and i see it two this afternoon when ashley will be anchoring fbn. >> wearing a i patch to give it added drama. stuart: 500 pages in 30 seconds flat. >> no problem. stuart: you're the man for it. here is the man takes eight way, neil cavuto. neil: we're watching all of that. curious timing. anytime something looks potentially harmful to the president of the united states, the release of this new york attorney general move to go to the trump foundation on very day we get the ig report. this is around 10:45 eastern time. so about an hour 15 minutes ago. take a look what is going on. the dow dropped, fairly precipitously from earlier levels. on the believe this could wash out expected news, good news for the president, the ig report, attorney general report that

will apparently james comey a new one, vindicate the president's views the guy should have been fired, depending on your point of view, was sort of washed out, with the new york attorney general going after donald trump and his entire family and the trump foundation saying they misappropriated funds. you heard the story. that prompted a selloff. hillary vaughn at white house they're responding at very same time rosenstein will be there, detailing the ig report. they have a lot to chew on, hillary? >> neil, president getting a first look at the report before it goes public later today. the big answer everyone is looking for out of the report, was there bias by the department of justice in handling of the clinton email probe? did they comply with federal law and fbi regulations? what we're expecting to find out about a number of individual here, who did anything wrong and what did they do? fired up director of the february by andrew mccabe,

we're looking to see the details behind his firing, that led to his firing, came out what is based on this report. we're seeing if fbi peter struck, lisa page, famous texters talking about the insurance policy see if they did anything wrong. more details. bottom line, if anyone at the fbi abused their power to help or hurt the clinton campaign in in process or make things better or worse for the trump campaign, we're waiting for a report to be released. some details are leaking out. bloomberg reports that inspector general will conclude that former fbi director james comey deviated from fbi and procedures handling the clinton email probe. the email report quotes horowitz, we did not find decisions were result of political bias on comey's part. we nevertheless concluded by departing clearly and dramatically from fbi and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted perception

of the fbi and the department as fair administrators of justice. that's a quote from inspector general michael horowitz. now the white house is not responding directly to this report yet. i asked deputy press secretary hogan gidley what the president is hoping to see out of this report? what does the president want to see out of this ig report? >> again, i don't want to get ahead of any of that. >> will we hear from the president today? >> he wants the american people to see as much as they can, as long as it protects the national security interests of. reporter: inspector general michael horowitz is widely respected across the aisle and appointed by president george w. bush and reappointed by barack obama. a lot of praise from the left and right. the inspector general can not charge any parties in the recommendation. he can only recommend indictments. we'll see if any indictments are

recommended in the report. that is what people look out for today. neil? neil: watching very, very closely. good reporting, my friend. let's get a read on all of this. i told you earlier about new york ag move against donald trump and his family over the trump foundation took wind out of sales of stocks. there is a rule of thumb here, whether you like the president or not, whether you're a fan of those investigations ensuing or not, that every time we get news that could be damaging to the white house, it hits stocks. when we don't, traders like it. i can only posit here that they like status quo. they don't like changes. don't like anything there could be tumultuous constitutional crisis. that happened under bill clinton, royaling on prospects he may get thrown out on his keister, president of the united states. they don't like it. would interrupt what is good economic rally. that is, i'm not taking a red or blue stance here. these guys see green. they are greedy.

they love money, money. anything gets in the way of that they don't like. get read on all of that, ashley pratte from "u.s. news & world report" and much, much more. ashley the initial read seems to when it comes to this comey report, i call it a comey report, because so much centered on the former fbi director, that he botched it. whether he deliberately botched it, had an agenda i guess people have to decide on that but that he screwed up. the president will pounce on the fact that he screwed up. what do you think? >> yeah. i think for sure this is going to be centered around comey and his actions around handling of the investigations here into clinton's emails. with that being said, clinton's name will not be on the ballot in 2018 or 2020 unless it is chelsea clinton but at the same time we do need to realize a lot of trump supporters were very angry by the investigation into her emails, how that played out. as well as distrust in government. if this report does show, there was in any way wrongdoing by the fbi in handling of this, i do

think this has impact moving forward. again, when it comes to james comey though, the president did days before the election discuss how he was doing such a great job because he did, you know, press more investigation into her emails a week before the election. it is interesting to see how tides have changed, how tides have turned against comey, especially coming to praise from the president. now obviously he will be the scapegoat here in all of this. neil: it is interesting how he gets fair and balanced rage from everyone, comey. >> right. neil: i want to bring you alert from "the washington post" who apparently sifted through some of this a little bit ahead of time. they say that among fbi officials there was a clear, will stop trump movement, emails back and forth to that effect where those closest in this investigation initially on the emails were very, very concerned

about donald trump emerging as the next president of the united states. it is a separate kind of a tandem to this report but it would feed the narrative that the white house, this white house, not the prior white house, that there was an agenda and an agenda against him. what do you make of that? >> for sure. that will be the narrative that comes out of the white house and out of the administration if that is something that can be proven. we've seen evidence of text messages going between some of the people at the fbi regarding trump's behavior, finding him terrifying. you can start building the narrative. one trump himself really taken a stand on and has tweeted about before. that there is collusion within the fbi and that is why, you know, he is being investigated for his actions in dealings with his campaign and russia. there will be a lot to unpack here. i think if there can be more proof when it comes to, again an agenda against trump in the election. i do think this is something that the white house will won tin to rail on. when it comes down to it, neil,

midterms in 2020, looking forward, it will be about the economy and his policies and what he has been able to accomplish and less about this. look again at how the investigations plagued hillary clinton's campaign. at the end of the day. it wasn't really anything. it seems a lot of nothing burger, something we're still talking about. you can talk about whether or not the investigations have an impact but he himself is still under investigation as well which is something he should be careful about when he is deciding his words and language moving forward on this report. neil: at first from bloomberg came this observation, also another organization got their hand on this thing ahead of time, which is a no-no, but someone did, former fbi director james comey, deviated, quoting from bloomberg, from fbi and justice department procedures in the handling of the probe into hillary clinton. by that i guess they mean by sort of big-footing the justice department, going past the justice department, bosses technically to handle any public pronouncements, but this was not

motivated by political bias. now that is going to come back and forth on the left and the right. the left argues that that movement, that decision to big foot the bosses at justice department, pause he says he had to because they wouldn't hurt and damage hillary clinton and cost her the election. so that is i think democrats take on that. republicans take, he was a bunk letter going back into that. bungler. there what do you make of all that? >> there is so much to unpack, neil, look at comey situation, he is a republican. he came out no longer of a republican because of trump and the platform. neil: you're absolutely right. >> there is that piece of it. when you want to claim political bias really hard to do that knowing he was a right of center republican. but again disliking trump what he has done to the party.

