plummeting. it's because of the developments in american pharmaceutical companies i can't wait. maria: and he is a cancer survivor we should point out. great panel, everybody, thank you so much, charles payne, steven moore, joining courtney, we'll see you soon, have a great weekend everybody i'll see you sunday on fox news. "varney" & company begins right now. stu take it away. stuart: good morning, maria and good morning, everyone. it's the big one it's the jobs report. here it is. 145,000 new jobs created last month. 3.5%, that's the unemployment rate, no change there, historic low. wages rising 2.9% over the last year, now that's the first time we've slipped below the 3% gain level, since july of 2018. i characterize overall this report as solid. in a fully-employed economy, which can't find the skilled workers it needs, 145,000 new jobs is pretty good, but the disappointment though is in wage

growth. late on the program, i'll be asking larry kudlow why is this happening in a fully-employed economy. that's jobs and now the markets. here it comes, 29,000, the dow may hit that mark today. yes, the astonishing market rally has taken us up 11,000 points on the dow, since the election, of donald j. trump and the value of american business has gone up $12.8 trillion since he was elected. a few minutes from now the market opens and we'll see the dow go up just a little bit more , maybe 20 points up, s&p up maybe 6 and a 30 point gain for the nasdac composite. one more story and it's dramatic satellite and intelligence reports show the plane that crashed into iran was taken down by a missile. it was not mechanical failure or engine trouble. the plane was shot down. canada's trudeau says it may have been done accidentally.

63 canadians were on board. "varney" & company, the friday edition, is about to begin. president trump: when i'm thrilled to hold the first rally of 2020 right here, in the great state of ohio. [applause] president trump: and as we begin the new year, our economy is booming, wages are soaring, workers are thriving and america 's future has never ever looked brighter. >> [applause] president trump: we're the envy of every country in the world. we've created 7 million brand new jobs since our election. >> [applause] stuart: that was the president last night at a all in it toledo

, ohio touting the very strong job market and it is a strong job market. joining us is mike rowe, you know this guy, he's got the best voice in television. >> and yet i'm following the president, really? really? stuart: [laughter] thanks, sorry about that, mike rowe. tough room. i think the problem here has not enough skilled workers to fill the jobs that are available. is that the way it is? >> well that's what i've been saying since 2008 when my foundation started. that's a question for you. i've watched on fox & friends this morning and i just heard you say that we're really at full employment. stuart: yes. >> but 10 minutes ago on the same channel i'm looking at a labor participation rate of 62.3 %. how does 62.3% and full employment, like when and how do we get to the point where 40% of people not working somehow met full employment? stuart: i would call it full employment when you've got 7 million jobs going a begging and you don't have the workers,

6 million people to fill it. a lot of the people are not participating in the labor force , they're retired and out of it. they're not coming back, so i would say that this is the most fully employed economy, the tightest labor market that i've ever seen. >> i agree. stuart: but that begs the question. in a tight labor market, why aren't wages rising much faster? >> well in part, and again, what i know, i crawled through sewers for a living, right? but i am following the president so listen to me america. stuart: [laughter] >> what if it's not just a skill gap? what if it's also a will gap? what if the opportunities that are currently available have simply been made to appear less appealing than they actually are what if for the last 40 years we've been promoting one form of education at the expense of all of the others and certain types of jobs at the expense of others i think that's what's happened

and i think an entire generation has grown into a labor market with a binary kind of expectation. this or that. like in a vocational consolation prize-kind of way. something subordinate to that which is preferred. stuart: i'll go further than that and i'll make a cultural comment. it seems to me that the elites in america, over the last generation, maybe the last of two generations, have said you've got to go to college and you're going to have a white collar job. we don't want these blue collar fang trish regan jobs and we don't want you out there working with your hands so you almost developed a european class system where you look down on that group of people. >> well you've marginalized an entire vertical of your workforce. you're basically, it seems to me , a coin has heads and tails. they're both equally important. if we're still going to look at labor in terms of blue collar and white collar it's kind of a

suckers bet to start arguing one is more important than the other but that's what we do in education. this school is better than that school. how many magazines year after year ranked the top 100 colleges couple of years ago i made this point saying why isn't anyone ranking the top trade schools and forbes eventually did, which was terrific, but you don't see enough of it, because when we tell kids we'll talk about debt and college and all of that. $1.6 trillion in student loans isn't really a mystery when you think of it in terms of we've been telling people for decades that if they don't sign on the dotted line, they're going to wind upturning a wrench. that meme is so inculcated in the reptilian part of our brain it's very difficult to step away college scandals, the cost of college, the tuition, all of it comes down to this sphere i think that we're going to screw our kids up.

stuart: you make a good 9:00 guest, so why don't you stick around for maybe the b block if you're not careful. let's turn to your money and do that right now. dow poised to open very close to the 29,000 level. 45th close, 43 points shy of it yesterday, we've got to get pretty close today. by the way we crossed the 28,000 level, just two months ago, less than two months ago. that is a rapid rise. jonathan hoenig, market watcher, joins us now and the rule i always learned jonathan is when you got a bull market in full run, you get out of the way. what do you say? >> let your winners run and these thousand point increments stuart we'll have to start looking at 5,000 point increments. one percent now on the dow at 29,000 we're talking about nearly 300 points so we'll be seeing numbers get bigger and more of these thousand-point milestones achieved and i don't think you fight it, trends tend

to persist in the marketplace and this bull market is still in the way. look at yesterday over 250 new 52-week highs only about 20 new 52-week lows so the trend remains up but the question is stuart is it a little too over bought? oftentimes you'll see a market go back down and it's 200-day moving average that means a 9% drop in the s&p 500 so we've come a long wayment doesn't mean the market can't reverse but i think the bull market trend for stocks is still on. stuart: the bull market trend for stocks is still on. who would have thought after 10 years whatever it is that we would be saying that, january 2020. jonathan thanks very much indeed let's turn to that deadly plane crash in iran. the pentagon says evidence shows the plane was shot down by a missile. do we have more on this? ashley: well they do western intelligence and leaders including the pentagon said look it appears very likely that this airliner was brought down by an iranian missile, by mistake, they believe. we don't know the circumstances,

but that's their first take. in fact one of the officials telling fox news, "an absolute tragedy, they just screwed up and it is tragic." meanwhile, iran continuing to say look, stop launching what they call a psychological operation, saying that it was a missile. they say that's not confirmed at all, stop putting salt into the wounds of those that were tragic ally lost in this plane crash. and another development is at the beginning, boeing, the maker of the plane was not allowed into the investigation and iran now changed its mind. boeing made the plane, ukraine owned it, france made the engine s for the plane, all now are part of this investigation and they do have the black boxes , where they are badly damaged but it was missiles and the iranians say that we don't know. stuart: right show me boeing's stock, pre-market please, because it was up yesterday, it's down a couple of bucks today. we have internal e-mails showing some employers were mockerring

the safety of that 737 max jet. >> and the documents were delivered to the faa and congress and it shows that employees themselves question the safety and the design of the 737 max, but yet it was allowed to fly in the skies killing 346 in two crashes and some of these e-mails, for instance one employee said this airplane is designed by clowns, who are in turn supervised by monkeys, and this is a 2017 instant message exchange that was bashing colleagues of the company and also complaints about the managerial decision to select low cost suppliers wasting money and offer the ultimate design of the air max. stuart: it was boeing that put this out, and the new guy starts on monday. >> calhoun? stuart: they want it all out there fresh start from this gentleman come monday morning. >> right like questions about whether or not the 737 max will ever fly again, billions of dollars in compensation to the families and deaths and also to the airlines that suffered because of the grounding of the plane. stuart: i just can't imagine

that that plane would never be allowed to fly again, but i don't -- >> it might be rebranded. stuart: check futures please we're still up just a little at the opening bell maybe 25 for the dow, but we're getting it awfully close to 29,000. do you remember when democrats insisted it's urgent to in peach the president? well his reminder? watch this. >> it was urgent. >> this is an extremely urgent matter. >> the president, based on his past performance will do everything he can to make it not a fair election, and that is part of what gives us the urgency to proceed with this impeachment. >> the timing is really driven by the urgency. >> it's not a rush to judgment. it's a rush to justice. stuart: speaker pelosi changing her tune on impeachment. 2020 democrat candidate pete buttigieg is suggesting that the u.s. should share some blame for iran's shootdown of that you crane flight. we'll discuss why he's now

facing serious backlash. new jobs numbers are out and we have a good show lineup for you larry kudlow joins us later this hour talking trump, trade and the economy. we're just getting started here on "varney." the friday edition. and i like tr every move. like this left turn. it's the next one. you always drive this slow? how did you make someone i love? that must be why you're always so late. i do not speed. and that's saving me cash with drivewise. my son, he did say that you were the safe option. and that's the nicest thing you ever said to me. so get allstate. stop bossing. where good drivers save 40% for avoiding mayhem, like me. this is my son's favorite color, you should try it. [mayhem] you always drive like an old lady? [tina] you're an old lady.

president trump: unemployment has reached the lowest level in over 51 years. wages are rising fast, they're going up very fast and the biggest percentage increase makes me happy, are for blue collar workers. stuart: that was the president wrapping up his first campaign rally of 2020 in toledo, ohio. actor dean cain is there right now talking to real voters. what are you hearing, dean? >> hi, stuart how are you? well i'll tell you what i'm hearing a lot of positive things about the economy, a lot of negative things about impeachment, and a lot of support for president trump.

it's the first rally i've ever attended myself and i was outside and talking to the voter s, and they, of course, were at a president trump rally so they were very supportive of the president but over and over and over i heard just nothing but support, the economy was job -one and one of the things i've done the most amazing moments of being out there was there was a woman singing the national anthem and there was thousands of people in line and it went dead quiet, everyone stood very respectfully for the national anthem and when she finished there was a roar that went up from the crowd, so there was great support for the president and for america and people are very very happy with the job he's done, especially the economy. on that note, i have my friend here with me, ron kreger, a vietnam vet, a business owner and i've been speaking with him all morning and he's kind enough to hang out with us and how is the economy under this president for you? >> excellent. america runs on the economy, trump is a business person and he understands it, he provides

businesses the incentive to do things like hire people, and invest in the future, and i'm second generation, i just passed it off to my third generation son, brad, and he's taking the moneys and invested it in material handling, artificial intelligence, better programming , and we've got over 180 employees, we're hiring more , we've upped the wages, we provided great benefits to people we want to provide people in northwest ohio the opportunity to have a job. when you've got a job and you're off the welfare roles and the only person that can really understand is that not some swamp person from d.c. it's somebody that's been a business person, and i've got to hand it to donald. he's not perfect, but the democrats have not put anybody up that i would vote for to replace him, so let's be open about it. there's a lot of things that he

can do different but the point being that he understands business and business is what america is all about. >> there you have it, stuart a real voter in toledo, ohio. stuart: dean cain it was clearly a trump supporter good stuff. thanks so much indeed. mike rowe has stayed with us into the b block and mike i want to talk to you about mr. bloomberg, mike bloomberg. he says he's going to win in 2020, but he's going to, with a plan that he's got he's going to bring more jobs than president trump. what say you? >> good luck. i read his plan. there's some stuff in it that i like. i mean for what it's worth, i like that he's focused on specific pockets of the country that have been somewhat left behind. the minimum wage thing makes me a little anxious and unintended consequences being what they are , but really, he lost me a couple days ago with the california thing. he said california was a model. stuart: he did. >> and i live in california and

i don't know what he meant or what it's a model for, but it's a model for something. stuart: [laughter] okay by the way, i think you know this but there's a headline in forbes magazine. you live in california and what was the headline? scroll up, please? mike rowe for california governor, 2022. i'm going to read a little bit of it. >> nice b block stuff. stuart: mike please jump into the california governor's race in 2022. you're the only candidate who can restore sanity and balance to california's governance and you can win and you are the season's schwarzenegger, venture a, trump. any comments? >> i'm not sure i'm ventura material, but i posted it on my facebook page when i saw it and i just wrote "how bad are things in california? this bad" because honestly, what am i going to go governing a state? but i'll tell you, rich, the author, he really made some

points that have troubled me for years, like mostly, i know california has had a surplus in 2011, but your point earlier, the idea that the market is where it is and the idea that real estate has gone through the roof, california's state budget is disproportionately weighted toward capital gains, and those cap gains, 13.3 i think is the highest in the country and what sectors are they attached to? real estate and the market. when those two things come back down to earth as they surely will, that's going to be really really really bad and for $3 trillion economy, what are the fundamental businesses left? it's tech and biotech, it's entertainment, and tourism. manufacturing is gone. banking is gone. aerospace is gone, energy is gone. right? so i think the author is right. not about me necessarily running the ship, but just in terms of looking forward this whole thing is held together with kleenex and spit and once the market

does what it's doomed to do at some point, i think i'm sorry but nobody talks about the fact that california's population is aging 50% faster for the rest of the country so it's all kind of tenuous. stuart: real fast, you've got a facebook watch, you've got a show on facebook watch. >> the actual reason i'm here is not to announce my candidacy. stuart: [laughter] but to beg your viewers to check out season 4 of returning the favor which has now been downloaded over 300 million times it's the number one show on facebook we're in season four and celebrating bloody do-gooder s from sea to shining sea and little towns we can't find on maps and show up and make them cry and do it again. the feel-good of the summer. stuart: you must be rev eling in 100-dollar bills.

