sharply for two days, maybe a bit letter -- lower this morning certainly in the early going, but a modest gain for the dow industrials. they've been down for two days ago well. let's see. press the button, please, let's get on with it. it is now 9:30 exactly. we're off. here we go. the dow is up, what, 27, 28, 30

points in the early going. that's a small gain, indeed. and the dow 30 show about two-thirds up, one-third down. not bad. the spread's pretty good. the dow is now up 65. s&p 500 opening with a very small loss, you're down 4 point, .10%. 5 points now. and the nasdaq composite, that is down .40%, a sharper loss for the nasdaq. i think that's because we've got the yield on the 10-year treasury going up close to 4%. here's big tech this morning. meta, up. microsoft, up. alphabet with, apple and amazon down. look at apple, 182 right there. we had some earnings coming out before the opening bell. this is the important. walgreens, i see them down 6%. must have been a terrible report. lauren: wow. well, surprise loss. retail store sales fell, but they're e focusing on health. that is working for them because their pharmacy sales rose, but then they come out and halveed their dividend to 25 cents. and there you have it, down 7

for walgreens. stuart: cut your dividend in half, not good. conagra, what have we got? lauren: vim gym -- slim jim, duncan hines. they cut the full-year forecast. they expect sales to fall instead of grow. they're losing shelf pace at the grocery store to cheaper brands, and sometimes the store's private labels. completely flat after this report. stuart: here's the one i'm interested in, general motors. i know they had a goal of producing 150,000 electric vehicles last year. two questions. did they hit that goal, and how many evs did they actually sell? lauren: okay, did they hit the goal? they did not even come close. they got half of the goal. 75,883. 3% of every car that they sold was an electric vehicle. 3 percent, stuart. stuart: that's it.

lauren: and most of those ev sales were for the bolt. guess what? the bolt is now discontinued. can they continue to sell evs? and if so, which ones? well, or i'll tell you this, the hummer ev, that was very popular last year, it costs $10 is 8,000. $108,000 for the hum or electric vehicle. stuart: there's a limit to how many you can sell at $108,000, i suspect, and that's a fact. record, they're raising the price of their electric f-150, the lightning truck. how much are they increasing the price? lauren: the lower end version becomes $5,000 more expensive while the higher end is less expensive. so if you look at the range, you can get an f-150 lightning for between $55-93,000. i guess they wanted to balance out the demand if they're seeing more buyers want the cheaper version, make that less cheap? the good thing here is that they are one of the few cars that can keep the federal $7500 tax

credit, but they also halved production. of their ev, of the f-a 150 lightning already. so we have production -- when you halve production, i guess you can raise the price at the lower end, which they are. ford, they just released, the final automaker to give us their 2023 sales numbers. here in the u.s. they rose 7%. stuart: got it. something tells me there's something wrong with the ev market unless you're talking about tesla and some chinese companies. this you go. now i understand there's some change coming at microsoft's key board. what's that? lauren: you're not good good with change, stuart, but they're adding in about a month an a.i. key. it's going to have its own space right next to the spacebar, next to the alt button to the right, okay? you press it and automatically the co-pilot comes up. that's the chat bot, right? microsoft's a.i., it costs 30 a month. so a.i. is the future for microsoft. they dedicated a key for it on the keyboarder, and it really

makes it immediate for the user, right? i was just shocked that the keyboarder is surviving -- key board is surviving artificial intelligence. i thought we were getting so good with voice is, we're actually still going to be typing? really? stuart: i would really like that. if it's voice activated control of everything, that's what i want. lauren: i know. stuart: i never know which button to press. i get that wrong all the time. as you well know, lauren. lauren: the keyboard will live on, i suppose. stuart: come back into the studio soon, because i need help with my phone. what's going on with cvs? lauren rawrp we think of them as a drugstore, but they're a pharmacy benefits manager also, and they will drop coverage of -- [inaudible] from abve this april. that is a blockbuster. it's actually the best selling drug after the covid vaccinings. it's $21 billion in annual sales, so cvs says, well, we're just going to cover your cheaper

rivals instead, and that'll save customers money, more than 50%, but it's going to cost abv is e money as well. humor rah sales are expected to be -- stuart: it's for arthritis, right? if. lauren: inflammatory conditions like crohn's, for instance -- stuart: rheumatism is the english condition. thanks, lauren. adam's still with us. now, you've got a travel theme -- >> i do. stuart: and i know why. because you've just come back from paris. >> i just got back, so working on a little jet lag. there are so many people traveling. the flights were full, the restaurants were full, the museums were full. we're now seeing 2.9 million people pass through tsa checkpoints every day, that's higher than pre-covid. so for me as an investor deploying capital, i look at that and say i want to own stocks, right? people are out there spending money, and you see that in the travel stocks. stuart: delta is your number one airline pick. >> it's the only airline i've

