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>> we're beginning this hour with some big breaking news on president-elect donald trump's pick for attorney general, matt gaetz, saying that he's now withdrawing from consideration. >> our correspondents are standing by with these new developments. let's begin with cnn chief legal affairs correspondent paula reid. and paula this news came as you were about to publish some reporting about matt gaetz. you reached out to him for comment and just before you were about to move forward with the story you were going to air with you got this response from gaetz announcing that he was withdrawing. >> that's exactly right. we firmed up our reporting earlier today. i reached out to his team around 1130 this morning. we made it clear that we would go with this new story at 1230, and we offered them the opportunity to weigh in and instead of getting a response or a comment just about a minute before we were about to go live on cnn, he notified the world that he is withdrawing from consideration as attorney general. and this new story is

that the ethics committee was told of a second sexual encounter with a woman who was just 17 years old. now, she told the woman, who was just 17 at the time, she testified to the committee that this second sexual encounter, which has never been reported before, also included another adult woman and i want to note that she testified about both sexual encounters, not only to the house ethics committee, but also in a civil deposition down in florida, and that her her testimony has been consistent. now, the congressman, of course, was investigated by the justice department over these allegations. they did not charge him. i will also note that the adult woman who was allegedly part of this encounter has also denied that she had sex with the minor, but this was an important piece of reporting because not only is it a second alleged sexual encounter with someone that was underage, it's also something that we didn't know before. i have covered the investigations into congressman gaetz for four years. we've broken so much news on the criminal investigation. we broke the news that he wasn't going to

be charged. we've been following the house ethics probe this was the first time that we had ever heard that the alleged underage victim said she had sex with him twice, and that the second encounter allegedly involved an adult woman. incredibly significant piece of reporting because it reminds people that the ethics committee has learned things that the public is not aware of. but when we reached out again, we did not get a statement. instead the world was informed that gaetz will no longer be considered for attorney general. all right, paula, stay with us. obviously, this is a quickly developing story. we want to go to cnn's kristen holmes, who is in west palm beach, florida, near trump's mar-a-lago resort where his cabinet has been taking shape. >> kristen, are you hearing anything from trump or his inner circle about this decision brianna, we have gotten a post from donald trump. >> this is what he wrote on truth social. he wrote, i greatly appreciate the recent efforts of matt gaetz in seeking approval to be attorney general. he was doing very well but at the same time did not want to be a distraction for the administration for which he has much respect. matt has a

wonderful future, and i look forward to watching all of the great things that he will do. now, the other thing i want to note here is i was told by a source that donald trump and the transition team were made aware that matt gaetz was going to withdraw his name from the attorney general before he actually did so on twitter that they had were prepared for this, that they had statements ready for this to move forward. now, i'm also told that there was a number of reasons for the for matt gaetz withdrawing. i was told by one source that they believe there was more information that was going to come out in that ethics report that was going to make everything harder, that while yesterday they were cautiously optimistic after their meetings with senators, it became clear there were a number of hard nos. and that at that time he couldn't have gotten confirmed. now on top of that, with more information coming out of this ethics report, they believe that that was not going to make their job any easier. so there were conversations going on about just how difficult it

would be to get matt gaetz across the finish line. the other point here to make is that there had been side conversations, and it's unclear if donald trump was part of these, about how much political capital donald trump should be using on matt gaetz, because there are a number of other controversial cabinet picks. and the question of course, is whether or not those people were going to essentially fall by the wayside because all of his political capital was going to be focused on matt gaetz, whether or not donald trump was brought into those conversations. unknown, but it is clear here that matt gaetz decided to withdraw his name as donald trump is saying, at least according to him, it was because it was becoming a distraction. we also heard those lines from matt gaetz as well kristen holmes live for us in west palm beach. >> let's take you out live to capitol hill with cnn's lauren fox. lauren, as kristen pointed out gaetz was just there yesterday meeting with republican senators urging them to give him a shot yeah. >> and obviously, his team was really arguing that they were