literally hundreds. stuart: you're all right futures were holding on to a very modest gain for the dow, the s&p and the nasdac. president trump calling out democrats who are slamming his decision to take out iranian top leader qassem soleimani. watch this. president trump: the radical left democrats have expressed outrage over the termination. they're all trying to say how dare you take him out that way. you should get permission from congress. stuart: are democrats trying to undermine the president with these new resolution to limit his war powers? we've got the story for you right after this. hi, i'm bob harper,

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stuart: it's jobs day, 145,000 new jobs created and we're going to go up just a little at the opening bell. we're going to watch for today is the dow may be hitting 29,000 remember, please, it first crossed at 28,000 and then went straight up to 29, almost 29 and that was in a less than two- month period. that is an explosive rally. jonathan hoenig back with us and susan li and ashley also with us right here. joel first of all, i'm a little bit older than you and i've been

doing this -- >> [laughter] stuart: and i've not seen anything like this before. >> no it's a big market. we've done extraordinarily well. last year was unexpected for a lot of people. we're off to a very strong january. i think that we still have daylight for another few weeks, months, we'll see what happens if there's maybe an early shrink but non-u.s. small cap is going to be the strong market. stuart: you've not seen this before? >> in 2013 we had a really strong year in 2013 so we got to go back about six or seven years and the continue answer of this and we had just an extraordinary decade so people were not expect ing this last decade and the new decades off to a good start. stuart: jonathan hoenig, this, to some degree, reminds me of 1999. >> well one of the differences in i think the reason why the bull rally can continue, stuart, is that unlike in 1999, you're not seeing that enthusiasm. you're just now starting to see look last year a lot of people were taking money out of the

stock market, trade war and a lot of other reasons, so you haven't seen that real manic bullishness that you saw in 199e literally taking money out of their houses and putting it in the stock market so that wall of worry that's been cited for many times in a lot of reasons evidence is that still exists in the stock market and one reason it can continue to go up. stuart: what do you got, ash? ashley: as the market continues to go up do the earnings of these companies reflect what we're seeing in the price of the equities? i think that's a key question and the good news is that we understand the global economy is starting to pick up and therefore that should help the earnings of these multi-national companies. we have a friendly somewhat of a trade truce right now and all of this is very very positive and the u.s. consumer, a critical has shown no exhaustion at all, so you know there's no reason for it to keep moving up. joel? >> that's exactly right in 1999 , we had companies with no revenues, no profits and this time, profits and revenues are record-levels so it's a fundamentally different market

from 1999 and 2000. stuart: before we get to you susan hold on. i'm now able to report this, secretary of state mike pompeo and steven mnuchin they are going to brief on sanctions against iran i guess there are new economic sanctions on iran that takes place at 10:45 this morning. we're going to take that. it could move the market. ashley: the president just said he's going to maintain maximum pressure on iran and this is an example of that and they already had very strong sanctions in place and apparently now we'll have more. stuart: now susan, we are all somewhat older than you. >> [laughter] stuart: have you seen anything like this? >> [laughter] well i do remember in 1999 and 2001. stuart: you remember that? >> we were talking about companies that had literally no profit. like investing in the economy and the stock market but when you were putting in money into companies that had like 3,000 to

sales valuations, i mean, that was basically like a hope and a dream; however there are companies that do seem a little bit like tesla, for one, which is trading at 100 times of sales >> [bell ringing] stuart: here we go, you can see, they're cheering it and we'll open the market, there we go it's friday, and the market has now opened, of course, what we're going to look at very closely is dow 29,000. it closed yesterday, 43 points away, where are we going this morning? so far we're up 21 in a very early going and looking at the left-hand side of the screen most of the dow stocks, the dow 30 are in the green and we're at 28, 974. all three. all three indicators, the indices i should say, all of them opened at all times highs. the s&p 500 that too, obviously, is slightly higher, a better gain percentage wise than the

dow it's up .20% at 3,281 and the nasdac comes' it, that tells me the technology stocks are doing just fine so let's have a look at one of them, apple $310 up $1.13 as we speak, not sure if that's the all-time high but it's certainly getting pretty close. tesla was riding high, took a modest hit, but now it's at $480 a share. i still say that it's riding high. don't forget boeing. big embarrassment with the release of internal e-mails showing employees mocking the safety and design of the jet but it's only down .4, $0.48 that's it so you've got boeing at $335 per share. overall, we're still up, record highs across-the-board. jonathan, would you buy boeing at this point assuming it's maybe at a low? is that looking for a bounce? >> so much of the regulatory

risk we thought was going to exist for big tech is really coming home to roost at boeing so this is a troubled stock i think you want to put it on the back burner for now, but don't think you buy the laggards, you want to focus on the leaders and you mentioned apple, it's almost what xerox was in the 1960s, and microsoft was in the 1990s as goes apple so goes the market and certainly so goes the nation at large but my only question stuart is does apple become too dominant in the indices and a lot of people's portfolio so if you're putting money to work now you do in new bull markets emerging not some of these old bull markets still very much alive but probably a little late in the game. >> well first of all it's $1.4 trillion company, just a few months ago it was less than a trillion and a lot of people don't realize the revenues are somewhat flat and profits are actually also flat the last four years and margins are down so this is stock that is appreciat ed quite a bit and

we're looking at a company that has not shown a lot of revenue growth and they've got very strong management team in place and they are highly compensated and the sg&a costs are rising. stuart: it's not your kind of stock to buy. >> we do own it because it's such a dominant piece of the indices that so for those of us managing money professionally you can't lose tracking, so we have some of our funds are a pure entrepreneurial company. stuart: you as an individual would not be buying apple? >> it's a $1.4 trillion company stuart: yes or no answer! >> yes, to be yes, it's a yes, but it's not an overweight, because i have it as a risk measure. stuart: i don't care if it's overweight, it'll be slimming down. >> modest, but you have better opportunities, a lot of other places. >> and most wildly-held stock on the planet, apple, yes, i mean a lot of people have it in their 401 (k) check it out but apple stock the reason it went up so much close to 90% last

year was because they bought back a lot of their shares $100 billion in buybacks and raised their dividend as well and now the sales are recovering especially in china, because last year we had the stock really depressed and because of concerns over chinese sales, but they went up by 18%. stuart: i hear jonathan hoenig say something. >> they have innovated stuart, it's all about innovation and truly, i don't want to say evaluations don't matter but where there is innovation tesla is a great example this stock has gone parabolic and done everything from opening factories in china and elon musk is taking a victory lap. i don't think you fight that strength but it's very hard to stand in the way of these technology stocks but the stocks go up but the innovation still is there for a lot of these companies. stuart: because you know that i sold some of my microsoft. ashley: oh, boy here we go. stuart: i've got seller's remorse. >> [laughter] okay. stuart: costco, sales got a boost from toys and i think it was liquor. joel, that stock is up what, 40%

since last january? >> yeah, within the retail sector, it's doing much better than the others so the revenue growth is around 6% or 7% and you contrast that to companies like macy's and jc penney which are basically disappearing, so this is a strong market, you've got walmart, target, and costco. stuart: would you write out jc penney? >> absolutely not. this is a $300 million company it's basically done. it's $1 stock. stuart: okay. what else we got? >> i was going to point out costco is doing more online. 15% jump in online sales over the holiday period that includes thanksgiving all the way out to cyber monday as well and plus with costco interesting business model because it's kind of like the netflix, you get recurring revenue, people pay their membership fees each and every month so there is already, you already have a base sales money that's coming in. stuart: but if i was, if i want something from costco i'll go to the store, because i enjoy shopping in costco. ashley: yeah. >> you probably even enjoy the pizza as well.

and the hot dogs they seem to be a draw for a lot of people. susan hit the nail on the head here. costco is a mall killer is exactly what our other guest mentioned, names like jc penney and macy's, they're going to go the way that the silent movies and maybe the elevator operators were in our economy. we're not going to see them any more. costco has been able to compete not just with amazon and walmart , but in its own light with that subscription-based model. this is here to stay and even in a down economy people will flock to costco. stuart: okay now take a look at target. i am told they're trying to go head-to-head with nike and under armour. i don't know what they're doing in that area? >> it's called private label right? because there was a lot of talk that target might be partnering up with the likes of under armour and nike in order to get some of those athletic wear and label up and running, but it's a private label and they are going head-to-head, cheaper pricing too, 399 but no footwear. stuart: on the screens right now

we have the 29 k blockers these are dow stocks, which are not helping the dow get towards 29,000. these are the biggest percentage losers on the dow and goldman, home depot, walmart, all of them down stopping the market from getting to 29,000 on the dow. what's this jonathan hoenig i hear rather heavy breathing. what's that? >> i'm in awe of what target is doing and susan alluded to it. launching their own private labels and here is a great example stuart of a company learning from amazon. amazon has done quite well with its own private labels and people talked for a long time that amazon is going to put everyone out of business, not with innovative companies like target which still have the foot traffic learning from amazon and building out of it with their own private label success. stuart: do you remember when kohl's announced it would accept amazon returns? it was supposed to get more people coming into the stores. i don't think it worked, but looks like they are in trouble.

ashley: same-store sales down, but -- stuart: down? ashley: down but here is the problem that look the returns come flooding back in january. one thing the company does point out is that everyone is buying this is not great for kohl's, don't get me wrong but they will see they believe a boost in january with 50% return rate with some of the major products that they will get people in, but the biggest problem for kohl's is women's apparel. 28% of sales and its been struggling. stuart: okay look, we've got the dow now down 22 points. this is jobs day. we've got 145,000 new jobs, 3.5% unemploy am rate and wages growing year on year, less than 3%. is that a drag on the market? another robust jobs report. >> well there's a technical reason why wages might be depressed in december, because usually when they take the survey it's on december 12. now people usually get paid on december 15 and when they, i guess, are in the same week you

have better wage results and in this case they are in separate weeks so there's a technicality there and pushing wages lower. stuart: a technicality? ashley: there's 2.9% compared to 3. it's not major. it's a solid report but nothing will move the market one way or the other i think. stuart: let me look at the 10 year treasury yield please i believe we're at 1.85%. when the yield goes up, that tends to be a positive factor about the economy. money coming out of no risk treasuries. ashley: right. stuart: have i got that right? ashley: you've got that right. i'm very glad to hear. stuart: you've got the yield on the 10 year treasury 1.85 how about the price of gold this morning that spiked close to $1,600 an ounce in the iran confrontation and now it's back down to 1,554 not much movement at all today. pretty much the same story with oil, we spun to 65 and now, we're at 5,897. all i want to see is gasoline start coming down in price, and

i think i'm going to see it. i'm going to get back to apple. you have to. it's worth $1.4 trillion, keep setting new highs, dominates its industry, and -- >> apple, microsoft represent about 8% of the total returns of the russel 1,000, so 1,000 companies were basically driven that index was driven by two companies one of which was apple , 1.4 trillion and microsoft spent 1.2 trillion. so two big companies and with apple they are excited about the china news, a couple years ago, they had $58 billion in sales to china, and now it's about 43 billion so they are down about 20-25% but they need a little growth and they don't realize that that down to 25% in china, sales and so now they are coming back a little bit. stuart: was $58 billion in sales in china. >> and they're coming back a little bit. stuart: what do you have jonathan? just to echo our guest's comment

about the size of apple you have the size of market cap of apple and microsoft now exceeds the entire market cap of the german stock market, just to give an indication of how dominant you have big tech players they aren't just u.s. companies they are the global leaders that are really pulling entire indices forward. stuart: okay we'll take it i have to say thank you very much to jonathan hoenig and to joel. good stuff indeed, gentlemen thanks so much for joining us on an important friday morning that's one more check of the big board, please. we're not at 29,000 on the dow industrials. we're actually down one point. >> awesome. i'm going to tweet out that stat >> [laughter] stuart: i think you just heard jonathan hoenig who didn't realize he was still on mic, and he's going to tweet out that stat about apple 58 billion sales in china now. you got that jonathan? make sure you get the tweet right okay? all right, everyone. now listen to this. president trump: radical

democrats are now the party of high taxes, high crime, open borders, late term abortions, socialism, and blatant corruption. the republican party is the party of the american worker, the american family, and the party of the american dream. we still have that american dream. [applause] stuart: yes, we do and i'm living it that was the president right there. obviously taking a shot at his political opponents, and look who is here. this friday morning. laura trump herself. how you doing? >> hello, great to be with you. stuart: looks like you've got the base secured. >> well we felt pretty good about that but it was a classic donald trump speech, and do you know what? the democrats not only are all of those things they also support terrorists apparently because so many of them think that killing soleimani was a terrible idea. it's crazy to hear, but that's where they are. they really have gotten so far off the rails stuart i think it will be an easy choice for people in 2020. stuart: why is your father in