ever poned. -- owned. you wouldn't think of an airline as a being ine genius? if well, it is. they have 32 different ways of segmenting the cabin, but also 10% of the money they make is from cargo, also by servicing other airlines' aircraft and selling the a parts. and they have a huge deal with american express whereby am-ex pays delta a billion dollars a year to buy up seats that it can give through its rewards program. so delta pulls all these different leverages. they also own a refinery in new jersey, a hedge on jet fuel. [laughter] and they trade at six times earnings. stuart: another travel stock, expedia. why do you like them? >> love it. trades at 10, 11 times earning. again, cheap. growing earnings at 25, 30%. what people don't necessarily realize, they're not just a broker. broke oring transactions. they buy up hotel rooms, they actually own the hotel rooms in the same way that a trading desk

will buy up bonds or stocks and then sell them over time. you know, they actually take a risk position. so, media, when it thinks that hotel rates are -- or hotel demand's going to 'em prove, they actually go out and buy up hotel capacity. stuart: i didn't know that. >> pretty clever. stuart: thanks, adam. coming up, usa boxing will allow transgender athletes to compete e against women. do they have any if safety concerns? brian kilmeade takes it on. another blow to biden's green agenda. a giant offshore wind project that the white house says is proof bidenomics is succeed ising, well, it's just been canceled. the company behind the project blames the economy. the white house blames republicans for the nation's debt. roll it. >> look at, if you look at that data, it's a trickle -- there's a trickle-down debt if you think about it. republican tax cuts are responsible for about 90% of it. [laughter] stuart: really? that's not all she said. we'll bring you the full tape. that will be next.

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stuart: see that graphic? we're officially $34 trillion in debt. edward lawrence with us at the white house. how much are we paying in interest? that's what i want to know. >> reporter: $659 billion for fiscal year 2023. that is a new record. and you said it, $34 trillion, another new record for the total federal debt held by the public. now president biden has been in office for 35 months now. he signed $6 trillion in spending into law, but the administration blames republicans for the debt problem. and over the past three months, the u.s. has added $10 billion

per day to the federal debt. so -- and that's not turning around. is there a discussion about cutting spending then? >> republican tax cuts are responsible for 90%. 90% of the increase in the debt. 90%. that is something that republicans are responsible for. what the president has done, what the president has done and you've heard us talk about it, i just talked about this -- >> reporter: no talking about cutting debt. the former president, president trump, signed $8 trillion in spending into law, but most of that was short-term covid emergency spending which has rolled off. the last four administrations, republican and democrat, added $28 trillion to the federal debt can. now, president biden has doning nothing to stop the spending splurge. in fact, he's asking congress for more money. the house speaker says it has to stop. >> we have to limit discretionary spending. the nondefense item requests that we're trying to reduce because, as you know, it's been

widely reported, we passed $34 trillion in debt today. we take this very seriously in the house republican conference. >> reporter: when lawmakers come back next week, they will have less than two weeks to come up with spending bills to fund the government. republicans want to cut spending, democrats want to keep the spending and then you raise taxes in order to make up that revenue. back to you, stu. stuart: okay. got it, edward with. thank you very much, indeed. take a listen to what else white house press secretary kjp had to say about our debt milestone. roll it. >> what we've seen on the other side is the complete opposite of what they've tried to do, continue to give a tax break to the millionaires and the billionaires. and that -- what they have actually put forward would add more than $3 trillion to the debt. stuart: okay. e.j. ej antoni from the heritage townation joins me now. what do you make of that? >> stu, frankly, i am so sick and tired of these lies, and i

really hate using that word, but they're absolute lies coming out of the white house. after watching those crips, i'm -- clips, i'm reminded of a moment from billy madison. nothing in that rambling, incoherent answer made any sense at all. we have all been made dumber for having listened to you. i award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul. [laughter] i mean, look, here are the facts: the president was handed an economy growing at a $1.5 trillion annualized rate, inflation was 1.4. if president biden had literally done nothing but allowed covid emergency spending to expire, we'd have a balanced budget today. and, no, the tax cuts under president trump did not explode the debt, and they do not account for 90% of the increase in the deficit. that's absolute hogwash. in fact, tax receipts to the federal government increased in the years following those tax cuts, not decreased. so far from contributing to the debt and the deficit, they have