then there is the democratic side of this where you and hillary clinton coming out after the election saying comey cost her the election. democrats bought into that narrative. just a week before the election he did ramp up investigations saying they would still be on going into her emails. so there is much at play here just in that context alone. you have a former republican, now there is political bias claimed against him, handing election over potentially to hillary clinton, it doesn't seem to make much sense. i'm hoping this report will provide some clarity but i highly doubt it will show there was a strong-willed collusion within the fbi. i think there will be instances where bad behavior can be claimed. i think again, loretta lynch, the meeting on the tarmac, all of that stuff will be in there. i think that there will be multiple causes. i just don't know that, you know, there will be anything more outside of comey being the one who is the scapegoat. neil: i think we should explain, loretta lynch, former attorney

general and this meeting she had in june of 2016 on a phoenix, arizona, airport tarmac where the former president just hopped over to her plane, how are you doing, how are the grandkids. of course. i'm curious this happens on same day, curious timing. new york attorney general suing donald trump and his children on the charity. charging illegal conduct. arguing that fund were miss appropriated, taking ad van of it. president arguing if we were taking advantage we had funny way to show it. more money went out than coming in. what do you think of it. >> timing, fascinating thing, something potentially good for the trump administration which is the inspector general's report, regardless what it says there will be some way this is portrayed in a positive light for the administration, whether again it is distrust of

government or there was collusion within the fbi. so of course if you want to play defense here you definitely want to come out with a strong offense which means that you're going to have something like this come out where it shows something against trump and his family which shows some sort of wrong-doing on their behalf. so again the timing here is interesting. i'm guessing this will come out to be nothing. but if it is something we'll see in the coming days. this is all to kind of distract from the inspector general's report today. neil: you know the president has long argued, that, the fbi, a lot of these security agencies had a vendetta. he will no doubt argue, depends on final report, hadn't seen it, if it does, finger comey for inconsistencies and you know, grandstanding all of that, we know how mr. comey feels about the president now. he illustrates it page after page in his book. he said so in testimony, not a

big fan. a number of former top security officials including andy mccabe, his number two, who said pretty much the same, not a fan. all others including peter strzok, lisa page, not fans of donald trump, you know that old line my dad used to say, sometimes it is get to be paranoid because people are really out to get you. you could make the argument if you're donald trump. these people freely expressed their opinion, we didn't know at the time if none had been fired, if none of this came to light, if james comey came in power you do wonder whether the president would have been within his right to say there is cabal against me? >> for sure. to this point trump has never actually cared who hates him. if anything fuels his fire and fuels his base. neil: he does keep track of it. >> he does. he keeps a tab. he has one of those little anger dolls where he pushes pins into them of people he doesn't like. he pushes his tweets out there about people he doesn't like.

again it fuels a narrative for him, allowed him to win, in some ways, i believe in the 2016 election. he got his base so fired up about there being this distrust of government, this collusion in government and they don't like republicans. for a long time conservatives always said there is, a, bit of a double standard when it comes to us and the federal government, when you looked at irs and all the wrong doings. to have this led by the fbi is a bit of a problem, but again, when you look at political, you know leans for james comey. he was a republican. he does not donald trump. he made that very clear in days and weeks after the election. i think as this moves forward, this is something we should watch out for in all government agencies, how they handle their relationships on both sides of the political aisle. just bus republicans are empowered doesn't mean these organizations should be going after democrats or democratic organizations as well. that is something in the future

we need to look at to make sure there is transparency and good governance all around. neil: what comes out, there wasn't a lot of transparency then leading to up the report. ashley pratte, thank you. this report due out 90 minutes from now. when it is we'll comb through it here with our top lawyers we'll be going through it as well about the impact of some statements. democrats will no doubt focus on fact that republicans are crying this is bias. look at us, we lost because of this guy, james comey. his investigation on again and off again and on again, cost hillary clinton the white house. the republicans will respond, cry me a freakin' river. these guys can't be trusted. they were out to get us. we were right to have the president fire james comey. folks, there is little middle ground after all this.

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i mwell, what are youe to take care odoing tomorrow -10am? staff meeting. noon? eating. 3:45? uh, compliance training. 6:30? sam's baseball practice. 8:30? tai chi. yeah, so sounds relaxing. alright, 9:53? i usually make their lunches then, and i have a little vegan so wow, you are busy. wouldn't it be great if you had investments that worked as hard as you do? yeah. introducing essential portfolios. the automated investing solution that lets you focus on your life. neil: for a while looking like republican mark sanford, the congressman from south carolina was an easy bet to win nomination to hold on to his seat in the united states congress. couple tweets later from president of the united states. kate at -- katy harrington emer.

he is joins us now. mark sanford. >> thank you for letting me join you, i appreciate it. neil: what do you think would have happened if the president never treated that you weren't his guy? >> well, you know, who is to say. i just say it probably didn't help. nobody wakes up in campaign world hoping they get a tweet against them from the president of the united states. but i think it begs a larger dynamic that played out in this race which is simply, are you for trump or not? and i think that if you look at my voting record, about 90% of the time i voted with the president. on a handful of issues tied to conservative philosophy or promises i made when i ran for office or views of people i represent back home i disagreed. and what i think we want to be careful about, as a party, is to say, wait a minute, if we agree on 90% of the stuff, we're out there. i fully supported every item of the president's agenda with the

votes i took in the house. so i think we want to be very careful pledge allegiance to anything other than the flag and the constitution. that is sort of a bit what played out unfortunately in this race. neil: outgoing senator bob corker a lot of republicans, be careful on signing on, paraphrasing here, sir, the trump cult. what did you make of that? >> well, again, what i made out of it, made of it is what i saw in my own race. let's be clear it is not a cult. the sentiments of republican voters frustrated with way things worked in washington, not worked for them makes complete sense. i think we're going to a point a bridge too far when the president wants 100% allegiance and agreement all the time on all subjects. that is a bridge too far. if you look again, at the design of the founding fathers, it was

designed to create vigorous debate. designed a the legislative branch would be a check on the seng did, executive branch and that is what he alluding to. i think there is group think in washington, that will make things worse, not better. neil: maybe you didn't suck up with him enough? >> i'm a south carolinian. we're in 17 hundreds patriots fighting against the british. that is not what a local representative is supposed to do. we're sign on to republican agenda, which i have absolutely done. we're to vote wherever we can with the team. if there are a couple issues come along. for instance i voted against the omnibus bill. that is technically a vote against the president of the united states. that was not a vote against the president of the united states. that was a vote against the taxpayer, and for i would argue the common sense conservative philosophy i always stood for. neil: what are you going to do

now? >> i don't know. come to you for wisdom on that front. figure out what comes next. neil: you can do much better than that would you entertain running for office again? a lot of people thought after you stepped down as governor didn't think you had a future. you ran for congress and won. >> i never say never in life. i certainly don't have a clue what comes next. i have another six months in this office. i will be try to be the best member congress for the first district that i can be as i run all the way to the finish line. neil: are you working to elect katy harrington. >> cross those bridges when you get to it. there is bad blood. she didn't run honest campaign. we'll source that out over time. neil: you would support or think of supporting a democrat over her? >> absolutely not. i just said what i said. let's leave it at that. neil: which means i guess only other thing you don't vote at all? >> again, i'm about 24 hours after election. let me absorb this, have a conversation with folks. let me get tomorrow tomorrow.

neil: congressman sanford thanks very much. mark sanford, south carolina congressman who was surprisingly beat in a primary. a lot of people said it started with the president of the united states tweeting that he didn't favor him, favored his opponent. she won. he is leaving. more after this. a sinkhole opened up under our museum. eight priceless corvettes had plunged into it. chubb was there within hours. they helped make sure it was safe. we had everyone we needed to get our museum back up and running, and we opened the next day.