law going to the uber blue state of new jersey, as he is later this month? >> yeah. stuart: i lived there. >> are you coming to our rally? stuart: i didn't say that but i live in new jersey, and it's really a blue place. is your father-in-law trying to flip the garden state? >> well you never know what could happen with donald trump. people have always been wrong about him and always underestimated donald trump when it comes to politics and the wins that he would have. we feel really good about states like ohio where you just saw the president last night, north carolina, florida and we're looking at states that we have never looked at before. i was just out in oregon. i'm not saying we're going to win oregon but we're investing in states that we think we can make huge gains and listen nothing is off the table for this president. stuart: you putting a lot of money on to the west coast? i'm going to say, in my lifetime , and i'm a little older than you are but in my lifetime i do not expect a republican to be elected in a statewide race,

certainly not in california, probably not in oregon, and probably not in washington and you put money in there? >> well the great news is that we're in a such different campaign stuart than we were in 2016. we're have well-organized and really running on all cylinders. we have a ton of money. in 2019, we raised $463 million for donald trump. that should tell people all they need to know that the american public is behind this president so we had the great ability to go to states that we really couldn't have invested in in 2016, and who knows what could happen. stuart: where are you spending that money? $469 million? last year? that's overall? that's rnc -- >> everything combined correct. stuart: where is the focus? where is that money going? >> well we're doing a lot of stuff online, obviously, brad pe rscell is our campaign manager , we're really focused on that but we're able to get out there and do a lot of stuff on the ground and really invest in our teams all across this

country very early. last time we didn't know for sure that donald trump would be the nominee this early, so we're getting everything in place and we're really investing all across this country again in states that maybe we weren't able to in 2016. >> do you enjoy it? >> [laughter] stuart: because you're all over the country with different rall ies, part of the campaign, you've got young children. i do. i have a 25-year-old son and four month old daughter. listen it's hard to leave them whenever i do but nothing more important now especially. it was important in 2016 but now having two kids really to see this country ahead in the right direction, for the long term, and i know the only way we can do that is to keep donald trump in the white house. stuart: where does your father in law get his energy from? >> oh, my gosh i wish i knew. he's really amazing. you know, i always remember that at the end of the day, he didn't need to do this. donald trump takes hit after hit after hit, every day he has since the day he said he was running. stuart: he loves it.

but he loves it because he loves this country, stuart. stuart: he loves the job. he loves that too, but he really knows that he's doing something that's even bigger than him and that will be a resounding long lasting effect on this country. stuart: i'm sure i've asked you this before but i am fascinated by it. i don't know whether you were in the room on election night 2016. i think you were. >> i was. stuart: so can you identify the moment when you knew it was now mr. president? your father-in-law was mr. president? must have been a moment. >> well they waited they made us all wait until like 3:00 in the morning for it. stuart: you would have known before then. was there a moment? >> you know i think whenever we won michigan, i knew something had happened. and i knew that this was going to be a historic election, and that really, to me, when they finally called pennsylvania of course but i think when we won michigan that said a lot because that hasn't happened for a republican for a very long time. stuart: what happened, you won michigan, you knew you're going

to win, it was mr. president. >> well we all realized that then the president-elect at that point, my father-in-law, had to go make a speech so he said he's very superstitious. he didn't want to write anything down beforehand so we started composing a speech really. stuart: right there and then? >> yes. stuart: you created his acceptance speech? >> yes. stuart: do you remember the moment he called hillary clinton >> she called him actually after we got to the hilton where we had our watch party and we weren't sure what she was going to do so he said let's go out and at least talk to everybody because it's 3:30 in the morning and she called him and i mean, it was a pretty amazing moment because remember so many people said that would never happen. they had told hillary clinton she would be the next president of the united states. so for all of us pat put our heart and soul and every ounce of energy into it, it was such an incredible moment and we knew that was out there but they had all told us it was impossible so truly a feeling none of us will ever forget. stuart: just that moment of the transition of power.

>> it's pretty incredible. there's one other thing i want to say today it's a little off topic but it's my brother-in-law jared's birthday so i'd like to say happy birthday. stuart: i met him recently. >> i think you did. stuart: he was very generous. >> he's a great guy. stuart: happy birthday. >> nice. stuart: lara, thanks for joining us this morning i appreciate it. >> absolutely. stuart: to get back to the market, because you know, we were waiting for 29,000 and we haven't hit it yet. we opened this morning, on the upside, moved to the downside, we're now at 28, 945 down 10 points but we've got a modest gain for the s&p, a very modest gain for the nasdac as well. fortunately, joel is still with us and is able to comment on the 29,000 on the dow industrials. we're going to hit it at some point. >> the economy is just way too strong. we've got a low unemployment, we've got strong economics, we've got low interest rates so we're going to hit this and the

dow represents the largest companies but of course the broad brush with a lot of companies that by the way didn't make a strong performance rally like last year, so we've got more than half the companies did not beat the 28% or so of the s&p so we've got a lot of companies that still catch up for 2020. stuart: okay moments from now, larry kudlow white house chief economic guy is going to be with us talking obviously about today 's jobs report, 145,000 new jobs, 3.5% unemployment rate, wages rising just 2.9% year on year, susan what do you have? >> just to give you more on-the-jobs report because it has been a great jobs economy in this administration as lara will tell you as well and despite the fact that we're looking at 2019 being the third lowest expansion in jobs since 2010 there's a lot to celebrate. for instance those that dropped out of high school, so record low unemployment rates last year , women are on the verge of actually overtaking men in terms of the positions employed, with

the laborers and self-employed individuals as well, and also those that didn't get a college degree dropping 3 percentage points in the jobless rate over the last few years, under president trump. stuart: thank you for doing some digging there, susan. i didn't know any of that. that was really good. i'm supposed to know these things now at 10:45 this morning treasury secretary mnuchin and secretary of state pompeo will deliver a briefing on new economic sanctions on iran and i think you've got this. ashley: well no we're getting interesting statements out from the state department saying that any delegation sent to iraq would discuss recommitting to strategic partnership, not troop withdrawal. it says that the u.s. and iraq do need to discuss security as well as financial economic and diplomatic partnerships, so that's an interesting comment on what is the future relationship between the u.s. and iraq with regard to the number of troops in that country. stuart: well can i read between the lines? ashley: you may. stuart: we're not limited.

ashley: doesn't sound like it. stuart: we've got just a moment before larry kudlow comes with us and i'm going to take this moment to -- >> oh, that's okay here you go. i mean it's a nice offer. stuart: i want to just tell the world, tell my colleague joel here, what i did recently and i want him to pass judgment on what i did. first of all, i've held microsoft for many many years, i sold about 10 days ago, 75% of my microsoft. i made a real nice profit and i'm very very happy with it and what did i do with some of the money, i put some of it -- ashley: third party? stuart: no. ashley: [laughter] stuart: i actually put some money into boeing you've got 20 seconds to tell me what an idiot i am. >> we've been saying for a long time, fear of your dollars in terms of profits from microsoft and put a non-u.s. small cap in u.s. small cap. stuart: i'm an idiot.

>> not boeing. but if you have some dollars left over put it in non-u.s. small cap. stuart: joel thank you very much indeed and now the white house chief economic advisor larry kudlow is right there. larry welcome back to the show. always good to see you. can i start off with something which i thought was rather disappointing in this jobs report? i'm sorry to stop on the negative but look 2.9% wage growth year on year, below the 3 % growth level that we've kind of gotten used to. now, i call that disappointing, and i don't understand it, because in a fully-employed very tight labor market, i'd thought that wages go up. what's the problem? >> well wages do go up and we are very fully employed at 3.5% unemployment 50 year semi low. look i wouldn't cherry pick one number like that. there's a lot of measures of wages, generally, total compensation has actually been

running 3.5-4%, and today's numbers and every other number show that the production people, the service people, the bottom half and actually the bottom 10 or 15%, their wage increases are still vastly out pacing the increases of the managers, with the stock market rally and we've had eight or $10 trillion increase in consumer net worth, it's the 50% that's the biggest beneficiary. i just don't think any of that story has changed and i don't think you can cherry pick one number like that, but today's report in general, stu, today's report in general, for my life, you know, 145,000, is a good number, solid economic growth number and again 3.5% unemployment is a remarkable number, and that unemployment report comes from the household survey, which had 26 5,000 job

increases, gigantic number, so i still think the economy is strong and i think the stock market with the tremendous rally up almost 30% in the past year, that's got to be telling us, business and consumer confidence is rising, and the economic outlook in the next year is going to be stronger. stuart: do you expect what we call the wealth effect? we have such an enormous run-up in the stock market. $12.8 trillion added to the value of american business since the election, how does that flow out into the general economy? >> i think that's a really important point and look, it not only flows out through the businesses which gives them the resources to expand productivity has been rising, they have been investing, they have been using their business tax cuts, but the shareholders are the ultimate winners, and i think that there's a lot of misconceptions out there. only the richest people own the stock. they may own the biggest share

because they got more money, but actually, you look at the federal reserve consumer finance studies, middle income people have retirement accounts and 401 (k) and they have had a fabulous period. actually its been a fabulous three years, last year. that gives them wealth, that gives them resources, that gives them confidence, they spend, they start new businesses, and i think that this is all part of the tremendous dynamic of the u.s. economy. look president trump's policies have opened the door to all of this, all right? taxes and regulations and energy independence, and lower trade barriers, just yesterday, i mean this maybe gets overlooked. just yesterday his announcements on reducing environmental regulations and cutting the time period to okay new infrastructure projects is tremendous instead of waiting 30 years to build bridges, roads

and tunnels that create jobs and wets and wages now we're going to put a two-year timetable and maybe a one-year timetable, so this is just one of many areas and you net this stuff out, what is the number? average income is up $5,000 after inflation and taxes and they're saying now, the regulatory burdens have been reduced by about $3,000 a family so this is just all flows into a tremendous dynamic growth story. stuart: okay, it appears that we are short of some skilled workers. a lot of skilled workers, we are short, don't have them. why don't we import them. why don't we open up some immigration to skilled workers that we want? why can't we do that? >> well lord knows, lord knows the president has attempted immigration reform, you know, trying to shift the system and first of all, to a strictly- legal basis. stuart: but wouldn't you just up

the number of visas? you could do that. >> well, yeah, again, we have a whole package of reforms which is based on merit, exactly the sort of thing you're talking about and we're looking at additional reforms also. people may want to come in and invest in the united states, so we want merit, we want skilled workers to come in, we want them to come in on a legal basis, and fortunately, a lot of the border problems now have receded the illegal immigration flow has come down quite a bit. those are all big pluses, but to your point, yes we are looking at a number of these changes and the whole idea here is that we want a merit-based system so i agree with you but i also want to add, you know, my colleague, ivanka trump has done so much work on job reskilling and job retraining recruiting i don't know, 400 companies-plus, millions of people are eligible,

and the bls is going to start reporting the result, this is all about job reskilling and re training which is what you're talking about, so companies are hungry to hire, and we are doing everything we can to work with the private sector, not government mandates, but the private sector, to do just that. stuart: now the president was in ohio last night, and he gave an interview i think it was to an ohio radio station where he suggested that the phase i china trade deal might not actually be signed on january 15. it maybe after that. is there some problem here that we don't know about? >> no i'm not aware of that interview. i'm not aware of that statement and the president here yesterday , when he unveiled his environmental reforms, regulatory reforms, said just the opposite and i can tell you that the authenticity of the

translation has worked out beautifully. it is virtually complete. next week, there will be an official signing on january 15, by president trump and the vice premier, and i spoke to ambassador lighthizer about this last evening and everything is going and it is a whopper of a deal which is what the president said yesterday, and i'm not sure what your radio source is there, but no we have a come plealy different point of view and just one quick point here. now this is a pro-growth deal that adds at least a half a point to gdp and more over time. but you left the easy stuff, you left the hard stuff for later. no we didn't. we got whatever we got, 40 or 50 % of phase i, and second point i want to make is ambassador lighthizer i was talking to bob last night on the phone, checking en, and no one has ever

done this before, stu. no trade deal in the history of china, u.s. relations, ever, so let me tell you, the first one is always the toughest one just because its never been done before, you are setting precedence ever anywhere and again there's going to be strict discussions to resolve this and what not but we covered a lot of ground and it's alabama on schedule. stuart: i'm just looking to next week wednesday, the democrats debate in des moines, iowa that's supposed to be about the economy. i think they are going to raise the issue of income and equality i think they are running on the income and equality. it's not fair and right. do you think this income and equality which is said to be greater more extreme now than its been for generations, is that a problem for the economy? does it hold us back? >> i don't think it's true.