feeling confident about that. those meetings that they had yesterday. but one thing that has become very clear is there is a sense of relief up here on capitol hill among a lot of senate republicans who were either worried that they were going to have to take a very difficult vote on matt gaetz, potentially crossing the new and incoming president. >> there were also some republicans who are close to the president's team, who still had serious concerns about matt gaetz. you know, i want to read one statement that susan collins just gave in the hallway to our colleague. she said, quote, what i think it probably reflects is the meetings that he had yesterday with senators as they started going through the judiciary committee members. i don't know that for a fact, but i think that he has put his country first, and i am pleased with the decision. now, another republican i spoke with on my way to this hit, roger wicker, said that this was a positive development, and when i pushed him on why he thought that this was such a positive development, he just smiled at me. did not answer the question

basically, i think trying to insinuate we all know why this was going to be a very tough road ahead in the months that came after this nomination. now, another thing to keep in mind here is there's still a fight to get that ethics report out in the light of day. we are told that representative sean casten, who had introduced a privileged resolution to force a vote of the full house on this issue, still wants to move forward when they get back from the thanksgiving recess. so there's still some pressure points up here on capitol hill about getting the contents of that ethics report out into the public eye. of course, you would need some democrats to vote with republicans it's not clear that that would happen, especially now that matt gaetz is no longer vying to be the next attorney general of the united states. >> all right lauren fox, live for us on the hill. thank you so much. >> we have cnn's senior law enforcement analyst andrew mccabe joining us now. andy your reaction to this news and also, i mean, as paula said, after so much reporting that

there was there are additional details that we, the public were not privy to about another encounter here sure brianna, i mean, my reaction is that the men and women of the department of justice and all of its component agencies this is a this is a very positive result for them um, because i, you know, i know for a fact from folks that i speak to who are in the department or even, you know recently left the department, there is great concern about the sort of leadership that may come in in the next administration. >> and the announcement of matt gaetz as the as the nominee for the attorney general job was pretty much uniformly met with horror. he is profoundly incapable and unqualified for that job. so they've avoided that one. really. concerning result. but i don't think anyone is. you know, nobody's kidding themselves. there will be another nominee and likely

whoever that is, they will also come to the department with the instructions and the mandate from the president and the administration to really tear things apart and take a very different view of the work that the department does. so people who work there are very committed organization. they've invested their lives and their careers in doing that work are understandably can still concerned about that. >> andrew, you and i actually spoke over the last few days about the investigations into matt gaetz, not only by the house ethics committee, but also the department of justice which declined to press charges against him. i'm wondering if you were surprised at all that we learned more about the details into these investigations. if there is potentially more still that you imagine may come to light you know, i'm confident that there's more information. >> there's always more information in the investigation in the files of the investigators in the

transcripts of witnesses that have been interviewed there's always more than what ultimately meets the public's eye. so i'm not surprised here that there was more information that we've now learned about as this process kind of stumbled forward. we would likely have learned much more if it went all the way to a hearing where witnesses would likely be brought in. some of these very witnesses whose accounts we're talking about today may have been brought in to share their stories with the committee. it's important to know that the work of the ethics committee is very different than the work of the department of justice. their job is not to find to prove the elements of a crime their job is just to find out, um, who has information to share about this alleged activity or this activity that, uh that matt gaetz is allegedly been involved with. so it's a very broad scope inquiry they're typically very thorough and very careful about protecting that information but as this

process went forward, it's inevitable you're going to find out more and more things. i think today's revelation about two encounters with a 17 year old, two alleged encounters with a 17 year old is um, really changes the game and should kind of shake people in a way that wakes them up to the seriousness of of what this person may have engaged in and the sort of effect that it has on whether or position of trust. i would say obviously, no. um doesn't mean that he's committed a crime. doj never took him nev charged him, never took him to court never proved that he had committed a crime but the fact that the committee talked to witnesses who they believe were credible you know, you have to take those stories very seriously and factor that into your assessment of mr. gaetz. >> it also doesn't mean that he didn't commit a crime. >> and i think we should be clear about that. as the doj

considered whether to charge or not. andy, take us through that, because you're hearing these allegations. and i think anyone looking at them says, i mean, shouldn't a 17 year old be protected if this is actually what happened? and yet doj makes a decision not to and they do this in cases all the time and of course, as you said, the legal line is different than the ethical line. but explain that decision to us what could have complicated prosecuting this brianna. >> and it's it's really gets to the heart of this thing. and i think also raises some other important questions doj likely had access to all of these same witnesses. they likely received the same testimony. they probably had additional information. they were able to get with legal process. and subpoenas and things like that. at the end of the day, they