>> welcome back to "cavuto: coast to coast." i'm nicole petallides live on floor of the new york stock exchange. the verdict is in for at&t and time warner. and now let the media mergers begin. media, telecom, everything is on the table. in fact comcast after the bell yesterday said there was 65 billion-dollar all cash offer for fox, 21st century fox, parent of fox business network entertainment an international

assets. we're seeing everything get a boost. will disney come back from higher offer from the original 2.4 billion. fox. 8th record consecutive close. we have never seen that. thanks to senior editor charlie brady telling us that. all-time highs for twenty-first century fox, amazon and netflix. in fact netflix yesterday got $490 price target over at goldman. whether you look at the group overall, at wedbush, analyst saying watching for cb and viacom, pencil that in. will he scoop up more content. discovery, lions gate, part of those he owns, charter. verizon will they scoop up anymore and sprint an t-mobile. the highest level in about three months, helped by charter, disney and comcast. back to you. neil: nicole, thank you very much. comcast is challenging disney in

the bid for 21st century fox assets. charlie gasparino, first on story, all over the story. >> we broke out yesterday it would come out after the bell. it was known it was coming out. we didn't know when. we got the tip on that yesterday. we did it around 3:20 i would think. neil: now what? >> here is what i would say. not so fast on all these deals happening and just, i'm not saying they're not going to happen but here's the thing, in the next few days we'll figure out, we'll find out if the doj is going to appeal the at&t time warner verdict. now the at&t time warner verdict, decision by judge leon thee redally opens floodgates. you can do one of mergers, that merges big distribution with content. that means everything on the table. doj may appeal that. if they do appeal that, and i'm telling you, there is serious talk in there about appealing it, that would, that would basically leave at&t, time warner to merge, and the

possibility that that merger might get quashed in court. in the d.c. circuit court, okay. play this out. will comcast actually go after our assets if they think doj is going to play hard ball and try to go after them in the d.c. circuit court? throwing a little more weight behind the appeal, the possibility of a appeal. the d.c. circuit court is deliver the than judge lee on. a lot of judges are bush appointees. judge leon was bush appointee, more free market. the bush d.c. circuit court is packed with obama era appointees. i know nor a fact inside the justice department, they're hoping for panel of obama-era appointees so they can do the appeal before them and they strike down the deal. that appellate court will be negative on any transformational deals. neil: long term, it is uphill battle? the argument, whatever the court decides, i heard similar, it

might be inclined to reverse this? >> d.c. circuit court. neil: this might be a battle and a way of sticking it to both? >> that is the problem. if there is a possibility, i have been covering mergers and acquisitions a long time. if there is possibility the deal could get unwound or reversed, bankers have to take that into account. investors take that into account when they purchase a stock. that is more than a theoretical existential threat. neil: are they appealing? they have a couple days to decide. >> they have until sunday night to decide. we don't know. as of monday there were senior people inside of the doj pushing for an appeal. the head of the antitrust decision, it is his decision. he may turn around and say we have bigger fish to fry. the judge leon wrote very narrow ruling. he could bly a fox attempt to buy twenty-first-century-fox asset. it is narrow on at&t. that does not carry over they might say. neil: wouldn't comcast for fox

be deemed another vertical move? >> it would. what i'm saying, judge leon wrote a narrow ruling on at&t time warner, justice trying to block that. they may try to block, listen, this ruling, down set precedent. the judge himself said it. it is a narrow ruling that doesn't mean we can't go after this deal. i think, here is the thing, the problem with the media mergers, if you have transformational meals justice doesn't like, including vertical ones where you put distribution and content and you have to go to court, for years, that's a problem. you know, these companies do not want to be fighting the justice department for the next two years. it is really a problem with the deal. particularly if you get it before a butch of obama appointees, who if there is one thing that elizabeth warren and some of the liberals in congress agreen on with donald trump it, was that this deal was bad and those are the type of judges on the d.c. circuit. neil: let's say that doesn't

happen, for whatever reason, they rethink. it doesn't happen. how, could others enter this fray? would there be bidding war between comcast and disney? >> there could. neil: with other big players come in. >> you know, when you talk to bankers, the word is there is a mystery bidder out there for fax assets. they're saying it is out in silicon valley. i can tell you, i have sources at apple. i went there, they said, not us. amazon has no comments, netflix. there is a lot of silicon valley potential in terms of increase bidding war, at least that is what bankers are saying. there is interest. that doesn't mean they're ready to do it. but there is interest. by the way, silicon valley, everyone is calling silicon valley to get directly into the content business last five or six years, ever since i was in sun valley five or six years ago, the year i got thrown out -- neil: are you going back for this? >> i don't think so. i don't know. but the year, that year, that i

got thrown out we were making a bid for time warner and it was speculation we would bid for time warner. we actually did but there was a lot of talk about silicon valley interest in time warner. that has never materialized. so there is something that is keeping silicon valley back. maybe now is the chance. there is only certain amount of content assets out there. we're one of the premier ones. cbs has -- neil: could it ever go beyond assets being discussed here? >> for fox news? neil: for, yeah, other fox properties. >> like us? neil: yeah. >> that is what bankers tell me. mr. murdoch, the murdoch family holds controlling shares. i will say this, that sort of structured is challenged in chancery court in the battle between shari redstone and -- everything is on the table. neil: thank you, my friend. obviously murdochs they have a fiduciary responsibility to hear everyone out. >> they do. i tell you, that is why we

reported a couple weeks ago that comcast has a legitimate chance of breaking up this deal because they have to listen to it. they are. they are listening. neil: differential there. they are. thank you very much, charlie, on this story, all over the story before everyone knew it was a story. we're keeping you on top of the release of the inspector general report, very revealing how it embarass as number of peep. not so much illegalities, so much as embarrassing. we'll get into that after this. copd makes it hard to breathe. so to breathe better, i go with anoro. ♪ go your own way copd tries to say, "go this way." i say, "i'll go my own way, with anoro." ♪ go your own way

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♪ >> we think that gradually returning interest rates to more normal level as economy strengthens is the best way the fed can help sustain an environment in which american households and businesses can thrive. the main takeaway is that the economy is doing very well. most people who want to find jobs are finding them. and unemployment and inflation are low. neil: all right.

you know jerome powell, the man who heads the federal reserve, he is not an economist by training. you can tell the way he speaks because you can understand him. an economist, i know many, kind of one myself. anyway, they don't speak english. i it is just arcane, gobbledygook. i think this would come back to hurt mr. powell down the road, when you say the economy is great, things are going well, you don't have any middle ground or wiggle room, because your words were so clear before. to "the wall street journal" james freeman. who has an incredible book coming out soon. i can't divulge that. i leave it up to you break publisher agreement. >> appreciate it. neil: you and i listened to more than our share of fed speak. he doesn't speak it. he was very, very clear as to the impetus behind the rate hike yesterday. i guess additional ones to come. things are going well. that was it. of the he. >> he is right. it is a good economy. he says it plainly. i think a lot of people will

appreciate the plain english approach. certainly we're used to it as you mentioned fed chairman speaking in a code or language that is then parsed by various securities professionals and, they try and inform all of us what it really means but, i think he is, he is right. speaking plainly, that the economy is in good shape. i think it is positive that we're moving back to a real economy from a fed-driven economy. they're signaling four interest rate increase this is year. markets are not having a tantrum. neil: would be two more. we already had one? >> that's right. so a total of four. the market is not throwing a tantrum. people are confident that the economy is strong enough, with higher rates, things will be okay. this is a nice transition. i think if i was going to maybe pick a knit here, would be subject of our editorial in the journal today, which is that you got to question the gradual plan of rate increases given the