i think in fact that whole story is incorrect. in fact just in the past three years, during this administration, we have seen, again, i'll say this, we talked about this, it is the lower end wage earners who are doing the best. okay? they have the fastest wage gains in 10% actually. stuart: but it is the wealthier people who take the lions share of the gains from the huge stock market rally. fact for fact. >> you know, i'm just looking through my cards here. let me just read you something. our council of economic advisors just put up. real net worth, okay household net worth that's the federal reserve series, right? basically, you're home, and your retirement portfolio stocks. the bottom 50% this is over the three years of president trump, the bottom 50% has increased

their net worth by 47%, okay? second. the top 1% has increased their net worth by 13%. now look, the rich are richer, that's why they look different than some of us, and you as a successful wealthy broadcaster would understand that, and that's, you know, your crowd, just kidding. stuart: [laughter] >> but the fact of the matter is, i can't resist it. stuart: i know you can't. >> but the fact is those people proportionately at the bottom half have done much better than the top half. they are closing the gap, and the gap here, look. it's about growth and resiliency and entrepreneurship. it's not about class warfare. i've got, i want the wealthiest

to take advantage of lower tax rates and deregulation, and things like opportunity zones, in the poorest parts of our country. opportunity zones which raised investment taxes for a period of time. that's the way our system works. those that have the resources, provided that we reward their efforts, will invest them into those areas that need the resources. that is what a free enterprise dynamic economy looks like. that's what entrepreneurship looks like. that's what we are doing. now, some on the other side are painting a picture of an economy that is at the edge of the dark of night in a deep recession except for 22 people who have succeeded. that was just nonsense. utter nonsense. seven million new jobs in three years are you kidding? do you know how strong that is?

but again the low end wage earn ers having a faster rate of increase than their managers and even in terms of our 401 (k) with this fabulous stock market that's gone up 50% in three years, it's the bottom half that's had the biggest gain. when you open up the system and deregulate the tax penalties in the system, when you essentially take the sclerosis that's caused by excess government out of the system, you know, we can build the hoover dam in four or five years or the empire state building that's been built in one year and that's what yesterday's environmental deregulation was all about. what we've done is we've reopened the economy, president trump has rebuilt and restructured the economy in three years. i don't know, many of whom are good friends of mine is come to my show i talk to them they are good people i'm sure, but the fact remains i don't know what

country they're describing. it's a mystery to me. stuart: larry i don't think you know this, but as you were speaking, we put the dow industrial average on the other side of the screen and when you started on that real roll in the last two or three minutes, you've put the dow at 28, 995. we're within about three or four points of hitting 29,000. would you like to continue on your roll and see if we can move it up to 29 k? you've got another 30 seconds do you want to use it for that? >> these are long-held beliefs of mine as you well know. >> you did it! larry what a guy. >> [laughter] >> i believe in the incentive model and i believe in free enterprise, and the great honor for me, stu "varney", is to work for a president who holds those views and has given me a chance to be a senior policy maker that's the wonder of the story.

that's the blessing. i'm glad the stock market is going up this morning. i'm not sure i have anything to do with that, but i am here. they are all facts in this gain and i'm just trying to cite facts about wages and retirement accounts and who is benefiting and how our new system that the president has reopened, rebuilt, restructured, deregulated, how that system is now working and it's going to get stronger and stronger. that's my job and that's the blessing for me to be able to participate in those. stuart: you're a good man, larry kudlow you really are and you've got us to 29,000 like it or no. it's always a pleasure and we thank you. >> thank you. ashley: by the way, 37 trading days between when it hit 28,000 and when it hit 29,000, thank you, charlie brady for that and sixth fastest stretch of 100 points so amazing, 37 trading

days we've gone up 1,000 points. stuart: really extraordinary stuff but that's a melt-up and by any stretch, that is a melt- up. let's go to the new york stock exchange, gerri willis there. i guess there was a big cheer for 29 k. there's got to be. gerri: listen, yeah, pfizer, apple and coke led us here this morning that's what happened but i've got to tell you i was never in doubt. traders here totally expected it to happen, despite it was an okay johns report we knew we would get through this level in fact we thought we would get through it right at the open and i've got to tell you analysts all over wall street are helping with this because they are putting price targets on these big tech stocks sending some of them, among them which is a member of the dow right to the moon, and you know how that works, like earnings right? so good news, for traders down here, they would rather see more volatility than just a steady march higher. stuart: that's what we got, 29 k

, the brand new hat right there good stuff thanks gerri. we'll be back to you, i'm sure, when we get to 30,000. who knows when that is. greg valier is with us agf investments chief strategist i'm sure that you just heard what larry kudlow had to say to us. what's your reaction? >> you can't fight the tape, stuart. i think that kudlow is right. i think the economy is going to surprise to the upside this year i'm not sure about 3% but i think 2.5% is doable and on his plan on household net worth he's correct. household net worth has improved over the last two or three years so the argument the democrats will certainly make next week in iowa that the economy is in shambles, we've got this huge gap, the statistics do not bear it out. stuart: i just want to repeat that because frankly, greg, i've not heard that before. but larry kudlow put it right out there, right there, he said

look, the bottom 50% of households, then network has gone up 47%, whereas the top 1%, their net worth has gone up 13%, in other words the bottom half is getting richer at a faster rate than the top 1%. i think that's a gist of what he had to say. i don't think many people know that and it's definitely not what we're hearing from the democrats. >> well absolutely and i think to make a case next week in iowa at the debate that the economy is in bad shape that's a really tough task for the democrats to make it with any kind of credibility. stuart: where are we going from here on this market? >> let me just to be slightly negative, i do worry a little bit about a trade war with europe. that is a possibility. i tell all my friends stock up on wine, we can see a big tariff coming on wine in the next few weeks and i also worry a little bit about frothiness.

i've seen a lot of clients who seem to be only expecting things to go straight up, i get a little worried but i hate to use a cliche but i think goldie locks is still the prevalent story and will be for a few more quarters. stuart: that other cliche don't fight the tape. greg thanks for joining us very important day, always appreciate it thanks very much. keith fitzgerald is on the phone for us. i know were you watching the larry kudlow interview there and you saw the jobs report and you've seen us hit 29,000. tell us more please, keith? >> isn't this great? this is the way markets are supposed to work. you increase wealth, wealth gets put in the economy, all of these negative nancys who say it isn't going to work have really come up in the market today. stuart: you wouldn't fight the tape right? in other words get out of the way. don't try to interrupt, don't try to sell out of this. just stay with us. that's your advice? >> well this is like trying to

ride a bull at the rodeo. you want to make it to the eight second buzzer but if you try to anticipate where the bull is going to go you'll get bucked off every time and so yeah, there is a possibility of a bad headline, possibility of a correction but in the meantime, one of the most fundamental rules of law for any investor and any trader is you do not fight it. stuart: by the way, president trump has just come out with a tweet. here it is. 11,000 point gain in the dow in the three years since the election of president trump. today, it may hit 29,000. that has never happened before, in that timeframe. that has added $12.8 trillion to the value of american business. that's pretty much what i would say on fox & friends this morning ashley. he quoted there on the screen there and then he says, the best is yet to come. thank you, mr. president. all of that is factually accurate, we're up 11,000 points on the dow, since his election

and that has added $12.8 trillion in the value of american business. ashley: remarkable. stuart: that's extraordinary and greg you're still with us, i hope. >> yes. stuart: that is a remarkable performance by the economy, and this growth, $12.8 trillion it's unique. never seen it before. >> and you'd think, stuart, with those kind of numbers with the economy this strong, interest rates would be significantly higher but they're not. we're still well under 2% on the treasury 10 year. stuart: does that mean the federal reserve is going to come in with some kind of rate increase or what? i don't understand what the fed is going to do here. >> i don't see them coming in. you look at earnings, there's no real sign of inflation anywhere. i think that we've got a year to go before anyone has to start worrying about the fed raising rates. i think they are on hold. ashley: a raising. stuart: that's good for the market. >> but we had stocks yesterday still pointing to weakness in the global economy, and there's no rush to raise interest rates,

and in fact economists predict if they are going to do anything it's lower rates even further from here rather than raise it. stuart: i mean, keith on the phone with us, greg, just used the expression "goldie locks" scenario. do you agree with that? >> oh, yeah and don't forget, in 2009 they missed every step of the recovery. they are almost totally irrelevant so the only thing they can possibly do is chime in with hey, we missed that one, and closed out of business and step out of the way. stuart: i was just intrigued also what larry kudlow had to say about the wealth effect. that being the rapid run-up in stock prices adding so much to the value of business, does it flow out into the economy? and of course, a lot of people are saying well the rich just get richer and the poor just say where they are. >> no. stuart: but you're right, keith. he pointed out that the top 1%, their net worth has gone up 13%

but the bottom 50%, their net worth has gone up 47%. there is a wealth effect, keith. very much so and it's to use a much overused phrase. it's an inconvenient truth that you'll have to focus on it. stuart: i'm just interrupted because we've got another tweet from the president and i believe he's quoting us again. i've been doing this for 40 years, that's me by the way, and i've never seen anything like this economy. "varney" & company, fox & friends. >> there you go. stuart: again thanks mr. president. i am actually accurate. wonderful! i'm just an immigrant fresh off the boat. it's the president of the united states is taking notice it's really something else. can you imagine that? ashley: no. stuart: i can't. ashley: well done. >> [laughter] you want to take a look at the stocks that have driven the dow up to 29,000 from 28 to 29? stuart: show me. >> the main boost, apple of

course, united healthcare, mcdonald's, goldman sachs, microsoft, and j & j, in fact, apple i think has been responsible for one-third of the dow's rally up to 29,000 from 28 to 29,000. apple has been responsible for one-third of that. stuart: hold on one-third of the gain from 28 to 29,000 is apple, one company. >> one company. stuart: it's now worth $1.4 trillion. >> yes, that's right. stuart: microsoft went up, and they're worth 1.2 trillion? >> correct and alphabet is closing in on $1 trillion valuation as well and this is because people expect them to post that when it comes to ads, and revenue growth. stuart: keith would you be buy ing apple now at 311 per share? >> you know, i'd be cautious, but it wouldn't stop me particularly if i'm going to re investor acquire more shares i think the company is just beginning to hit its stride and there's far higher prices ahead and dare i say it i'm even going

to put 400 bucks in it. stuart: do what? >> i'm even going to put 400 bucks on the table. i haven't quite worked out the timing yet but i missed apple by one day this year, so maybe i'll get something else kind of right next year. stuart: [laughter] greg, apple, would you buy it? i know you don't really deal in individual stocks, but let me broaden this out. big tech has done so extraordinarily well especially amazon, i'm sorry microsoft and apple. would you be putting money into the big tech stocks now? >> well as a washington analyst stuart i would just say all this hype about breaking up the tech industry, or going after the financial industry, it's not going to happen as long as the senate stays republican and i think that's likely, that's the firewall. so any kind of radical agenda against these industries would die in the senate. stuart: i just want to put those stocks back up on the screen there. we had mcdonald's on there, microsoft, these are the stocks that have propelled the market, the dow, so quickly, from 28 to

29,000. it was less than two months, less than a two-month period when we did it. mcdonald's has gone up 7.2% in that less than two months. even though the ceo left, and i'm not sure, but walt disney is only up a fraction, .3%, that's it so that didn't give a great boost to the dow, american express, 5.8% please remember, 5.8% sounds not that great, but it's spectacular, for a company of that size in that timeframe. show me apple can you do me apple and mcdonald's again and microsoft again, please? put that up again? ashley: 17.5. stuart: 17.5%. microsoft, i've got seller's remorse. >> [laughter] well you know, boeing is actually the biggest drag on the dow since 28,000 to 29,000 sorry to say that in fact that shaves 240 points off the dow. stuart: so let's bring keith

back in again. did i make a horrendous mistake at selling microsoft at 159 and putting some of the money into boeing at 332? >> boy that is a tough call, stuart. boeing is one of the companies that has a bright future or significant problems that he's got to work through. i'd be hard pressed to say you made a mistake but i couldn't counsel you that was a great move either. stuart: [laughter] scott martin joins us on the phone. what's your perspective here, scott, we spoke to you a lot recently and we've consistently made the point, look, get out of the way. don't fight the tape. just let this thing run. are you still doing that? >> yeah, stuart i just stepped out of the hair salon. >> [laughter] >> i think i've really got to take better care of myself starting from today and it's one of those days where you can go to the hair salon and can maybe

go to the country club or the grocery store wherever you got to go to do something because things look pretty good and i think the market likes what it sees from a couple things stuart one is certainly you guys have been talking about it likes what it sees from company fundamental s, from earnings, from revenues and also likes to see the fact that the democrats are upset with president trump and he's dealing with them, dealing with iran, we're having some progress there so the market is very comfortable in where things are and remember the market always trades on future expectations, so things that we learn today with respect to the job numbers which wasn't too hot, wasn't too cold is going to keep this market supported and keep it driving higher. stuart: one of the things that gets to me when i see the market run up like this is people who say well, i don't own stocks, he's got nothing to do with me, i haven't benefited. well i'll take issue with that. consider this. 55 million americans have a 401 (k) and most 401 (k) money is in stocks, most of it, and most 401