determined they they did not want to go forward with the prosecution. the standard in the department in making that decision is whether you think you could obtain a conviction at trial and sustain that conviction under appeal. so clearly, whatever they had failed to meet that standard in their discretion, and they have great discretion in deciding that there's a lot of reasons why they might the really rough process of having to go to trial and testify about events like this, it may be they thought some of the witnesses wouldn't hold up to cross-examination in a way that would have been productive for the prosecution there's a million different reasons, and i think at some point the oversight committees should talk to the department about that, should get a better understanding about why they walked away from a prosecution of a person in a very high ranking position that allegedly involved the victimization of young women. um, you know, i'm

not clear the doj would ever share their reasons with oversight committees, but it's something that they should certainly look into. >> andrew mccabe, thank you so much for the analysis. let's bring in cnn's senior political commentator, scott jennings. now, he was the special assistant to president george w. bush. scott, you were here with us when gates was announced as the nominee and at the time, i think it's fair to say you were in shock and disbelief what's the sentiment now that he's withdrawn? >> well, i think it was probably right to do >> i mean, this had a low probability of success from the beginning. >> and the information that's come out now made it even worse so he did the right thing by president-elect trump, that's for sure. >> i didn't think he ever had a path to 50. and it didn't didn't seem that he was ever going to get there. so trump deserves to be able to nominate someone who has a fighting chance of being confirmed. that obviously wasn't happening with gates. i mean, this transition though, is i said at the time, it's entertaining. i

mean, it has more twists and turns than an m night shyamalan movie and now we're going to get somebody else and we'll see who that is. he had a list that he had before, and maybe he'll go back to that i'm very curious about that because there were some folks on that list that had a more conventional streak, i think, for heading up doj. >> wyoming republican senator cynthia lummis said this with gates deciding not to have his name in contention anymore, that this will allow trump to appoint someone ask you this was there like a singularity in the brand of tenaciousness that was matt gaetz. it seemed that donald trump might have been looking for something like that. is there someone else who brings that? >> oh, i think there's several people who would be tenacious who see the world the way president trump sees it, but just don't carry the same amount of confirmation baggage that

this thing so, of course, i mean, there's a number of great choices, and i don't think there's any shortage of people who want to work for donald trump. i think he's got all kinds of folks who are highly qualified for all these jobs, who are would be more than happy to serve the american people in this so i think he'll have a good a good list to pick from. i do think this he went out on a limb on this one and it got sawed off pretty quickly. my advice would be don't do it again, you know, because if you nominate another person who starts below the line, that was the thing with gates. he sort of always started below the line of any anywhere being near confirmable if you do that again, you're putting your party right back in the same position of having to fight to get. >> has he done that on some of the ones he has? >> i think the rest of them all could be confirmed. gates, i think as i've said to you that day, he always struck me as being in a different category. i think everybody else is still within the realm of confirmable. so this job, my advice would be let's find somebody who starts above water, not below water. >> i do want to point out we just got new reporting from kaitlan collins that at this point, trump does not have a

backup attorney general in mind. the reporting is that, according to two people familiar with the matter, he has to return to the drawing board. he struggled to find a candidate he liked initially, which is what led him to gates in the first place. going back to picking gates in the first place. there were concerns about gates for years, as paul had been reporting these things were out there in the ether the trump team obviously knew that more was going to come out. why go through all of this? >> yeah. did they? i don't know i mean, that's a that's a great question. i mean this may have been a decision that was made more on the fly than after a considered vetting process. and that's another thing about nominating people to jobs. it does pay to do your homework on the folks you send up and look everybody has things that come out about them. i mean, every nominee, you know, gets picked at and picked over. it doesn't necessarily mean everything is fatal. but in this case, the information that had come out and that's coming out today obviously was going to be a bridge too far for someone who

already had pretty fraught relationships on the hill. >> scott jennings, thank you so much. still ahead, trump's defense secretary pick going on offense. he is on capitol hill today trying to win over lawmakers. but this visit comes on the heels of a newly released police report detailing sexual assault allegations against the former fox news host from an incident that allegedly took place back in 2017. >> introducing new roxon gel, the first fda cleared ed treatment available without a prescription a roxon gel is clinically proven to work within ten minutes, so you and your partner can experience the heights of intimacy. new arachnid treatment from dress the bird >> ready wallet. >> happy that's 365 by whole foods market. >> when a tough car finds you