producer prices rising nor than i think people expected and above the fed's target. so he may have to go faster than gradual with the rate hikes. >> i saw that and begin to wonder what does it mean? almost every meeting a quarter-point hike. you can argue in half the remaining meetings he is looking at potential of a hike. but he is also going to have, you know, a presser after every meeting rather than every other meeting. that seems to indicate that he might be poised to move very aggressively. what if he does? >> i think that is good news. starting next year he will have a press conference after every meeting to get away from the idea that people have had, they only raise rates at meetings where they're going to have a press conference to be able to explain it. i think what he is saying is. no, it is not about raising rates. it is about keeping people informed. one thing it does allow, it gives him freedom to follow the

data. if the signals in the economy are telling him it is time to raise a little faster, he can follow that. if not, he can proceed, he gives them i think, freedom to move. also gives markets more clarity, if he is speaking after effort meeting. neil: james freeman. thank you very, very much. those rates go up to his point. then what happens to the debt we carry? because obviously we carry a lot of debt. a lot in shorter-term instruments being hiked by the federal reserve as we speak. to the national taxpayers union. your fear this is going to increase the cost of our debt, right? >> yeah. i think that the debt and deficit is still an issue we need to keep an eye on. now there of course are measures congress and president worked on in order to address that issue. there needs to be long term sustainability measures to bring the debt and deficit under control. there are biases towards spending in congress that need to be fixed. last week the house of

representatives passed president's recision package, which is the largest recision package the administration sent to the hill. the senate needs to act quickly to take up the package before it expires the end the week. something like that, $15 billion, against trillions we're leverages right now, doesn't seem like a lot. but it send as signal that washington is serious about getting spending practices under control t takes money off the take, when we talk about deficit finance spending. what congress does, it pilfers that these pay-fors on balance sheets. by getting rid of those through recession package, it prevents future spending abuses important to get our fiscal house in order. neil: mattie, what about the growth argument? the latest talk the quarter we're in will produce maybe a 4% or greater pickup in gdp or activity? that can go a long way to bringing revenues in, which brings down those figures. >> yeah. neil: and makes the absorption of higher rates at least easier.

what do you think? >> i think we need to be careful when we talk about growth. let's identify what true drivers of growth are, pro-growth policy, allows for the economy to be unhinged from what -- neil: i agree with you. i don't care. i'm not minimizing your argument. revenue will be revenue, will be revenue. that will offset whatever you're worried about. >> no, no. neil, you can't tax your way out of this problem. you can't grow your way entirely out of this problem. if you look at our entitlement programs, social security and medicares, those present 82 trillion-dollar liability. neil: i'm not even minimizing it. i agree with you. hear me out. that this growth might save some of their bacon for a little while? >> i agree with you growth is a problem, solution fix as lot of props of the without growth we can't talk about fixing infrastructure and spending issue that we have. totally with you there, neil. what we need to do, focus on what it is that provides growth. the tax bill last year absolutely the number one reason we're seeing a lot of these

economic fundamentals start to change. the deregulatory agenda coming out of the administration, crucial to keeping growth on path it is right now. to your point this can't be a flash in the pan. it can't be just a sugar high. i don't think it is. a lot of observers are saying effects of tax reform bill and regulation are short term. i fundamentally disagree with that synopsis. when you look at us completely rewriting tax code we'll see that in the coming years. that is happening slowly why you see some hand-wringing yesterday. we haven't seen wages tick up as we like to see in the inflation environment. we'll start to see when businesses realign the behavior as rules get fleshed in. we have a lot of runway, which will catalyze things to come. neil: mattie, always good seeing you. >> always good to see you. neil: thank you very much.

you would think the fact that the chinese and united states were in sync on working with the north koreans to at least broker this session where two leaders met at a table maybe the administration would go slow on tariffs and chinese might go slow in responsibilitying. hate to break it to you. two different channels. and the trade war could very much be on. more after this.

♪ >> we discussed trade today. our deficit with china is still too high. i stress how important it is for president trump to rectify that situation. so that the trade becomes more balanced, more reciprocal and more fair, with the opportunity to have american workers be treated fairly. neil: continue with my crackpot theory that he is the bad cop to the president's good cop when it comes to meeting, not only with the north koreans, it will be discussions with them, but with the chinese as in today. mike pompeo indicating right now, just because we're making progress on talks with north korea, means that you're off the hook on the trade stuff. former navy seal commander dave sears on all of this. what do you think, commander, of

this two-pronged strategy? >> i think it is fine. there is no direct causation between trade and tariffs implemented and north korea. i say that because it is in china's interests as well as ours to have a stable, korean peninsula. they want that. they don't want to return back to the brinksmanship it was. will we both use this as jockeying position? sure. ultimately will it affect the end goal of a stable korean peninsula? i don't think so. neil: commander, all this talk and rumormongering about how we might go light on chinese because of their presumed help with the north korean summit, and continuing that help i guess, what do you make of that? >> sure i think it's a negotiating tactic. it is a lot of talk. you put things out on the table. see what the response is. you're trying to go ahead and act, sense, kind of respond what occurs. i think it is a lot of rhetoric. you have to see what finally comes out of it. neil: who's tone are you buying

more commander? >> i might be overanalyzing. the president during the cops is appears to be good talk. north koreans and their leader. then we hear from, you know secretary of state mike pompeo pompeo yesterday in seoul, south korea. i don't know, we'll have accountability and then a follow-up from the north koreans before this president's term is up. echoing that again in china today, when it comes to being forcefully on these trade deals. who is right? are they both right? >> i think they're both right. you could easily see reversal of that, right? neil: right. >> see president trump suddenly become a bad cop, doesn't take a big imagination to do that. and secretary pompeo stepping in as the good cop. it is good to keep your negotiating stances off balance. the people you are negotiating with, you wan to keep them off balance and guessing. if they have complete certainty, easy to negotiate for a better deal.

neil: we're getting word, commander, vladmir putin is already invited kim jong-un to come to russia but, it will be in september, at least we learned that, the day they want to do it, on same day china is threatening to scrap any trade deals it has with the united states if we even think of imposing those tariffs some chinese goods, so weird. what do you make of it? >> this is kim playing. he doesn't want to be little brother to china constantly. he wants to get on the world stage. the more he can sort of cozy up with the u.s. cozy up with russia, get a economic relationship with south korea better, he wants to do that. korea and china have a very weird adversarial, little brother, big brother relationship korea wants out of. he is making all the moves. it is making china a little bit nervous. neil: what i'm wondering to what end? wouldn't we get anxious if we see them cozying up to vladmir putin? the president, who can be very

mercurial on this stuff, you and i had good, friendly discussions. now you're cozying up to vl happen. d and i'm not happy? >> we should be cautious of that relationship because russia is looking to throw more kinks in our plans. for them not in their interest, their interests to have china, u.s., north korea to be a little adversarial. they may not be interested in total stability on the have minutesla. we need to monitor and talk with north korea and china, let them know we're not happy. neil: commander, thank you for this. thank you for your service to this country as well. we're getting dribs and drabs on the inspector general report, what james comey knew, when he knew it, and whether he was showboating. a lot of interesting stuff coming up.