(k) has gone up 30% in the past year and maybe, 40% since mr. trump was elected. the 35 million americans have an ira. they've all done well as well. any union pension plan, any college savings that's in stock. you've all done well. that of course, as larry kudlow was telling us, there is the wealth effect. because your company, it's your company and its stock has gone straight up, that means your job is probably pretty safe and there will be new jobs created because the company has the capital to expand. don't tell me that a stock market rally doesn't have beneficial effects for everyone. back me up on this greg, please? >> exactly. these rallies, both economically and in the markets are self- reinforcing. you've got more disposable income. people have more money to spend. this creates a cycle that could drive things even higher.

i still think the big economic story this year is that the economy surprises to the upside. stuart: okay i'm just going to pause on our immediate market coverage to bring you an item of news. the top aid to speaker pelosi has said that there will be no vote on the articles of impeachment today. i'm not quite sure what vote that is but evidently i'm going to read between the lines and make sure i'm right on this, justin, our producer, no vote today on articles of impeachment , a top aid tells fox , as per mike emmanuel and again i'm trying to read between the lines here. it seems to me that that means there's further delay on getting the articles of impeachment to the senate. ashley: of course. stuart: so that the president is actually impeached and the senate trial can begin. it seems like the delay continues. now that's politics and i want to bring in for that, tammy bruce, i want your commentary on this. this is the news report we've got and i'm again, reading between the lines seems like the

delay continues, what do you make of it? >> yes part of this likely would be about choosing the house managers, which would be a step that they would need to take before moving it over to the senate. but what it also shows to everyone is the horrific fraud this has been from the start. i mean, this has started with the president was a maniac we've got to stop him we've got to make this point, this is urgent and now it becomes this game. it's theatre. when the senate is said there already, top democrats in the senate like dianne feinstein said look if this is urgent you send it to us and if it's not then just don't so this is clearly, she's managed to do what no one else has done, nancy pelosi create a bipartisan framework when it comes to what's going on with the senate. stuart: but if there's so much opposition to this delay, so many democrats say get on with it, why is she holding back? i don't understand that. >> well this is clearly, this is -- stuart: it's not just house management. >> well she hasn't been a rational actor in this from the

start so we can't expect rational logical behavior at this point when from the beginning this was a hoax and they're making it look, i come from the left. part of the energy is not a majority of it. it's spent on maintaining the fraud. it's that there's so much energy when you're dealing with, you know, kind of winging it as you go from moment to moment they know it they remember they came back from their break, they are finally back in the house and the senate and they found out at home through focus groups talking with constituents that this has not gone well, and she now is loathed at moving it to the senate but she also according to a time magazine profile, noted to members of her caucus, so elite members of her caucus that if they don't move it to the senate, then it will be trump will be impeached forever with no chance of vindication, and this is what's been feeding them. not what is best for the country and the harm to the country is also not considered the american people have to realize this, her

continued delay is a front to the american people and it's an insult to the constitution, and to what we am stand for. stuart: greg, you also cover not just the market but the doing of washington d.c. it looks to me like there's a further delay and these articles of impeachment go into the senate what do you make of this? >> impact on the market zero. i don't see any impact whatsoever for investors. maybe it'll get interesting if we do have john bolton testifying i'm not sure he's going to but we all know what the outcome is going to be. i think it's a waste of everybody's time. stuart: now just let me pause for one second and point something out that's important. at 10:45 eastern time this morning, that's not too far away , a treasury secretary mnuchin and secretary of state pompeo, they will issue a briefing, not sure exactly what that means, but they will be making a statement and briefing, i guess reporters, are on iran sanctions. now it says there, iran sanctions.

does this mean new iran sanctions? part of the maximum pressure that our president was saying he will be putting on iran. i presume that it is new economic sanctions being placed on iran. tammy bruce, that, to me, sounds like maximum pressure. >> well and he's able to do this because of everything he's done here at home. we are energy-independent, makes a huge difference in options the president has, our own economy, of course makes a huge difference, and the fact that he has not just kept promises and delivered them at home but he's also kept his promises to the world. the world, you notice, china's quiet, russia's quiet, everyone else is quiet about what's happened to soleimani and to everyone else, because they know it was a remarkable, important act to take and just that kind of freedom, and the signal to the people of iran and iraq and the middle east and the world that there's now leadership that does not see you asco lateral damage in this fight that this

is about leadership that knows that personal freedom. economies, being able to plan for the future of your family belongs not just to americans but to iranians to iraqis to persians, to saudis to the europeans, we know this, the british are understanding this now, as well. this is a worldwide movement that the president is leading, because it's really about only what america can show and what we've been doing for the last 250 years, showing the world what's possible when individuals are free, when there is security and when there is real leadership so these actions matter and i want to reiterate about wall street, wall street is main street that's one of the big lies the left has been telling americans, and as everybody knows, this impacts every aspect of our lives. yes, 401 (k) and ira's and your small business, pensions, unions every company invested all of this, the left just remember for november, remember the party that sympathized with terrorists

over these last few days and blamed the united states. that is what one should remember in november. stuart: greg i know you're still with us patiently going through all of this but it's exciting times is president trump going to win in 2020? >> he's clearly the favorite now and it's not just the economy, iran blanked we have a deal on trade, it's the quality of his opponents on the democrat side. he should go to church every morning to thank the lord he's got this group of democrats to run against, i think with the possible exception of bloomberg i don't see anybody who can beat him but i can't see bloomberg winning the nomination so trump is in very good shape. stuart: we still have with us scott martin, and keith fitzgerald with us. how does the election look to you, keith? >> it's going to be very hard to beat trump. the only card the left can play is the emotional driver of this has happened or that's happened or we think this is going to

happen but the reality of the situation is as we've been discussing all morning the economic benefits are very real, the data is very real, and the psychology is very real and america is winning. stuart: we're approaching 10:30 eastern time. i just want to wrap up what we have seen so far today. because it has been really rather dramatic. at 8:30 eastern time this morning, we got the jobs report, and it was a solid report, nothing spectacular, 145,000 new jobs, and the unemployment rate stayed at 3.5%. then we opened the market at 9: 30 eastern time and the market was not doing that much and then we interviewed larry kudlow that came around 9:50 eastern time and the market started to move up. larry kudlow made a very convincing case, of something called the wealth effect, but the gain in the market will be spread out into the overall economy and boost everybody, in

other words, the stock market rally is good for us all. he was on a roll and up went the market as he was finishing speaking after 10:00 eastern time the dow hit that magic number, 29,000. it had gone from 28 to 29,000 in less than two months. not bad i would say, we've come back a little from there, but still up 28, 976. that's where we are. do we take a break and play the beatles no we do not. no, no, okay well no break okay. scroll up i want to see what you've got in mind for me. okay. "varney" realizes that he's getting ahead of his skiis. >> [laughter] stuart: thank you producer. i can say this listen to larry kudlow, roll tape. >> 145,000 is a good number,

solid economic growth number, and again, 3.5% unemployment is a remarkable number, and that unemployment report comes from the household survey, which had 26 5,000 job increases, gigantic number, so i still think the economy is strong and i think the stock market with the tremendous rally up almost 30% in the past year that's got to be telling us, business and consumer confidence is rising and the economic outlook in the next year is going to be stronger. stuart: okay that was larry kudlow right there about half an hour ago. he, i think he kind of moved the market. he was on a role about the wealth effect and how the market rally benefited everybody and at that point the dow hit 29,000, susan? >> we should celebrate the decade because we're looking at a 50 year low unemployment rate, the 3.5% capping a tenth straight year of payroll gains and the longest stretch in 80

years of data of job gains. i mean this is a remarkable jobs market that should be celebrated and the market is taking that in stride. stuart: next big thing that we're waiting for comes up in 15 minutes from now, 14 to be precise, 10:45 eastern, treasury secretary mnuchin, and secretary of state mike pompeo on iran sanctions. that is, i presume, maximum pressure on iran through new iran sanctions. you'll see the podium down the left-hand side of the screen coming up in about 15 minutes. what if that moves the market or not i don't know but it's certainly a significant political development and this is a very political and politicized stock market and economy. so we're going to run that for you and you'll see what they have to say at that time. let's bring in conta akhmed, and independent women's forum fellow , welcome to the show. >> thank you. stuart: first time you've been on this program. my pleasure. stuart: thanks for being here we

appreciate it. >> a fellow britt. stuart: i'm an american. >> and american. stuart: we come from the same place. what troubled me about the down ing of the plane in tehran was now pete buttigieg' response to it and he implied that some element of blame should be placed on president trump and that bothers me, how about you? >> this is the entire democratic portray all of the events of the recent days. president trump is not responsible for the death of the passengers in the commercial jet in any way. nor was he responsible for 40 years of low grade smoldering and incredibly widespread regional warfare, islamist iran has been waging in iraq from where i just returned two weeks ago, in lebanon, in syria, in yemen. the murder of the lebanese prime

minister for instance was an activize lamb it's iran, so this was in no way, a fault of the united states president. what it does represent is iran is wreckless, it has gone from being, trying to portray itself as a victim of american primacy, to actually being the aggressor and the complete disregard to human rights and it didn't even ground its airplanes on the days it was sending all of these rockets so this is a second humiliation for iran which it should pay attention to. of course america, the loss of all innocent lives whatever nationality we're very sad about that and many iranian nationals that we're also very sorry that lost their lives as well as canadians but this is the second humiliation after soleimani was decapitated and his network inside iraq has been seriously injured and now the world sees how incompetent they are at this time. stuart: do you think we're moving to a whole new stage in our relationship with these iran

where some form of negotiation is possible. we're exerting maximum appreciate you on the regime through sanctions and the regime is hurting the economies in absolute chaos and we seem to have something of a box and keep them in that box. i do sense something positive in the future but maybe there's change and talks. >> it's very interesting that had not occurred to me mostly because of the arrogance of the regime that we can see and that is in the denial of reality they are denying the nature of this accident and lying on the board about deaths of american soldiers which has not occurred, they have no intention of giving up their puppetting of federal iraq, where they are still selecting cabinets and calling decisions and still operating them malitia, so i don't think they are ready to hear anything in the way of diplomacy.

i do think what's going to come is a 21st century embargo. we have already been putting tremendous sanctions on them which is president trump's move and that's tightened further probably aiming at the shipping industry, probably aiming at cushing carriers that actually upload iranian oil and put them on other vessels with other flags and maybe even chinese tanking companies which the financial times is reporting that do facilitate that and we have the china deal coming up hopefully the trade deal on january 15. stuart: what you're talking about is almost a complete isolation, a 21st century embargo and isolation of iran. >> an isolation of the iranian islamic regime. what we're talking about happened with a missile attack and that missile attack is characteristic of iran compensating for a military that's not been updated since the 1960, the army and aircraft since the 1980s because there's been a western embargo and arms

import since then because our only maneuver is using missiles and their goal is not necessarily to inflict devastating damage on us, but to provoke us into doing something irrational. sanctions shows that president trump in his administration is clearly rational at the time the rest of the world is hysterical whether it's the iranian regime or the democrats, manufacturing their own narratives. stuart: would you just stay there for a second please? valued guests and we don't want to lose you too soon, thank you very much. pleasure. stuart: charles hurt with us, can you give us more on how you feel, there you are, how you feel the democrats are reacting to the taking out of soleimani and the downing of the plane in tehran. the democrat response to your analysis, please? >> my goodness, stuart. the taking out of soleimani should have been a unifying moment, i think it was, for most americans but to listen to the debate on the house floor yesterday and to listen to the

top concerns of nancy pelosi and democrats in congress, their only concern is president trump. they're concerned that president trump, i don't know what it is, at first they began predicting a world war iii, and then they fell back to this position that it's going to lead to world war iii, and you get the sense that they are almost rooting for failure, and of course failure in this situation would be catastrophic and have catastrophic consequences but the truth of the matter is what the iranians did in taking down that airliner is the fault of iranians and iranians alone, and it has nothing to do with in no way does that blame go back to the president, but i think that's something that actually confuse these democrats. it's very troubling, to look across the aisle and see that kind of behavior coming from the democrats. stuart: charles hold on for one moment please. ashley webster has some context on this.

ashley: listen just on wednesday the president said he would un leash punishing economic sanctions on the islamic republic until they changed their behavior so i think we're going to find out in perhaps 8- 10 minutes now what those further economic sanctions would be, four months ago the trump adminitration went after using sanctions at the iran central bank and its sovreign wealth fund and two months before that it went after the top supreme leader, the military and top diplomat so this is a ratcheting up and has had an impact. stuart: conta akhmed still with me. she allows the president to use military force in this situation but she opposes what she called tripling sanctions, and that have staved the innocent people of iran. now your response to that? >> oh, she argues that while she caused the sanctions on israel, the only democracy in the middle east, constantly and very brutal and ambitious

sanctions on israel, and she doesn't extend that feeling to israelis or my fellow jewish human beings, but it is true that there are risks to sanctions however the united states has always excluded food, medicine and humanitarian aid and it will do that again at 11 a.m. also the goal is to squeeze and weaken and i hope, myself, one day to the end of the islamic regime. we already knew that iranian people were protesting being shot to death by the revolutionary guard right before these events. they were not even allowed to come out in public and mourn their deaths the way the countries did qassem soleimani's assassination. she is an empty vessel with no allegiance to the united states that i can detect. she speaks like an islamic mouth piece. her views are completely in line with the views of qatar, the muslim brotherhood, and other sympathizers of which iran would also be in appliance as a shiite islamist. stuart: to be clear you're a muslim yourself?