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and an anonymous woman say happened in 2017. their accounts vary. hegseth has denied the account and was never charged with a crime, but the details could be cnn's sara murray is here with us now. sara, walk us through what's in this report? >> well, it is disturbing. and these really lay out competing narratives of what happened on this evening, in october, in 2017, in california, around a republican women's conference. and i want to go first to the woman's account. again, she's not named. she's referred to as jane doe in this police report. and she describes hegseth at this conference as giving off a creeper vibe. you know, she says that she ended up in a strange hotel room. hegseth took the phone from her hands he blocked the door with his body, and she remembered saying no a lot. but there are also a lot of parts. she forgot that she just couldn't piece together. she said it's possible somebody slipped something in her drink but there are other eyewitnesses who said she seemed sober, and also other people who said they might have seen her earlier in

the evening, having an encounter with hegseth at the bar. one person perceived that as flirting. now, eventually, after this encounter in the hotel room, she decided to seek medical attention. she got a rape kit and the nurse reported it. now i want to go to hegseth version of events, which is very different from what this woman recalls he says. this was a consensual sexual intercourse between two adults. he said she was in his hotel room and there was always conversation, always consensual conduct. he said he and jane doe had a conversation about how she was married, and she was going to tell her husband that she had fallen asleep on a couch in someone else's room, and that she showed early signs denied that there was any kind of sexual misconduct. his attorney, timothy parlatore has said the same. he said to cnn, the police report confirms what i've said all along the incident was fully investigated and police found the allegations to be false, which is why no charges were filed. we should note what this police report tells us and doesn't tell us there were no charges filed. that is correct. it doesn't say that her

allegations were false and there are pieces of evidence that we still don't have. and the public may never have. there is surveillance video. there's a memo from the district attorney's office that could shed light on why there weren't charges in this case. and the woman again, jane doe, she's not commenting. cnn found her last week and tried to ask her about this incident. she broke down in tears when her team asked her about it. >> you can imagine she will potentially hear from republican senators soon seeking similar answers. sara murray, thank you so much for the reporting brianna. >> joining us now is democratic congressman jason crow of colorado. sir, we'll get to pete hegseth here in a moment. first, though, i do want to ask you about this breaking news on matt gaetz, your former colleague, withdrawing his nomination for attorney general. he seemed singularly poised to offer president-elect trump a type of retribution through his doj that others might not be able to. what is his withdrawal from consideration mean well, it means a couple of things. >> number one, matt gaetz was

never qualified to hold this position but that was actually kind of the point. >> he was nominated not to actually execute the duties of attorney general. you know as america would expect that person to do. but rather to be a loyalist and to exact retribution on donald trump's perceived enemies. >> right. >> you look at the vast majority of his nominations, not all of them, but the vast majority of them. >> and they fall into several different categories. >> they're either people that are his donors and supporters, so they're being paid back, and they're going to earn money or get something, some kind of benefit out of their nomination. >> they are people who are being nominated to dismantle or destroy an agency that performs a critical government function for americans, or they're people that are just extreme loyalists that are put in position to be his foot soldiers into exact retribution. >> that is, about 90% of his nominees fall into one of those three buckets. right now. >> and let's talk about pete hegseth now, this police report, that's out, i'm assuming you've had a chance to take a look at some of the details here in the last few

hours. what's your reaction to it? >> well you know, my reaction is less important than donald trump's reaction. >> donald trump has responded to this saying that he's undeterred, that he doesn't care about these allegations and that actually makes sense. knowing donald trump, because he's an adjudicated sexual abuser himself. so, of course, he's not going to be concerned about allegations about one of his nominees doing the same. but listen pete hegseth, even before these allegations is not qualified to hold this position. he's not qualified because he doesn't have the experience either. the experience running a large organization or the experience on defense and national security policy. and he's not qualified because of some of his comments on women serving in combat, which he has said women should not serve in combat, which is immediately disqualifying in my book. i'm a former army ranger. i served three combat tours in iraq and afghanistan. i served with women who fought for this country who sacrificed for this country in some cases, died for this country and for somebody to say that they're not