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allow you to take advantage of growth opportunities... with a level of protection in down markets. so you can be less concerned about your retirement savings. talk with your advisor about shield annuities from brighthouse financial- established by metlife. neil: all right, this is kind of interesting day here we're down about 34 points now we were doing a-okay even though there is the release of this inspector general report today that's going to detail the antics, that's how it's going to be probably read of james comey and how he might have botched the whole e-mail investigation of hillary clinton, the on again off again investigation days before democrats say because of that she lost, so there might be something in there for democrats who just need the administration no doubt will cease on indications here that this is a group of people who hate the

president, didn't want him to become president and some e-mails and exchanges and the like are going to come to light that will prove that and prove the president's point he was right to fire the guy the former fbi director but it was a develop of in a separate area whose timing was shall we say curious when new york tosses attorney general went after the trump foundation including the president including his kids and detailing that maybe a lot of the money that went out shouldn't have gone out a lot of the money that was going in shouldn't have been coming in the president responded with a nasty tweet of his own not only the question as i said the timing but to say that more money went out that came in and it went to all good causes and there's nothing nefarious going on here. we're going to get into that in a second here suffice to say when that came to the market's attention about an hour and 15 minutes after the dow opened a gain turned into a hefty loss and we have since to try to re coup route. justice department attorney and former fbi assistant director ron, i do feel obliged to ask you about the timing of that new

york ag report on this day, this coincidence or accept it at face value? >> well, neil, i think at this point in time there's always, we always need to look behind any kind of press release to see what's the motivation or the relationship to the timing so i think yet to be determined on the timing of that one but we ought to be cautious and perhaps a little bit suspicious of it. here, just walking in here i saw that's kind of a high level new york times commentary on the inspector general piece about james comey. it looks like there's no smoking gun there on his motives on hillary clinton timing and politics involved in the decision-making, but certainly, it reopens the wounds as it relates to the fbi. neil: john, there's so much we still don't know about in the detailed report we're going to get out of the inspector general 's office, but they

presumably will be something for everyone including for republicans the notion that these guys were incompetent, that james comey was grandstand ing, that there are more exchanges between a number of top officials there who thought dimly of the prospect of donald trump becoming president, i was mentioning all that in these e-mails particularly from peter strzok and others at the beginning of this show. i don't want to necessarily re hash all of that but there's enough there to feed the argument on both sides that comey botched it. what do you think of that? >> i think that's right, neil. i think on one hand, as ron just said, democrats can take comfort from the fact that the report will appear to show that there was no out right political bias to help hillary clinton and defeat president trump using the hillary clinton investigation although note there's still an inspector general investigation still yet to come on the whole russia investigation; however,

republicans, however, i think can say look, president trump was wise to fire james comey. look at all the things he did. the report suggests that he was in subordinate but i think worse than that and americans should be worried by an fbi director who was starting to approach hoover-esque boundaries by trying to grab power away from the justice department, claim the right to interpret the law when the fbi's only job is to assemble the facts and bring them to the prosecutors. you also see, i think, quite a bit of miss management on the part of loretta lynch, the attorney general under president obama at the end who apparently never talked to comey about these highly controversial rule- breaking decisions. these are violations of justice department procedure to make an announcement you're not going to prosecute hillary clinton and to change your mind at the end of october, james comey was never supposed to speak about this case in public. neil: um, he did. we know that in retrospect he

did because ron apparently he thought that the justice department would not, and so we felt compelled to do so. the only question i have still is that around the same time, when we know there were these questions bubbling about the russian thing, why there was a real clear concern not to go crazy on the e-mail stuff that could damage hillary clinton because in the end, he opted to take a course of action that didn't damage her, when in fact he was on to something far far potentially bigger that could affect the guy she was running against. what do you make of that? >> well, neil i think that timing is and the details are critically important. how much did the director of the fbi know about hillary clinton and her e-mails at the time and in early summer of 2016 versus how much did they really know about carter page, about george

papadopoulos, about a potential russia or at least an intent to penetrate the campaign at that same time and even deeper into 2016. i think those two things are very very different. we ought to be listening to the inspector general in how the fbi proceeded. he is at least today, the most impartial arbitor of that information and so i'm looking to read the entire report myself before i reach those conclusions i think what the inspector general has to say in the ground he's covered is important. neil: how can they come to the conclusion, john, real quickly, that whatever comey botched it was not deliberate political bias? >> apparently it can only come from looking at texts, e-mails, and interviews. now that doesn't absolutely settle the question of course because who knows what they thought in their minds and you're going to see i believe a

series of texts between two of the subordinates for james comey who are having an affair which do have partisan bias to it, or seem somewhat lurid, but in the general picture apparently the report doesn't show that but again who knows what's in the minds of people but i don't see any evidence yet of some kind of partisan bias. neil: all right, gentlemen thank you both very very much. again, still a ways from the release of everything coming out and when we do get them out and again, the washington post or bloomberg and some of the other entities that seem to have gotten their hot hands-on this stuff i do pass them along here but again i do think it is way way too soon to make a judgment one way or the other simply because we don't know. to real clear politics associate editor, a.b. stoddard. you know this town quite well they're going to seize on whatever fosters their case, democrats that say what you will with comey they were furious with him when he intervened in the race so close to election day. republicans will counter all the

stuff that's come to light to prove the point that these guys had it out for the guy eventually who beat hillary clinton. how do you see it all parsing out? >> well, neil you're right. i think it's going to be sort of an all you can eat buffet for both sides. i have urged people all along to read up on michael horowitz as well as robert mueller, their reputations and history in terms of assessing their credibility and to not look at the narrative in the different media hemispheres and to just read the reports. it's 2018 if you don't have a computer someone can print it out for you or at least summaries of them but i think it is your previous guest was making the case. i mean, we don't see evidence, neil, here that despite those sort of controversial texts that the subject of the texts we seen between peter strzok and lisa page we don't see an actual narrative of evidence showing they successfully engineered a

result that blocked ultimately a prosecution of mrs. clinton. i was interested in what details there were about loretta lynch and sort of what role she played in potentially protecting mrs. clinton. i was a student of the e-mail scandal and spent a lot of time but i think still what she did was deliberate and illegal but this report from our earlier assessments and again you keep saying rightfully so that we've not read the 500 pages does not show that there is a trail of evidence and data showing that they actually successfully planned to protect her and block an effort to prosecute her. it is clear that james comey went rogue. what he did was unprecedented. much of what he did was to look out for his own hide, neil, he was actually convinced that people in the new york fbi were so pro-trump and so anti-hillary they were leaking to rudy giuliani and others and that if she won, it would be found later

that he had actually reopened the case which is why he came out in october and therefore really injured her in the final days of the campaign, so while there is anti-trump sentiment within the fbi, there was also anti-hillary sentiment as well, and it's clear that james comey probably bought himself getting fired with his conduct. it's not clear, however whether or not special counsel mueller will perceive president trump's comments to lester holt about why he fired james comey because of the russia probe. i don't know if that adds up to obstruction. he did not say i fired james comey because he went rogue and was in subordinate in the hillary clinton e-mail case. that is not what he said. neil: he never said that at the time so real quickly let me ask you robert mueller relied on james comey for a lot of his early investigation into the so-called russian collusion thing, so did peter strzok and lisa page. all of their credibility now has been shot to you know what, it

would appear, it would appear, so does this risk, does this risk, the mueller probe going on longer, because he really has to work hard now to dot his i's cross his t's make sure there's nothing there that could come back and bite him. >> neil you make a good point if the special counsel has to go on longer than he's going to he's not going to come out with a report that is a punching bag of breitbart news. i think this man knows exactly how much political pressure he's under and what he's going to come up with will have to be able to be something that stands up in court. it's not something he'll know a lot from classified intelligence but if it's not evidence that can stand up in court if it's from a flimsy source it's not going to be in the report. this is not going to come from the steele dossier, it's not a report based on the notes of james comey. it's going to be a paper trail of assertions he can prove and charges he can prove or it's not going to add up to much. neil: a.b. stoddard, good seeing you again thank you very much. thanks, neil.

neil: the dow down about 16.5 points right now. media deals still much of the attraction in the market today and a lot of attention on my parent company, and a lot of companies that want a piece of it. whose going to win that prize and whose going to join the quest for that prize? after this.