>> i'm a muslim and also lived the middle east in saudi arabia and i'm in the region constantly and iowa supposed to be in iraq friday but only i won't be able to go. stuart: is the islam, the political islam? >> islamism is the political totalitarian religion proper. when i go to the middle east whether it's egypt or jordan or with the kurds, in northern iraq , they are hugely in favor of this president's animosity towards radical islam towards islamism. nobody has suffered more under islamism than muslims including iranians, who are not free to have political speech, political gatherings, dress how they choose, decide to become atheist , convert religion. this is absolutely not connell: with true islam. stuart: i want to bring in jamil jaffer joining us today, left-hand side of your screen is the podium where secretary of state pompeo and treasury

secretary mnuchin will appear momentarily. i want to ask you, are we going to see a continuation of the maximum pressure idea? is that what's announced shortly maximum pressure on iran? >> well i think there's no question that's exactly what's coming stuart. we've been seeing this process evolve since the president took office. he made clear on the campaign trail that he intended to return to this idea of maximum pressure and realize raise the bar on it. he's done just that and got rid of the terrible nuclear deal that president obama negotiated with iran, and he's now started to ratchet the pressure and you can see iran react in that pressure and what you see happening in iran on the streets of iran but also their behavior around the world is them getting desperate, and lashing out. now that we've shown them that we're not going to take that any more and keep taking punches, the president made clear that we're going to reestablish deterrence we're in a much stronger place today than a week or two weeks ago. stuart: charles hurt is still

with us. no war, no military action, but maximum pressure to keep them in their box and maybe bring them to the table. what do you say to that charles? >> i can't think of any better option. obviously you're dealing with iran, we've been dealing with iran for a long time and there are rarely any good options dealing with them but the president has shown through the sanctions, patience, all that has worked very well and the most important thing is he show ed them also that he's not going to be a pushover like previous administrations, and the fact that they killed an american and the response was their top general was taken out, and how that is not just absolutely celebrated across the entire political spectrum here in washington, think think just goes to show how far out of step washington has become. >> just in response, not only was it iran targeting an

american citizen, but it is an islamist iranian regime that executed a muslim american iraqi linguist in cocuk. it's the jerusalem of the kurds, that was taken away from kurdish control after they wanted to declare their independence, by iranian malitia collaborating with iranian armed force so this president and his administration are often accused in the united states of being islamist, it is the opposite and they are so infuriated by the execution of a muslim american by this regime that they have taken that action and that was not the only reason why soleimani was assassinated. he was a war monger and architect of death, for decades. stuart: just moments ago you were talking about the total isolation. the 21st century embargo of iran you mentioned various measures which have been reported i think in the financial times. would you repeat that please? >> so some of the measures of the financial times is speculat ing include target being particularly the movement of oil out of iran which is still

ongoing. we have already managed to achieve a reduction in iran's outlook, i think from 2.8 million-barrels daily to about 500,000-barrels; however, there are still what moves by changing ships. also the financial times has reported i think this morning that some of those companies are chinese tanker companies, which are collaborating in that movement and that's where it's going to be a diplomatic challenge for president trump and his administration as we do want to secure a trade deal with china but we also need to contain iran and that will be a challenge. stuart: so how far will the sanctions go that we'll hear about in just a couple minutes time. hold on for a second please, susan. you have details on the impact on iran's economy. >> its been stark because 2018 is when president trump pulled out of the iranian deal and since then the iranian economy has been in recession shrinking according to the imf, 9.5% in 2019, 4.5% in 2018, and

also the deficit by the way that means government is taking in less than it actually spends for the first time since 201 and the unemployment rate was at 17% in the country. that's stark. stuart: given that situation, co nta, what chance of regime change and internally generated change? >> look, they will not relink wish power, and i'm not sure that it is the united states position to really induce that. that is for the iranian people to decide just in response to our colleague one thing worth mentioning is the iran deal hadn't even been alive we of course pulled out in 2018 and those sanctions in 2020 this year, so the timing is very relevant but we are still going to squeeze sanctions. the one fear i have because we did put them in the region previously is sometimes the

drives citizens who are deprived towards more radicalization, a retreat into fundamental allism and it can lead to the rise of insurgence which will be problematic for the room on but it's already there. stuart: we're about to hear from secretary of state pompeo and treasury secretary mnuchin. we're expecting news on new sanctions, economic sanctions on iran. its been quite a day. let me build up to what we're about to see at that podium. 8:30 this morning the jobs report, 145,000 new jobs, 3.5% unemployment, wages up 2.9% over the past year. a little later, larry kudlow appeared on this program and outlined what we called the wealth effect that is the distribution so to speak, the effect so to speak of all of the money that's been made in the stock market on the overall economy, and overall on america. a positive effect, moving towards more growth, that's what

he had to say. at the end of the interview the man was on a role about the future of the economy and its current strength. and up went the market. the dow industrials hit 29,000 as mr. kudlow was on our air, thank you very much, sir, and its since retreated not much, we're at 28, 986. we've been giving you details about how fast this rise has been from 18 to 29,000, i'll interrupt myself with treasury secretary mnuchin. >> i'd just like to make a brief comment before we talk about iran sanctions, i'm everybody saw the dow had 29,000 the president's economic plans are clearly working we're looking forward to the china signing usmca and a very strong economy this year. as previously announced by the president we are announcing additional sanctions against the iranian regime as a result of the attack on u.s. and allie troops. first, the president is issuing

an executive order, authorizing the imposition of additional sanctions against any individual owning, operating, trading with, or assisting sectors of the iranian economy including construction, manufacturing, textiles, and mining. let me be clear, these will be both primary and secondary sanctions. the eo also allows us to designate other sectors in the future as secretary pompeo and me think is appropriate. second. we are announcing 17 specific sanctions against iran's largest steel and iron manufactures, and a vessel involved in the transfer of products and as a result of these actions we will cut off billions of dollars of support to the iranian regime and continue our enforcement of other entities. third, we are taking action

against a senior iranian officials who advance their regimes destabilizing activity and were involved in tuesday's ballistic missile strike. secretary pompeo will comment more on this. today's sanctions are part of our commitment to stop the iranian regime's global terrorist activities. the president has been very clear. we will continue to apply economic sanctions until iran stops its terrorist activities, and commit that it will never have nuclear weapons. i'll now turn it over to secretary pompeo. thank you, steven, good morning, everyone. today, president trump is delivering on the pledge that he made the day after iran attacks american forces in iraq there will be a series of new sanctions, secretary mnuchin just mentioned eight senior iranian officials that are responsible for the regime's

violence from the home and abroad. we're striking at the heart of the islamic republic's inner security apparatus. these sanctions targets include the secretary of the supreme national council, and the commander of the forces. that's the regime's brute quad which is in the last few months killed approximately 1,500 iranians who were simply demanding freedom. our action also targets other senior leaders and they've carr ied out his terrorist plots undestabilizing campaigns across the middle east and around the world. they've employed soldiers, across the regions battlefield. they've trained malitias in iraq , syria and elsewhere in the arts of domestic repression. today they are accountable with murder and mayhem. the goal of our campaign is to deny the regime the resource to conduct its destructive foreign policy. we want iran to simply behave like a normal nation, we believe the sanctions that we impose today further that strategic

objective. our campaign is composed of diplomatic, economic components, they deprive their regime of billions of revenue that the regime has used to fuel death and destruction across the middle east and all across the world. sadly the previous administration had opened up revenue streams for iran. under our administration all revenues are down by 80% and iran cannot access roughly 90% of its foreign currency reserves not even two weeks ago, the president of iran admitted our sanctions have cost iran over $200 billion in lost foreign income and investment. as long as iran's ways continue we will continue to impose sanctions. finally i want to reiterate president trump's concern for americans in dual national citizens detained inside of iran iran knows these individuals have committed no crime. they know the charges against them are fake. we will do all that we can to get each of them returned home safely to their families

with that we'll take just a few questions. yes, ma'am? reporter: the administration said this strike was an imminent threat but this morning you said that we don't know precisely when and we didn't know precisely where. that's not the definition of imminent. the president also suggested there was some sort of a plan against an embassy perhaps several embassies. can you clarify. did you have specific information about an imminent threat and anything to do with our embassy? >> we had specific information on an imminent threat, and those threats included attacks on u.s. embassies. period. full stop. reporter: you were mistaking when you said you didn't know precisely when and where? >> completely true, those are completely consistent thoughts. i don't know exactly which day it would have been executed but it was very clear. qassem soleimani himself was plotting a broad, large scale attack against american interest and those attacks were imminent. reporter: against an embassy?

>> american facilities including american embassies, military base, american facilit ies throughout the region john? reporter: mr. secretary, in the initial hours after the missile attacks on al-assad airfield it was believed that iran may have take epidemic steps to avoid u.s. casualties within the chairman of the joint chief came out, the secretary of defense came out, other officials came out to say no this missiles were intended to kill americans. if it was iran's intent to kill americans does that not deserve some sort of response? if somebody takes a shot at you and they don't hit you semitism does that mean they weren't trying to kill you? >> i'll refer to the department of defense on the details but there is no doubt unmy judgment as i observed the iranian activity in the region that night, they had the full intention of killing u.s. force, whether that was our military folks or diplomatic folks in the region and i'm confident the response the president taking

was appropriate. president said we don't want war i want iran to behave like a normal nation the reason the secretary and the treasurer are here is to continue this campaign, the strategic effort to get iran to behave in a way that doesn't continue their 40- year long effort to terrorize the world. reporter: mr. secretary, do you believe that the iranians shot down the ukraine international air wears, a plane and if the iranians shot that plane down, will there be consequences? >> we do believe that it's likely that plain was shot down by an iranian missile. we're going to let the investigation play out before we make a final determination that's important that we get to the bottom of it. i've been on the phone i was on the phone with president z elins ki, just before i came here and on the phone with my canadian counterpart working to get their resources on the ground to conduct that investigation. we'll learn more about what happened to that aircraft and

when we get the results of that investigation, i am confident we , and the world, will take appropriate actions in response. reporter: will you allow the ntsb to work with iranian? >> i was just going to comment on that. the treasury will issue waivers for anybody whether it's americans or others that can help facilitate the investigation. reporter: back in december, you were announcing additional sanctions and secretary mnuchin at that point, you said i did have more sanctions on iran and it's absolutely working and since then you've seen an escalation in violence from iran shooting down the drone, attacking the embassy, contractors were killed, u.s. troops were badly wounded. how are sanctions keeping the united states economic sanctions keeping the united states and the united states interest more secure? i think we have 100% confidence and we are consistent in our view that the economic sanctions

are working, that if we didn't have these sanctions in place, literally iran would have tens of billions of dollars. they would be using that for terrorist activities, throughout the region, and to enable them to do more bad things, and there's no question by cutting off the economics to the regime, we are having an impact and as the president has said, the fact that the obama administration turned over $150 billion to the regime we >> may i just add, it's important to keep in mind what's taking place in iran today. this country has never been in the place that it is today. big challenging problems. their budget, they are going to fail by tens of billions of dollars of achieving their revenue for this year. they've got real challenges in figuring out how to make difficult decisions. do you underwriter hezbollah, do

you pick hamas or do you allow your people to have the opportunity to live the life they want and grow your economy. those are the difficult choices that the regime is facing. you can see the protests, protests we expect will continue, that will demand from the iranian regime that they begin to treat the iranian people in the way they so richly deserve and this administration will continue to support those efforts as well. reporter: you mentioned secondary sanctions. what is your message to our european allies who continue to do business with the iranians, specifically, if you can, will this impact the barter mechanism which was set up by a number of european countries to avoid sanctions, to continue to do business without using the u.s. dollar? >> those are both very important questions. let me first comment, i don't believe there has been any transactions. as we have made clear, we are working on a swiss channel that we have approved for

humanitarian transactions. we will continue to allow humanitarian transactions. we have warned that they will most likely be subject to secondary sanctions depending on how they use that. so that's absolutely the case. as it relates to the europeans, both the secretary and i have spoken to our counterparts in europe several times over the last few days. we have emphasized the impact and the issue of iran has announced that they are no longer part of the jcpoa and we have had very direct conversations with our counterparts about that. reporter: secretary pompeo, what is your definition of imminent? >> this was going to happen and american lives were at risk, and we would have been culpably negligent as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said, we would have been culpably negligent had we not recommended to the president he take this action against qassem suleimani. he made the right call and

america is safer as a result of that. reporter: [ inaudible ]. >> go ahead. >> one question for everybody. just so as many people can get questions. i don't mean to cut you off but we are trying to -- go ahead. reporter: sir, six months ago, secretary pompeo, the president said that u.s. intelligence agencies had been running amok. he spent most of the past three years he's been in office denigrating and attacking the intelligence community and disputing findings whether it's on russia or north korea or really any area that contradicts things that he has said previously. why then should americans suddenly believe your assertions that you had good intelligence on this when the head of the executive branch has been casting aspersions on the intelligence community for most of his time in office?