actually helped reduce it. stuart okay. $many trillion worth of debt nol probably grow a trillion a year in the near future. what are the reper if cushions of that? do you think a debt bomb is going to explode soon? >> oh, absolutely, stu. that's certainly the path that we are on. and i think eventually the bond vigilantes are going to have their way here. people are increasingly waking up to the fact that the federal government is not going to be able to pay back this debt. now, may you actually get dollars back? yes, absolutely. but will they be worth what they are today? absolutely not. bond holders have already taken a 17% haircut because of the inflation. we have -- we have seen under joe biden. that is going to get worse in the future. we are going to continue to see a devaluation of the dollar because inflation, frankly, is the only way you're going to be able to pay off this much debt given the size of the economy. stuart: that's an unfortunate outlook in the first week of 2024, but that's your outlook

and we'll take it. thanks for joining us, ej antoni, heritage foundation. thank you, sir, appreciate it. 2023, it was a bad year at the box office for disney. they lost their spot as the top grossing studio. lauren, who's the new number one? lauren: universal thanks to super mario brothers and i haven't seen you in person, stuart, oppenheimer. i know you loved it. it actually brought you to the movie theater for the first time in, like, forever, right? if. stuart: that that's true. lauren: i didn't like it. couldn't finish it. stuart: really? lauren: yeah. i've been meaning to talk to you about it. universal grossed $4.9 billion, disney came in second at just over $4.8 billion. i see most of the disney movies, and i can tell you there is no magic in the new little mermaid or almostal, and that's been -- elemental, and that's been a challenge for ceo bob iger e.

he's been challenged by activist investors like nelson peltz when don't like how the turn-around is going. they've lost their way. stuart: come back into the studio soon, we need to talk about oppenheimer. lauren: i tried four times. stuart: adam johnson's here. would you buy disney in. >> i actually own it. i'll tell you why, bob iger admitted they have forgotten how to tell stories -- can. stuart: why do you with still own it? >> that's when you buy stuff, when e people realize they need to pivot, and disney is pivoting. and the fact that activist investors like nelson peltz are going in there and say let's focus on cash flow, they had a billion dollar loss, actually $1.8 billion in the second quarter loss on streaming. guess what? now it's only a couple hundred million, so we may actually see that thing start to go positive again. i'm very good with owning disney right here. it is when you buy it, stuart. stuart: whatever you say, firm on disney. >> i actually liked oppenheimer.

stuart stouter i thought it was brilliant. >> yeah. and what that guy did and what he went through, it's staggering. but he had this guilty complex, and that's why he went through what he did. stuart: great movie. coming up, critical race theory, even kinder kindergarteners develop racial biases. guarantee we're all over that one. the epstein documents are out. the full report next. ♪ you know what's interesting these days? bitcoin. look for bitwise, my friends. your best defense against erosion and cavities

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golo has improved my life in so many ways. i'm able to stand and actually make dinner. i'm able to clean my house. i'm able to do just simple tasks that a lot of people call simple, but when you're extremely heavy they're not so simple. golo is real and when you take release and follow the plan, it works. stuart: nearly a thousand pages of court documents concerning jeffrey epstein have been released. lydia hu, give me the prominent names. >> reporter: hey, stuart. former president and donald trump, prince andrew, stephen hawking, michael jackson and david copperfield are among the names. they appear in documents like deposition transcripts, e-mails. they're included in a civil case filed by epstein accuser

virginia jafri who named clinton as a close personal friend of epstein. other records reveal epstein told another accuser, quote, clinton likes them young, referring to girls. a clinton spokesperson denies the foreman president had a close relationship with epstein and maintains clinton knew nothing of epstein's crimes, never went to epstein's island, but they do acknowledge he flew on epstein's plane four times. they did not on the to the release of these records, stuart. names included are not evidence of any wrong doing, and here's an example of that. alan dershowitz, he was previously accused s of sexual abuse. dershowitz always denied those claims, and gioffri later withdrew her alleges. now he talked about that last night. watch here. >> if all the documents are revealed will prove categorically that she did misidentify me, that i never if met her, never heard of her, never spoke to her, and i can

prove it by independent means. i was epstein's lawyer. of course i flew on his plane. >> reporter: no names that we've not heard before, stuart, but what these records are doing is adding details to the scope of epstein's network, high-powered people, politicians, celebrities, royalty. we heard there are more documents that could be released as soon as today. stuart: i doubt that bill clinton will be out on the campaign trail endorsing anybody this year. that's just my opinion. thank you very much, adam, for being with us for the hour. still ahead, general anthony data on -- s&p up 3, nas nasdaq down 37. as we were seeing, general anthony tata on iran promising revenge after bombings killed more than 100 in iran. are we prepared for a direct clash with the iranians? texas governor greg abbott, is he and the republicans, are they willing to shut the government down to close the border? the government concern

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