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with td ameritrade®. neil: all right, on the day the inspector general report, i know this is coming so the timing is being questioned, the new york state attorney general suing the trump foundation, trump kids, if the president himself, adam shapiro has the very latest on all of this. adam: neil this is the 41-page lawsuit which was dropped around 11 a.m. this morning a lot of people saying political at play but the new york attorney general barbara underwood is saying no the trump foundation violated new york law for not-for-profits as well as potentially violating federal campaign law. essentially i'll boil it down for you. what they're saying is the trump foundation the charitable not-for-profit seeded control of its assets millions of dollars so that the trump campaign could use that money to influence political outcomes like the iowa caucus. they actually talk about a fundraiser that took place in iowa in 2016 and $2.8 million

which was then subsequently used by the campaign to make donation s to various charities for veterans, so the lawsuit calls this a persistent pattern of abuse by the foundation, dating back to almost its founding. they say that it's operated in persistent violation of state and federal law this pattern of illegal conduct by the foundation and its board members includes improper and extensive political activity, repeated and willful self-dealing transactions, and failure to follow basic fiduciary obligations or to implement even elementary corporate formalities required by the law. now the board of directors for the trump foundation are donald trump, donald trump jr. , ivanka trump, eric f. trump and then of course the foundation itself, is named as a respondent in this lawsuit. those people didn't ever meet as a board, going back to 1999 so the trump foundation has respond ed as has president trump he tweeted in regards to this. the pleasing new york democrats

and their now disgraced and run out of town attorney general eric schneiderman are doing everything they can to sue me on a foundation that took in $18 million and gave out to charity more than it took in, $19 million. i won't settle this case, and the foundation issued a statement in which they said, " this is politics at its very worst." the foundation donated over $19 million to worthy charitable causes, more than it even received. the president himself, or through his companies, has contributed more than $8 million neil, it's important to point out that the president's tweet and the foundation statement do not address the accusations and allegations of criminal activity that the attorney general raises in the lawsuit. they talk about politics and they talk about the generosity of the foundation, but none of those statements addresses the accusations. back to you. neil: all right thank you my friend. to adam's point here, now we've

got word of it the dow which had been doing pretty nicely reversed course and has since to gain back into positive territory, so around 10:45 eastern time is when all of this started happening and we could chart it out for you and that represents the drop-off as early on in the day and the markets trying to claw their way back since. we are monitoring this the same day as the inspector general report which we'll be getting details already but of course the full report still hours away so, on to other stuff including media deals that involve even the parent of this company, many more that could be in play, to fox business network susan li, wall street editor. dana, to you first. fox 21st century fox up again today on the notion that there's going to be a bidding war. is there? >> absolutely. i mean, one thing all these proceedings have put a spotlight on is if these assets are very much in demand, we knew comcast

had been hanging around when late last year when disney sealed the deal. now, comcast is back, with an even higher bid than it had put in before. neil: yeah, significantly, right susan? so obviously the murdock family had the fiduciary obligation to look at all of this but it could get bigger and it could involve other assets. >> $35 a share, that's what 65 billion in cash represents and if you look at how fox is trading right now we're at $44 and change so this is only the beginning and people are thinking how high could the bid ding war go? neil: well 13 billion more, you know, there's all cash. >> all cash. neil: than the disney offer. >> yes. neil: and disney is still up even though it's going to have to pony up more dollars. >> probably will have to pony up but even though it's a stock bid for fox assets, it doesn't mean that it's actually not superior to comcast's bid because how do you know rupert

murdoch doesn't like a board seat on disney? how do you know he doesn't like to be the biggest shareholder in one of the world's largest entertainment conglomerates so even with a cash bid some say in their view you really have to pony up a little bit more maybe go up with more leverage to make it far superior to what is being offered to rupert murdoch. neil: well so there are other players that have been mentioned do you see other players entering the mix and other companies also part of the mix? >> it's a great question. the journal has reported that amazon had a discussion with comcast about recent months about potentially teaming up on some kind of a bid for the fox assets. neil: apparently those talks ended though. >> they did. neil: now did they restart in light of this? >> who knows. neil: right. but just to bring it up to say there has been speculation that maybe there's a 900 you pound tech gorilla looming out there and amazon fits that description

so there's always a possibility there's somebody like amazon or apple looming. >> in the past they usually don't make huge acquisitions. >> that's a very fair point especially apple. amazon is getting more aggressive to be fair, they did whole foods and premier league deal. >> oh, 11 billion, to 60 billion is big difference in price. you have to be really, you have to really believe in the future of where entertainment is going and jeff bezos doesn't he spend enough on cloud and blue origin at this point, but what i'm trying to get at is what about what happens if let's say there's a bidding war. there are personalities at play as well. i remember in 2004 when comcast tried to buy disney, memories are long, and -- neil: those two don't get along. >> feuds linger. neil: so that had me wondering, you know, robert would not think nicely of leaving his arch enemy

at disney, the victor and vice versa, right? so this gets to be an ego battle as well. >> it's an ego battle, it's a battle of billionaires, lots of money at play and it's also for the future. neil: but bob iger lost this at this diplomat. is he in greater danger to lose something like this or brian roberts? >> oh, it's interesting. iger hasn't done a deal on this scale before, brian roberts has. neil: right. >> we don't really know what's in bob iger's head. he might very well say it's going to cost me so much more to get back in this game. i'll just walk away. he's not accustomed to playing at this level. brian roberts is. neil: well he must have envisioned that the at&t thing went through, that comcast was going to advance, right? >> yes. and don't forget bob iger put off his retirement for this deal and i feel like his legacy hinges on getting this through.

>> people say that he's been pretty successful. i have a little bit of a hard time swallowing that. look if he walked away he might be seen as disciplined and you never know whether this deal is going to work out in the long term. neil: but you're arguing this could go on for a while, this could go on for months? >> sure if disney decides it's not going to walk away very good possibility that will happen. >> you don't retire on a loss. bob iger isn't going to retire for a loss for sure, but you know what can they do? they can change up the deal. disney could come in with more cash which actually might be attractive. neil: or they could expand the properties they're interested in beyond the ones we see and hear about. >> sure. neil: could be the journal. it could be fox. >> that would be a really big deal. the journal is very valuable as we all know. neil: really? >> [laughter] neil: expect the unexpected we've already seen that. guys thank you very very much and we were kind of rifling through the stocks involved here we'll keep you posted on that whose moving and whose not moving and then we got the ig report a lot of confusion as

to what it means here. the gist we're getting and the early read on this is that comey comes across as a little self- important and he's all that and a can of whatever, but he didn't do anything illegal and he wasn't expressing any political bias. that's the report. you decide. for our customers. it's how we earned your trust. until... we lost it. today, we're renewing our commitment to you. fixing what went wrong. and ending product sales goals for branch bankers. so we can focus on your satisfaction. it's a new day at wells fargo. but it's a lot like our first day. wells fargo. established 1852. re-established 2018.