qualified to serve in combat is just beyond the pale to me. >> yeah. we can't forget there are female rangers, which is pretty amazing. and you're also on the intel committee. so let's talk about tulsi gabbard for director of national intelligence. trump's pick for that many democrats have questioned whether she's compromised which is a huge allegation to make, whether she's actually been influenced by a foreign government. do you question that yeah i do question that, actually, because you just look at her public statements, you look at her affinity for autocrats and dictators, whether it's bashar al assad, whether it's vladimir putin, adversaries and enemies of the united states war criminals. >> she is somebody who has you know, visited. she's gone to syria and visited people in the syrian regime. she's made very troubling statements about america's adversaries, and she doesn't actually have experience. right. she's unqualified because she doesn't have the experience running the nation's largest intelligence network. now, you don't have to have done that

before. that's not what i'm saying. what i am saying is you should either have experience running large organizations or you should know something about defense policy and national security. neither of which are true for her. but then you add on top of that questions about her loyalty and questions about her integrity are concerning because the director of national intelligence is responsible for overseeing our alliances. right. so we get a lot of intelligence to protect americans from our allies. there's a there's an alliance called the five eyes relationship that we have with a couple of different countries and we get intelligence that protects americans from other countries. those countries are not going to share intelligence with us if they don't have confidence that we're going to protect that information and honor it in the way that that alliance requires us to do so, which actually will make americans far less safe. >> congressman jason crow, thanks for joining us this afternoon we appreciate it. >> thank you. >> and still ahead, a potentially major escalation in the war on ukraine. some new questions on the type of

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holidays for any hard to shop for person on your list when you want up it's our son, he is always up in our business. it's the verizon 5g home internet i got us. oh... he used to be a competitive gamer but with the higher lag, he can't keep up with his squad. so now we're his “squad”. what are kevin's plans for the fall? he's going to college. out of state, yeah. -yeah in the fall. change of plans, i've decided to stay local. oh excellent! oh that's great! why would i ever leave this? -aw! we will do anything to get him gaming again. you and kevin need to fix this internet situation. heard my name! i swear to god, kevin! -we told you to wait in the car. everyone in my old squad has xfinity.

less lag, better gaming! i'm gonna need to charge you for three people. direct redefining insurance closed captioning brought to you by aarp join and get instant access to member benefits. >> join aarp for $12 for one year and get instant access to member benefits and social programs. >> join and get an insulated trunk organizer free plus aarp, the magazine just moments ago russian president vladimir putin announced that a russian strike in ukraine was carried out by, quote, an experimental non-nuclear ballistic missile which has a medium range. >> a u.s. official made a similar assessment earlier today after ukraine accused the kremlin of firing an intercontinental ballistic missile, a weapon designed to deliver long distance nuclear warheads. these are new photos obtained exclusively by cnn, showing the missile debris and the ukrainian city of dnipro. we want to get a military

perspective now. joining us is retired lieutenant general ben hodges, former commander of u.s. army forces in europe. sir. thank you so much for being with us. i do wonder about this distinction. the kremlin saying this is an experimental medium range ballistic missile. how is that different from an intercontinental ballistic missile intercontinental ballistic missile, that name evokes something that makes people think of the holocaust, the world war ii nuclear holocaust out and got people, uh overly excited. >> which of course, is exactly what the russians wanted in the beginning. now they're saying, oh, well it's this, uh, medium range, not an intercontinental ballistic missile. um, and also it looks to be i mean, it's been labeled as experimental. i think that's because it looks like it was not very effective.