>> look, i served as cia director for the first year and a half of this administration. i watched the president rely on the work the intelligence community did for the entire time i served as the head of the central intelligence agency. i watched him rely on the capable men and women who are delivering exquisite information to the executive branch. i watched the president have confidence in that information. we all challenge their work. we have to make sure we get it right. the intelligence community is not flawless. we get it wrong. in this case, the intelligence community got it fundamentally right, even the reflections we have seen after effect, after the strike that qassem suleimani took has demonstrated we were quite right. there was an imminent attack, there was active plotting and we took an action that we thought was likely to create less risk for the american people and i'm confident that we did that. go ahead, in the back. in the back. you. reporter: thank you. this question is for secretary pompeo. there are reports the iraqi prime minister has asked you to start negotiating the withdrawal of u.s. troops from iraq immediately. is that the case?

can you comment on that? >> he didn't quite characterize the conversation correctly but to the larger more important point, we are happy to continue the conversation with the iraqis about what the right structure is. our mission set there is very clear. we have been there to perform a training mission to help the iraqi security forces be successful and to continue the campaign against isis, continue the counter-daash campaign. as we can deliver upon what i believe and the president believes is our right structure with fewer resources dedicated to that mission, we will do so. we also have today nato team that's here at the state department working to develop a plan which will continue the important missions to protect and defend and keep the american people safe while reducing our cost, our resources and burden and the risk to our soldiers and sailors who are in the region.

reporter: today at the podium you said the imminent threat was a threat to u.s. embassies, you didn't know precisely when or where. last night the president said it was a threat to embassies including to our baghdad embassy. why can you say that here and the president could say it at a rally in toledo but no one said it to lawmakers behind closed doors in a classified setting as multiple senators have since said? >> we did. reporter: you said it to the senators -- >> yeah, we told them about the imminent threat, all of the intelligence that we briefed that you have heard today, i assure you in an unclassified setting, we provided in the classified setting as well. reporter: to be clear, you told them that embassies were to be targeted, that was the imminent threat? >> i'm not going to talk about the details of what we shared in the classified setting but make no mistake bit, thoabout it, th leaders, those members of congress who want to access that intelligence will see the very same intelligence will reflect what i described and the president said last night. reporter: is that threat now gone now that suleimani is gone? >> threats are never gone.

there's a lot of danger in the world. always a lot of danger in the world throughout the region. nobody believed that a single mission in any respect took down the risk of terror, terror from al qaeda, terror from isis, terror from al shabab. no one believes that. the president does. look at the list, though. look at the achievements in the administration. we took away the caliphate in its entirety. we took down hamza bin laden, we took down qassem suleimani. this has reduced the capacity for terrorists around the world to perform the functions that put the american men and women and the homeland at risk. we are very proud of what we accomplished. we will stay the course. reporter: i'm curious -- >> no, no, next to you. yes. reporter: about the china trade deal, the chinese side is going to be here next wednesday to sign the phase one part of that deal but china is also a big importer of iranian oil and iranian minerals and that's a big part of their economy as well. how do you balance the two? are you concerned about the iran issue coming up in either the signing of the phase one deal or

the negotiation for the phase two deal? >> let me just comment, i had no idea you would ask that question but that's a good last question to end on. let me first say that we are looking forward to the chinese delegation coming next week, phase one is very significant. it includes very significant components of changes to technology issues, intellectual property issues and $50 billion of purchases for our farmers. i would comment, i don't agree with your comment that china is a big buyer of oil. the china state companies are not buying oil from iran and i would just say we are having conversations with china as well with any other counterparty on sanctions evasion. thank you very much. thank you, everybody. stuart: remarkable performance there by the secretary of state, mike pompeo and by the treasury secretary steven mnuchin. let me wrap up what they said. essentially this is a new round

of sanctions levied on both individuals and companies and trading organizations in iran. individuals to be targeted included -- not targeted, that's the wrong word, but to be sanctioned, to be restricted, individuals include those who are at the heart of iran's security operation and also people who are very close to the ayatollah khamenei who have organized troops around the country and attacks around the country. then the questioning began and a frequent question that was returned to at least three times that i saw was whether or not it was -- was there an imminent attack coming from suleimani, and that's why he was taken out, because there was an imminent attack. there was a constant questioning about what is imminent, was it really imminent, and what was the threat against. secretary of state pompeo responded in very calm, cool

terms. he said simply it was imminent by our judgment and it was an imminent attack against american facilities including embassies and that they had every intention of killing americans. we have group coverage of what's been going on and i will start with kanta ahmed. i want to talk about the reporters who kept coming back to the idea of whether or not we were in imminent danger because of suleimani. why did they come back at that? >> two points. they want to portray our president and administration as impulsive. they were clearly not impulsive. before the attacks happened, i had news from those who knew iraqi forces and military police personnel were ordered to fall back over a mile away from each u.s. installation they were normally stationed at so they were fearful a strike was coming. then we all witnessed on camera the rockets, i think over 11

rockets that hit the al assad air base, which is an american and iraqi air base. there was a strike, not to mention the attempt to have the siege on to the embassy. so there was no question of an imminent attack. it was an attack that was happening, american lives and diplomats and allies were at risk. they want to portray qassem suleimani's assassination as extrajudicial. it is not within the context of american law post-9/11 because he was manufacturing plots, and we also, they are overlooking the fact that iran has a major presence inside iraq now, with missile launching capabilities, missile manufacturing factories, resurrected from saddam's era that iran has reopened. they are manufacturing warheads and ballistic equipment there which are targeting u.s. interests and our allies. so the idea that there is no imminent threat is asinine and reveals their ignorance of on the ground facts. stuart: got it. steve hilton is with us. steve, i think you are there.

>> i'm here. good to see you, stuart. stuart: you, too. look, i'm intrigued at the very calm tone of secretary of state pompeo. they were blasting him with just kind of -- trying to get him with their questions but he replied very calmly and laid out the case. i thought it was a pretty good performance. >> i agree and what that tells you, i speak now as someone who has been involved as you know working many years ago in government behind the scenes for events like this, it tells you that they have got a really clear and coherent strategy. they're not scrambling around trying to justify it on any kind of basis. mike pompeo knows that this administration's policy towards iran is based on an incredibly clear and coherent set of principles which is summed up in the phrase maximum pressure, and you see more of that today announced with the sanctions but maximum pressure includes the military pressure that we saw with the killing of suleimani. that's part of it.

what they have been trying to do is say to iran you've got to change. we're not going to tolerate you getting a nuclear weapon, nor are we going to tolerate you spreading mayhem and terror around the middle east in pursuit of your regional ambitions, we're just not going to let that happen. we are going to use every lever at our disposal to stop that from happening. they have known that's their strategy all along and this is just the latest stage in its implementation. what you saw there today was a ping that is incredibly clear about what it's trying to do and how it's trying to do it. stuart: just in case you thought you were watching the bbc, i think it's time we brought in an american voice. what better american voice to bring in and lieutenant colonel oliver north, right there, the man himself. ol ollie, welcome back. good to see you. >> thank you. good to be with you, my friend. stuart: my question is this. we just saw extra sanctions imposed on iran, part of the maximum pressure regime which we're using. what do you think is the

objective of that maximum pressure? is it to keep them in the box, get them to the negotiating table, what is it? >> all of the above. not only was the secretary very very clear and very patient with the chaos that was going on around him, but the president the other night was in my humble opinion, reagan-esque in the oval office the night that president reagan told the country about the raid that we had conducted on gadhafi. there were people in the press that thought that's grounds for impeachment. they thought the same thing about granada. the reality of it is one, this pressure campaign is having an effect. in fact, what suleimani was doing for the iranians, with the quds force, was building little proxies all over that part of the world. it wasn't just in iraq and lebanon. he built proxies in pakistan. he built proxies in afghanistan. all of those were designed to do

one thing, kill americans. the goal of the quds force and the islamic revolutionary guard corps, rouhani said it the other night, is drive the westerners out of the lands of the prophet. we're not leaving. the reality of it was the missiles that they fired were not accurate, as they intended. four of them failed on the way to al assad. the reason they attacked the base in erbil is fwaubecause it kurdish city, a kurdish base. it was built by the americans and it's the main hub for its thriving economy in what would be kurdistan if we backed them up instead of walking away from them. i thought the president -- the president did and what secretary pompeo and secretary of the treasury did today, they laid out the case for what we are going to do, our objective is to bring the iranians back into the civilized world. it's very straightforward. stuart: i'm jumping in. ollie, forgive me for jumping in like this, but i've got a

breaking news development. we have reports that yesterday, a russian warship aggressively approached a u.s. naval destroyer. it was in the arabian sea. the russian ship was on course to collide with the destroyer, ignored calls by the u.s. to shift course. it eventually did move around the u.s. vessel. is there any significance in this? i'm asking you, you are a military guy, the significance, please? >> we have all kinds of challenges to freedom of navigation in the reagan administration because for four years under carter, they did nothing to enforce freedom of navigation. this is the russians trying to be included as part of the solution here. i say the solution, it's a pro-i ra pro-iranian solution. this administration convinced putin not to sell the sa-400 anti-missile, anti-aircraft system to the iranians.

it was a brilliant move. it started the process of where we are going today with iran. i can tell you, stuart, the goals and objectives are laid out very clearly. the media -- this president could walk across the potomac river right behind me on the screen and they would say he can't swim. stuart: you got it right. hold on just a second. jamil is still with us, former white house counsel. we just gave this news of the russian warship tweaking an american destroyer in rather dangerous fashion. what do you make of it, please? >> you know, we have seen a lot of these types of things before, both back in the '80s as lieutenant colonel north lays out but also more recently. the russians have been playing the advantage here for quite awhile. they have seen the u.s. retreat under the obama administration and even at the early part of this administration from the region saying we wanted to withdraw. they have taken a leading role in syria. they think they can mess with us and the president is making clear, hopefully he doesn't do the same with the russians, we won't stand for this kind of

behavior whether in this renaliregion or anywhere else in the world. stuart: now i will get back to the politics that emerged from that briefing, pompeo and mnuchin. i want to bring in charles hurt for this. it seems to me this was political pushback against democrats who were saying there's a rush to war. it seemed like they were saying in a very calm fashion no, we've just got extra sanctions and that we're using maximum pressure, and my theory is maybe they want to get them to the table but it seemed like political pushback against the democrats' cry of a rush to war. >> sure. and you know, i'm not surprised to hear those questions lobbed at mnuchin and pompeo today, especially given the fact that just yesterday, speaker nancy pelosi declared that the attack on suleimani was both provocative and disproportionate. i don't know what would have been more proportionate to do to a guy who is responsible for

killing hundreds and maiming thousands of more u.s. troops. but i thought at the beginning of that press conference, it was really -- the juxtaposition between the united states and the iranian position right now, you have the economy in america reaching new heights never seen before versus where iran is right now. iran just had their top general killed, they just had operation pound sand where they lobbed 15 missiles into the desert that landed nowhere. then we wake up the next morning and we find out they shot down a civilian airliner leaving their own airport. can you imagine what the leadership in tehran is thinking right now? they must just be -- their heads must have exploded, especially after eight years of complete appeasement, getting paid hundreds of millions of dollars by the previous administration, they must be just bewildered by

what's going on right now. stuart: charles, was that a real shock to their system, to the leadership? were they really knocked out by this? >> i would say so. that's probably why they are denying so aggressively. there were reports this morning they are bulldozing over the wreckage. they haven't secured the area. a lot of the evidence that could tell us what happened is being lost. a wonderfully humane act on the united states' part to waive permissions and allow people from ntsb, the world's leading investigative agency, to go. but most certainly, i want to pick up on colonel oliver north making a very important point. iran's nightmare from the united states is not over yet. these sanctions being tightened are just the beginning. the united states will remain in the region and will augment its position in northern iraq, in iraqi kurdistan and if it knows what's good for it, will realize a sovereign kurdistan which will have u.s. bases there, which will be a strong pro-israel ally. there will be a hub there for

iran, for turkey. we quickly moved out of northeast syria and turkey felt the gloves are off and made an incursion aggressively. when we leave the region in small numbers, all kinds of bad actors start acting out and we are not going to have that happen. the kurds are the strongest, most pro-american, pro-israel, pro-women's rights, pro-democratic ally. that is the gift of our trillions of dollars of investments into that region. stuart: ollie north, we do have them -- i keep using this expression, in a box, but it looks like our troops are not going to leave iraq unilaterally and just walk away. we've got new sanctions on them. we have enormous military power surrounding them, just about. they're in a box. where am i going wrong here? >> well, no, you are absolutely right. in fact, what you're seeing play out in iraq is the fact you basically have two governments. you have a pro-american government, you have a pro-iranian government. obviously the prime minister is