neil: lawmakers are getting their chance right now, to get their hands-on and review 500 plus pages in that inspector general report, largely focuses on comey of course and the clinton e-mail investigation was on again and off again you remember all of that. it doesn't really necessarily deal with the so-called russian collusion issue, although a lot of not as concerning donald trump and the role investigators were playing during the campaign do come up louisiana republican congressman mike johnson has that report, and a peak at some

of it here. is it fair to say it doesn't look good for james comey? >> i think that's fair to say, neil. i've got a copy of the report here it's about 500 pages about three inches thick, we're reading it digesting it right now members of congress have just been given this report but if you look at the executive summary which is the first 15 pages or so of this report there's pretty interesting information. you know i'm a member of the judiciary committee and our committee as well as the oversight committee and the house have been working on this since october we reviewed thousands of pages of documents have a number of high level fbi officials come to testify before our committees and very serious questions about how the rule of law has been maintained in this whole process. it looks as though some of our suspicions are being proven out and this report is really explosive. neil: well what are your suspicions being proven out? >> well first of all, the biggest question on the minds i think of the american people and in our minds as well as members of these committees is did hillary clinton receive special treatment for who she was because if she did that's not

equal justice under the law or who we are or the maintenance of the rule of law which is so important to our system. if she was given special treatment and treated with kid gloves because she's a clinton that is a serious implication and it looks like if you look at page 5 of the report i just highlighted this, it says clearly, "witnesses told the office of the inspector general that director comey emphasized that employees of the fbi would be disciplined for similar conduct" and he wanted to distinguish the clinton administration from the cases of other public figures who have been prosecutessed for mishandl ing violations that means other who mishandled classified information were treated differently than hillary clinton for who she is. that's an explosive charge and if that bears out by the evidence and i think it does, that's something very serious we need to contend with as well as all of the other questions . neil: a lot of democrats will come back say this was something helpful to hillary clinton it didn't seem to do the trick because they allege this on again off again announcement on the part of james comey to say we're reinvest it gating no

we're not re-investigating case close, hurt her lost the election what do you think? >> well look the political outcome is irrelevant to whether or not the law was followed that's what ultimately this is about. our job is judiciary committee is to make sure that the law is handle handled correctly that the fbi, the federal bureau of investigation these are our top law enforcement officials in the nation, that they handle the law appropriately. the politics is a totally different issue. neil: i understand that was there anything in there to the effect that they were simultaneously then ignoring the russian stuff that might have been going on concurrently? >> it certainly seems that way. i haven't read all 500 pages yet but we will by tonight and what we're concerned about is the obvious and overt bias that existed in this investigation, going all the way to the top of the fbi from the director himself comey from the deputy director mccabe, it looks as though they were involved in i'll use the word, a cover up. i mean, that's my word. it's not in the report i don't know if it's there. i haven't read it yet but we're

about to but here is the thing when you have peter strzok the chief investigator corresponding with lisa page with whom he was having an extra marital affair they're the person in charge with vest it gating irregularities for handling classified information they're bias against the president, it looks just smells to high heaven neil: so when the inspector general was supposedly saying and you have the report, i don't , that comey, a number of misssteps but he did not exhibit and he did not see or the report did not see any evidence of political bias, you don't buy that? >> i don't buy that and i'm not sure that's a conclusion in here i'm telling you from everything we've heard on judiciary committee and oversight since october of last year, all points in one direction, that comey at least mishandled this at least was grocery grossly neglect, i think some of that will come out over the next several hours. neil: congressman fascinating thank you very much, sir i

appreciate it. thanks neil appreciate it. neil: lawrence jones is here getting all his thoughts like we are, folks, from campusreform.or g, the editor in chief. what do you think? >> well i think neil we have to digest this obviously we want to see the full report but the thing that strikes me is the whole bias thing. it's not a matter of if it's political bias but the fact there's bias and what we've seen not only as it comes to the fbi but in the criminal justice system at large, is that when you're well connected if you're rich, powerful sometimes you get a break and i think this is what's displayed in the hillary investigation. could there have been political bias? obviously when you look at the text messages back from strzok and page talking about stopping donald trump from being president you'd say there was politics involved but the fact bias exists in the justice department should be alarming to all americans. the question is this. now that we have the report what is the fbi willing to do to

restore that trust? remember this is not the first time that the fbi has been caught in something like this. back in the day -- neil: well you know lawrence a lot of these democrats will come on and say well this bias killed our candidate. >> well the politics shouldn't matter. neil: i understand that, but you know they will say that the trump folks are talking about political bias and all that but it hurt our candidate because this guy came out, you served his losses at the justice department for whatever reason, and went on national tv to say we're reopening this and no, now we're closing this, and killed her chances. >> well i'm say this i will be fair to my democrat friends. there is no doubt that comey coming out affected elections somehow but i also would ask him to take some of the blame for their candidate as well. they knew the charges. neil: that you're right. that's a separate issue but one of the things that's going to come on this report here is whether comey himself just went above and beyond what he should

be doing, that normally, fbi recommends justice and then follows up. i guess his concern was this was worthy enough to bring to the nations attention, e-mail stuff and it's not his job, but he then apparently fell compelled to do this because loretta lynch at the justice department wasn't doing it what do you make of that? >> go to the inspector general. there's a process. go to members of congress. go to oversight. i mean, the fact that he -- neil: he's showboating. >> to be fair to james comey even though he overstepped his ability he was insubordinate, he was once the department of justice official. he was once the assistant -- neil: he was more than that. he was working very closely and providing information to robert mueller on that investigation. and page and a lot of these other players, at the very least isn't it going to lengthen the mueller probe because he's going to have to dot his i's and cross his t's to make sure anything

and anyone he talked to is clean properly. in other words not from compromised sources. >> well i don't like that comey would be reviewed by mueller because i think there's such a conflict of interest. i mean, this is a guy that said that mueller was his mentor someone that he looked up to so it's unfair. neil: and mueller talked to him so i can't see that this couldn't potentially drag the mueller investigation on longer. >> look, it definitely is possible at the end of the day, i was against the whole mueller thing to begin with, because i believe that we have our attorney general that should be able to do his job and investigate this improper conduct. i think there is some bias within even the mueller probe but i'm willing to let his investigation take its course and we'll go from there. neil: that's a very reasonable position thank you very very much lawrence so much we don't know. there's much we do both sides already seizing on this, but the fact of the matter is, they can rage about it all they want at the very least, the question has

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neil: all right i want to alert you to a report that's out from the international monetary fund apparently warning the economic boost many in this country are getting from last years tax cuts will apparently fade by next year and in 2,020 year going on to say that the u.s. economy will slow considerably, well below the 3% annual rate that's trump adminitration has stated as its goals i only mention this because it lies in the face of reports that show the quarter we're in could see growth of better than 4% and that that activity will pick up here because we're firing on all cylinders. whatever you think of the international monetary fund that has not been a great forecaster and it did not envision good growth in the united states this year and that the tax cut it

said at the outset would be negligible whether you like the tax cuts or not i think it's safe to say it wasn't negligible so they've been wrong on this and wrong on the stock market but again they are the imf, i thought i'd pass it along they think not necessarily we're going to hell in a hand basket but not as nice of a basket. the read for the national association of home builders ceo jerry howard is here. what do you make of all of that? >> well our economists have been saying that since the tax bill came out we'll have a pretty solid economy through 2020 that maybe we start to see some slowdown after 2020 but not beforehand. i think this change maybe a reflection on the impact some are now saying that the tariffs are going to have on the overall economy. it's certainly hitting our sector already. neil: how so? >> well the cost of an average to construct an average-sized house in mesh has increased just by lumber costs alone by 9,000 dollars. the average multi-family unit, the average apartment in america costs to build that has