it clearly was not carrying a nuclear warhead. and when i've looked at the video of these, the pieces or the warheads that did impact around the dnipropetrovsk, um it did not cause much damage. so it's hard to say how effective this weapon is. the point is, we should uh, allow our intelligence agencies to do their assessment don't take the bait. this is russian scaremongering to try and get us to stop supporting ukraine. >> and, general, there is also excuse me. there's also something technology that does hint at some of moscow's threats over nuclear weapons. right confusion about what it was, um, i think the and obviously, this is a dangerous weapon. >> there's no doubt about that. but they have been using

nuclear capable weapons against ukraine from the very beginning. there's 4 or 5 different types of missiles and other weapons that are delivered by various means that are all capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. so again, i think that we should not make too much out of this. and in fact, it strikes me a little bit of russian. um they're worried. i mean, they're worried because they see that ukraine already is achieving very good effect with the atacms and also with the storm shadows, which they can now use against headquarters, against logistics. and so the russians are going to do what they can to try and doing this. >> general i also want to ask you about the closure of us greek and spanish embassies in kyiv. how do you read

that there's concern within those countries of russia targeting those facilities indications here over the last couple of days, and this this points to the excellence of our intelligence and our early warning systems. >> there were indicators that something like this was going to happen. they they may not have known the the target obviously, but you know, if you're going to launch a weapon like an icbm or in this case, this medium range weapon, there are a lot of things that happen that can be detected. so i don't know this, but my guess is that, um, they decided to alert the various embassies that there could be something coming towards kyiv. and so the different nations took different steps to deal with that. so again, i think that this was an appropriate we'll probably see our great diplomats back at work. and in

fact, i'm pretty sure some of them at work tomorrow. >> lieutenant general ben hodges, great to get your analysis thanks so much for being with us thanks for the privilege. up next, we're going to explain why the justice department wants google to break up with chrome and what this all means for our web surfing experience. we'll be right back >> but the gains are pumping the market's closed. teachers don't sleep in the after hours, bro. >> dad is mommy a finance bro? >> she switched careers to make money for your weddings. >> ooh penny stocks are blowing up, sweetie. >> grab your piggy bank. we're going all in. let me ask you for your wedding do you want a gazebo in a river? >> i don't. what's a gazebo? >> something that your mother always wanted and never got. >> or you could give these different investment options a shot. >> the right money moves aren't as aggressive as you think keeping the best. >> hi. my name is damien clark, and if you have both medicare and medicaid, i have some really encouraging news that

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with lovesac you make the rules. >> i'm hanako montgomery in tokyo and this is justice is proposing a way to bust up google's illegal monopoly. >> when it comes to searching the web. by forcing the company to spin off its popular web browser, chrome. billions of people use it, which comes bundled with the company's search engine. >> they may not have known there was another choice, right? but in a new filing, the doj urges a federal judge to force google to sell chrome. we have a lot to talk about now with cnn chief media analyst

brian stelter. so brian, why is the doj looking to break google up? and what does it mean for everyone out there who uses these products yes, including yours truly. >> it's how i'm coming to you live right now well, this follows the landmark ruling earlier this year, finding that google had violated u.s. antitrust law with its search business. the question now is what to do about that finding? okay, the court says that google is acting illegally. so what to do about it? overnight, the justice department the government to in this case, the court, to force google to spin off chrome to break the chrome browser off from the rest of google. and that's part of a broader effort to break up some of the tight integrations of google products. but it's those integrations of products that google says makes everything work so well. so google's chief legal officer, kent walker came out saying the doj is being overly broad here with this proposal pushing a radical interventionist agenda

that's the google position. what you can tell from that statement is that they will clearly appeal this. in other words, this is going to take months. probably years to play out. but if this does go through, if the court does order google to break up in this way it would be the most significant antitrust penalty for any tech company in a generation. >> yeah and i'd be curious to see who might be interested in actually purchasing that browser. there's also potentially some cable news networks that might be on the market soon. brian, what's going on over at comcast yes. >> this news rattling the television industry this week. comcast saying it's going to spin off most of its cable channels, including msnbc and cnbc into a separate private a separate publicly traded company. this process is going to take about a year. and there's lots of opinions about why comcast might be doing it. are they trying to come up with a growth opportunity for the industry, as they say, or are they trying to get rid of assets that are declining in value in the streaming era? i would say the google story and the cable story are connected in the following way. with the incoming trump administration,

there may be a much more beneficial environment for mergers and acquisitions. the doj actually, when trump takes over, might decide to follow through with the penalties that we just talked about. conversely, the incoming trump administration might decide that msnbc or cnbc is not friendly enough, particularly msnbc, and try to slow down any deal or try to stop any deal. so there's so much uncertainty, right now in the marketplace, whether it's big tech or media. and a lot of that uncertainty has to do with the change in administrations certainly, brian stelter, thank you so much. >> and still ahead, safety net threat. a new survey shows most americans expect to rely on social security in their retirement. but should they? why the future of this critical benefit is uncertain alka-seltzer plus cold or flu

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>> america will become the land of the free home of the broke. if we're not careful here, we're going to see a 27% reduction in these social security benefits by 2034. and here's why. it's a simple solution. you know, we have more people that are 65 or older than we do, people who are 18 and under. and so that's going to be more people that are withdrawing, less people contributing. >> so george is the solution looking forward, essentially a choice between two options, either raising revenue through raising income taxes or cutting benefits, cutting costs essentially by reducing the amount of benefits that folks get is that i mean, both of those sound like a headache and potentially politically perilous for anybody that tries to put that into place >> it's already fragile. and what we're seeing is the average social security benefit right now is about 1900 bucks a month. so we're talking poverty level. whether we do some cutting here or adding here, it's never going to be enough for someone to retire. so you need to be your own retirement plan. do not rely on

the government. instead, rely on the u.s. economy. we've seen the stock market double over the past seven years. so if you've been putting money in that 401 k or that roth ira, you're going to do far better than these measly social security benefits that we call social security. >> and so we talked earlier about people who are still working age, but among people who have already retired and even higher percentage relying on their social security more than three quarters. how concerning is that the ramsey show right next door, and they call in and say, we're retired we are retired at 63, and we're living off of social security, and it's not enough to cover the bills what do we do? >> and we have to give them the hard call and say, you've got to go back to work there's no other place you're going to find random income. otherwise you have your kids trying to support you. that's what we're seeing. they're called silver squatters. now, where they go, hey kids, we got to move back in with you because we didn't prepare for retirement. so the only option here is to continue working to bring in that extra

income. and there's a simple solution here it's called margin. you've got to spend less or make more. so we've got to cut our lifestyle down, which means getting rid of those debt payments before we retire, getting rid of the mortgage before we retire so that we can lower our monthly expenses and retire with dignity. and it's very much possible, even for those that are getting started later. if you're 40 with nothing in retirement and you invest 15% of the average household income, that's 80 grand. you'll be a millionaire by 60 31. 3,000,000in that nest egg. >> it sounds like folks should listen to that advice, george. i do wonder outside of trying to command personal expenses and the expenditures that people have every day. prices have gone up dramatically in the last few years. is there anything on the policy front that you foresee with an incoming administration that might change, that would alleviate some of those pressures, perhaps well, we know the tax cuts will continue to help americans but the tariffs might actually increase prices. >> so there might be a, you know, a net wash here. and

that's why it's so important to focus on your own house instead of what's happening in the white house. so let's just pretend that prices will continue to go up what are you going to do about it? well, that likely means getting on a written budget, living on less when you make, not getting more payments. in our life, but instead getting rid of those payments because we know retirement is not an age, it's a financial number. so you've got to start calculating. you've got to start investing. because if you invest nothing, you'll have nothing. and every kid with a piggy bank knows that you got to put some money in to have some later. and the good news is we want to help people with this. we created a free investing guide at ramsey solutions. dot com slash guide to help people understand all the lingo and what they need to do to get on track it's really good advice george. >> thank you so much for being with us thank you guys. >> appreciate it. >> and on this week's home front a taste of home for the holidays for american service members. the support ships nearly 700,000 pounds of food across the globe. just in time for troops to enjoy a traditional

thanksgiving meal. so what kind of trimmings are we talking about here get this more than 139,000 pounds of turkey. more than 176,000 pounds of beef, 98,000 pounds of ham, 49,000 pounds of shrimp. who doesn't love a shrimp cocktail? more than 46,000 pounds of sweet potatoes cakes and 1000 cases of that delicious eggnog. dla troop support calls this operation their super bowl, and they start gathering all those ingredients for meals as early as april. that's right. they've been doing this since april. stay with cnn. we'll be right back homefront buffet at golden corral >> we wish you a whole ham. we wish you all the size and fixings. and it's all to go.

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