increased by $3,300 per unit. those costs are difficult to bear. neil: so you're seeing that effect now before tariffs take effect? >> oh, yes absolutely. neil: because of the market, markets trading futures. >> and the tariff on canadian lumber was put in place ahead o of some of these other tariffs so maybe we're the precursor for what the worst is going to be. neil: all right what about the overall environment for hopes right now and just building even with the up-tick in rates and threats you alluded to. >> right now we're still going relatively strong as long as rates stay below 6% we think there's room for growth in the housing market. neil: where are they now? >> about 4.5 just around. neil: what's the not so sweet spot when you get over 5 that -- >> it starts to get dicey and 6 , we have to go to def-con 1 at 6. neil: i can remember even at those levels -- >> there was time when those were historically low. but this new generation of home

buyers isn't used to that. neil: what are the pockets of the country to look good? >> the growth states that are traditional the carolinas, florida rebounded very well, nevada is rebounding, arizona, and then "the rock" it mountain states, idaho is very strong. it's still a little bit of difficulty here in the northeast , prices are incredibly high, and i think you're seeing that still in places in the midwest and chicago for example, the markets. neil: i think it was the national average the turnaround time for homes in the market has narrowed considerably gone down to before the housing crisis levels. is that encouraging, short lived , what? >> well, it would be encouraging if we were in a normal market dynamic but there is still a serious shortage of inventory out there. guys are having trouble building homes. people are not putting them on the market because they don't have anything to move up to so there's a serious inventory shortage. the reason you're seeing quick turnaround is because when something goes on the market

there's a feeding frenzy for it. neil: and bidding wars in some cases. >> bidding wars again yes. neil: you don't see this though? >> no, absolutely not. not if the cost of construction continues to stay high i think we're headed for a real trouble spot. neil: kind of bumming me out, jerry. >> i'm sorry. neil: all right, jerry tells it like it is the national association of home builders he's the president there so i think he would know what he speaks again all of this at a time when the imf sees an economic slow down as jerry was telling you that won't be the reason why housing and other factors have nothing to do with the overall economy and maybe everything to do with rising rates. all right we're on top of that. also on top of the dow now in positive territory, all of this concern notwithstanding 15.5 points northward on the dow more after this. whoooo.

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i'm 85 years old in a job where. i have to wear a giant hot dog suit. what? where's that coming from? i don't know. i started my 401k early, i diversified... i'm not a big spender. sounds like you're doing a lot. but i still feel like i'm not gonna have enough for retirement. like there's something else i should be doing. with the right conversation, you might find you're doing okay. so, no hot dog suit? not unless you want to. no. schedule a complimentary goal planning session today with td ameritrade®. neil: all right, this was working the plan almost a consistent read we were doing just fine with the dow earlier this morning up about 100 points and low and behold we get this report out of the new york state attorney general that she is going after the trump family quite literally and the trump foundation and then the markets just went bad and we've only just recently sort of recouped a lot of those losses but the back

and forth apart from the inspector general report a reminder again whether you like the president or not that wall street on board the uncertainty things not looking good for him, and everything that comes with it, including good markets, good economy, et cetera. let's get the read from connell mcshane, market watcher michael block. what do you make of that michael it's uncanny. >> yeah, i mean the market is learning that like him or not the president is good for markets he's pro-business, proven to be a sure negotiator, we could be worried about the tariffs that may or may not be happening tomorrow but the market seems to be giving it a good pass and so if anything that hurts his allege allege ed adversary it will bode well for him especially as people start thinking forward these trade negotiations mid-term elections where look the fate of the presidency might be in the people's hands and it's going to be a good thing. neil: and this is like a bipartisan part where the markets got very skiddish where it looked like bill clinton could be impeached because say what you will, they like what was happening under his watch.

>> which is a lot of sense because if you take and michael 's right you and i think neil talked about how it looks like the president is able to buy himself some time or the investors are giving him some time however you want to phrase it to work through the trade negotiations and largely that's because his other economic policies have either hit at the right time or been successful because they were put in place at the right time be that the tax cut, de regulatory measures, the market likes that pro business outlook on things and that's why they're giving him some time on trade so any time we do have a, we've had last hour yesterday i think was a good example where the president did an interview with bret baier and then also the wall street journal added to it with some additional reporting saying these china tariffs might be coming by the end of the week market did dip then so that's one thing in terms of a macro factor that still hangs over stocks i think is trade. neil: the trade thing hasn't royaled markets as much as i thought even the threat, even some of the real possibly the chinese could respond with tariffs of their own, of course

the canadian stuff, as if the markets think all this will pass >> the market is con think dent that even if something goes into effect tomorrow a, it's undone through negotiation or the other thing is the economy, look at the data. just look at the numbers everyone. things are going well, look at that advanced retail sales number today, strong. the ism's they've been strong they're not coming in we have all of these on tv saying a recession is coming 2019 or 202e waiting for that let's see what happens i'm not saying it's impossible. we haven't given that up yet. neil: the imf is saying that and also whatever bang for the buck we got for the tax cuts is over. do you buy that? >> i don't necessarily buy that when you were talking about housing i'm still worrying about how the salt deduction effect being in a blue state i think about that a lot so with the housing market i actually do still like housing here i don't think rates are going anywhere in fact in my note this morning i talked about the big risk is

to curb inverting given what we heard from the fed and the supply/demand in the bond markets so i don't think it's done i think we're just starting to see it and at the end of the summer going into the mid-term elections the trump adminitration and the gop will be beating the drum again talking about infrastructure spending, stimulus, growth is not going away. it's just starting to kick in we could see a lot more the atlanta fed went to 4.8% growth in their q2 gdp model this morning let's see. neil: the atlanta fed though? >> they are but i'm pointing out the numbers are going the right way for right now. neil: i mean as it goes, it's fair enough. forget about it. >> it did say a lot of times the experts will say we've had these conversations a lot over the last year that there's no good time for a trade war which is probably true; however, if you go back and look, you kind of have brought this up a number of times go back and look at the 1930s for example, when the only time we have evidence of an

actual trade war that broke out and lasted for an extended period of time it was really a bad time and if the market crashed in 29. neil: it certainly wasn't exclusive. >> right and now you're talking about tariffs that are just a rounding error in the size of our economy when the economy is very strong so maybe it's not a great time for trade war, but it's not a horrible time to have trade negotiations we can put up with a little bit more than we might ordinarily be able to. neil: what about the mueller stuff, the investigation of course it's more noise today on this report. what do you think? any effect for what you do? >> there's a lot there. it's not something you people are paying a lot of attention to neil: are you? >> i'm really not. neil: we have a graphics package around it. >> [laughter] if president trump was the type who is with his sword i might be concerned about the viability of his presidency. he is just about the complete opposite of that type of person as we've seen over and over again. hate to use the term but perhaps he's a bit teflon here.

it's not something that enters the mind frame. >> that's kind of interesting i haven't heard that before, that the idea that a normal politician would give in more to these pressures. >> it's truement neil: great read gentlemen, the dow barely budging. i don't know what that means, after this.

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neil: that ig report close to being released. so much come out. bottom line james comey went a

little bit further here. that ticked off a lot of people including his old bosses at justice department. democrats will be upset at him. republicans are upset at him ashley: will the hillary clinton email probe be made public now? we'll watch the doj website as soon as it is public. we'll pour over 500 pages of that report in a second. we'll bring you updates throughout the hour. so don't go away, stay right there. i am ashley webster in today for trish regan. welcome "the intelligence report." what a big day for news. here is what we know at this hour. this investigation has been going on for nearly 1months, down