part of that very pro-iranian faction. the reality of it is we've got a major investment that we've made in iraq. we need to do more for the kurds. i was out there covering the peshmerga, my last assignment for fox news, was going out there covering the peshmerga in the fight against isil going into mosul. i looked at some of those iraqi units that were trained, equipped and led -- advised, excuse me, not led, advised by american special forces. they're as good as any special forces operation in the world because of what we did for them. they're more than pro-american, they're pro democracy. so i look at where we are in a much better place today than we were before suleimani decided to go back to baghdad. stuart: i want to just hold off on the politics of the military for one moment, and the sanctions. i want to talk money for a moment. i want to bring in john allison. john, there has been no impact on the stock market from that

presentation by pompeo and mnuchin. none whatsoever. but we still appear to have a bull market on our hands. right? >> i think we have that bull market on our hands. i have said before that there is a melt-up quality to it and the very fact that you have difficult political and military conflicts going on underneath the surface of the market really does not affect the market unless that leaks into the economy and into the financial system in some way. right now, there is no leakage and frankly, there is no prospect of it, including any impact on oil prices, partly because of what the iranians are not doing but partly because we have enormous supplies of oil here in this country. we have a much more efficient energy sector. we have low inflation. so all of these things are -- militate against oil becoming an issue. you are absolutely right, this is not an impediment to what is

a bull market that continues. stuart: forgive me for bringing politics, john, but it seems to me the president's political position, president trump's political position has improved in part because of iran, in part because of the economy, in part because of the market. you think he's going to win in 2020? what do you think? >> well, that is totally above my pay grade even though i used to be a historian and have uvies on things like this. i would say incumbent presidents have a big statistical advantage in winning elections, and presidents that oversee an expanding economy have a big statistical advantage in winning elections. so if i were a democrat, i would be looking at that very very carefully in terms of my strategy and if i were president trump, i would be looking at that with some measure of confidence if not complacency because i think, you know, those forces favor re-election and have for decades and decades

statistically. stuart: john, let's pause for a second on the money side of things. let's go around the block here. we've got lots of experts around our table and in various studios around the country. my question is, look, we got the maximum pressure, got the extra sanctions, we've got the military in place and we've got a hard line president trump who is not going to retreat. it doesn't look like this man's retreating. he's got a red line, he doesn't retreat. my question now is what's next? i'm going to go around the block and just see if our experts can say what's next, where are we going? >> so we mustn't forget, this region is a target-rich area. i do worry about the shipping lanes. i flew over the persian gulf just a few weeks ago. you can see them, naked eye from a commercial jet. iran is going to attempt and it has three submarines, it's going to attempt strikes. we may have to re-flag vessels of our allies as we once did before when there was a tanker war. i also think that there is an element inside iraq, a small

element that is pro-iranian that is going to be itching at the bit to target u.s. interests and u.s. allies. i think the strike on kurdish territory, not just in erbil but elsewhere is an effort to drag the kurds into a war and that is to create more unrest. we are going to see a lot more activity and a lot more conflict and the united states will be restrained throughout. stuart: conflict, here it comes. ollie north, now what? what's next? >> the dow 30k, the impeachment is going to proceed, he's going to be exonerated in the senate, he's going to get reelected in november, and the house is going to go republican. how's that for a prospectus? stuart: it's an interesting speculation about the future. we'll take it. hold on again for a second. i have more news. this is on the plane downed in tehran, the boeing plane. what's new? lauren: the boeing 737 jet, 176

people killed. it was ukrainian airlines. ukraine is now, the foreign minister says they have access to the black boxes. iran is denying that they shot down that plane by accident, perhaps thinking it was a u.s. military jet. it was right when the missile strikes were happening. they are denying, of course, their involvement but ukraine now has the black boxes. their foreign minister says they received full cooperation from the iranian side in this crash investigation but to something that you said, has this evidence been bulldozed. maybe they found some remnants of the missiles. has that been bulldozed. stuart: if you've got the black box, you can tell what happened, can't you? ashley: depending how badly it's damaged. we understand it is and some of the memory has been lost. how much has been lost, you have a voice recorder and then a data recorder. so how much of that will provide the -- some of the answers, we hope. stuart: we don't know at this point exactly -- lauren: previously the ukrainian president wanted to speak with secretary of state mike pompeo specifically about this. not sure that they did but we

can imagine they will if they haven't. stuart: got it. welcome back, kt mcfarland. you were with us yesterday. after the absence of some years. back with us today. >> can't get enough of it. stuart: nor can we. you have heard what's going on, added sanctions on iran, maximum pressure, surrounded militarily. your take on what's happened today? >> this is the very beginning of the trump administration set out the maximum pressure campaign, using all elements of american military power, economic power, diplomatic power, psychological power, to target certain regimes including iran's. so he set it up so we have a strong american economy, we are energy independent, we don't need middle east oil anymore, we have a trump military buildup, our military is strong and where it ought to be and we are now in a position to continue to squeeze. now, the mistake previous presidents have always made is that they have put sanctions on or punishments and then the country that we were after, they come to the negotiating table and say great, we are going to now release all the sanctions,

everything is going to be fine, we give up our leverage at exactly the wrong time. trump is squeezing and using that leverage and i think he's basically saying to the ayatollah you've got three choices. you watched us with suleimani and know we can crush you militarily. number two, you know that we can tighten the screws economically. you are already on your knees. 80 million people are struggling to survive. we can tighten that screw. or third, we would love to have you come to the negotiating table without preconditions and let's talk about a way to move forward for both of our countries. stuart: steve hilton, come back into this. how do you see it? i mean, can you see the ayatollahs bending a little and saying okay, we'll talk? can you see that happening? >> i can, actually, precisely because of the situation kt described and the fact that they realize those are their choices. one of the most revealing things in this whole episode was the

muted iranian response and then the clear statement from the foreign minister that that's the end of our response. they wanted to send a message that they have done what they wanted to do, basically to save face at home. they're frightened of those first two options that kt laid out there. frankly, if it wasn't an election year, i think we could predict negotiations happening this year. but i think the iranians know that their interests lie in someone other than president trump winning in november and they don't want to give him a political prize this year, although i wouldn't rule it out. one final thing. i think these events really illustrate the truth about political candidates when they have to respond to real world events, and what we saw this week from the democrats is that all of their presidential candidates will be defined by the words that you least want to have attached to you as a political candidate and that is weak. their response has been weak. every single one, including and especially joe biden, whose

response to all this was well, we shouldn't have done this military action, it's all about diplomacy. that completely failed in the past and the weakness of his response and all the other democrats i think will be a real liability for them in november. stuart: kt? >> i think trump has set it up so that negotiations are possible, because as much as they may not like -- the iranians may not like the idea they would give trump a boost, american voters aren't going to be basing their votes on the iran negotiations. but i think what everybody, whether it's the iranians, north koreans or the chinese are going to realize is that trump is reelected, they are in a really bad position because trump term two is not who they want to deal with. stuart: who does. >> well, i like him. stuart: which rival, which foreign country that's our rival or our enemy, who wants to deal with trump? you never know what he's going to do. >> well, no, i think he's very deliberate and knows exactly what he's going to do but remember, john kerry and other

democratic leaders have been going around whispering in the ears of the iranians and the chinese don't worry, trump will be gone, he woen n't be re-elec, hold it out, wait it out, we'll be back soon, you can get whatever you want. stuart: the more likely it looks that mr. trump gets a second term, the more likely the iranians come to the table because they know the writing's on the wall? that's your position? >> wouldn't you say that? stuart: yes, i would. >> okay. stuart: in the unlikely event i'm a mutuallah in tehran, i wo say that. charles hurt, i hope you're still with us. i want to go back to the presentation from pompeo and mnuchin. if our viewers are just joining us, i will tell you this. new sanctions against iran, maximum pressure being exerted. but what struck me about that presentation was the near hysterical questioning from the media. they kept returning to this concept of what was imminent.

why was suleimani taken out. you say it was because it was imminent action on his part against americans. they couldn't believe it. they didn't want to know about it. they questioned him constantly about imminent, was it really imminent, was it not imminent, what's going on, mr. secretary. it was hysterical. >> it's interesting and of course, the second most asked question was why did you rely on your intelligence services after you have been -- after the administration has been questioning intelligence services all of this time. that's a really sneaky question and it hides like three or four lies in it. the most important of which is the president, he's not attacking the intelligence services for the sake of attacking intelligence services. he's attacked intelligence services who were involved in a spying operation against his campaign, peddling a bunch of nonsense so the idea that since

the president has been skeptical and critical of the intelligence services for what they did to his campaign, somehow means that he shouldn't trust intelligence services when they tell him there's an imminent attack to our embassies in iraq and we need to take this guy out, it's just -- it's mind-blowing. unfortunately, it's the state of journalism if that's what you want to call it in america today. they have completely given up any pretense of trying to cover this president fairly or with any sense of objectivity whatsoever. it's all this gotcha nonsense and really, they are aiding and comforting iran. they are aiding and comforting terrorists when they do this. stuart: i've got more on this concept of the imminent attack from them against us and that's why suleimani was taken out. kt mcfarland is close to this administration. what do you know about the intelligence sources we relied upon to go and take out suleimani?

>> i don't know the specific ones in this case but there's something called actionable intelligence where the intelligence community usually has three sources. one source would be they have seen an increase of chatter, like cell phones or text messages. the second one would be a human source, where somebody has come to them saying i think something's going on. the third thing, somebody who is close to the action that says i think here's, i'm going to rat on my boss kind of thing. then the third thing is they would see materials, money, something moving. all three of those things taken together give a pretty good indication. what they don't often give you or what they don't always give you is what date and what time, or they don't say which specific target. now, they would have a window, maybe it's going to be in the next week or two because they know once they start seeing all those three things, the country or the bad guy or whoever it is is getting prepared to act and they don't want to let it go stale. so my guess is that's what they had. actionable intelligence. stuart: that was actionable intelligence. they used that expression,

actionable intelligence. >> yes. stuart: okay. jamil, what do you have to add? >> i think that's exactly right. look, first of all, imminence isn't even part of american law. it's part of international law, the idea you need an imminent threat. beyond that, you don't need to know the exact date and time of a strike before you respond. it's enough, as kt says, that you have evidence, you have intelligence indicating they are actively planning an attack and by the way, it's the exact same standard the obama administration used to kill an american citizen in north africa. so this idea somehow that we needed more to go after qassem suleimani was the blood of our 600 americans on his own hands is ridiculous. stuart: i'm going to give the last word for the moment to ollie north. come back in again, please. i want your assessment of whether or not we are going to get regime change in iran because of this maximum pressure campaign that we just embarked on.

>> it's not going to happen before the end of mr. trump's first term. all of this is headed in that direction. that's the good news. 80 million people in iran, it's not a little tiny, little backwoods place. this is a very well educated country. it's impoverished right now by the sanctions and i can see the possibility early next term of things beginning to change in a very dramatic fashion in the right direction for the iranian people and the rest of this planet. stuart: okay. i want to get back to the subject of money. we spent a lot of time this morning on that presentation by pompeo and mnuchin. but we should not forget what's been going on on the market. we are down at the moment, off 60 odd points for the dow industrials but earlier, we did hit 29,000. i was interviewing larry kudlow, chief economics guy at the white house. i had him on the air this morning right there at 10:00 eastern time, and that's the moment when the dow hit 29,000. i want to bring john allison

back into this, because he was talking about -- larry kudlow was talking a lot about the wealth effect, how this huge runup in the dow and the market overall, 12.8 trillion extra on the value of american business, how does that flow out into the economy and affect the economy? he said yeah, there is a very significant wealth effect. went on to point out that it's not a question of the rich getting richer and the poor being left behind on the market. he made the point that the bottom 50% of our population in terms of income and wealth, the bottom 50% has seen their net worth go up 47%. but the top 1%, who is supposed to be getting much, much richer, their net worth has only gone up 13%. john allison, that speaks volumes to me about the value of a stock market rally. >> well, there's no question that the wealth effect is more

broad-based than people think and actually, that's a very interesting statistic larry kudlow quoted and that you just quoted because what it indicates is actually the very wealthy tend not to be as invested in public markets as those lower down the economic totem pole so regular people tend to be invested in the s&p and if you have -- if you are very wealthy you may be invested in private equity. so that i believe would account for why there's that discrepancy. also, the other thing to keep in mind with the wealth effect, this is not glamorous but it's a fact, is that many many companies still have pension plans and those pension plans still have obligations. if the stock market goes up, that improves those companies' ability to pay out and therefore, improves or reduces the amount of money they've got to put into those pension plans to fund them. all that is positive as well. so there is really nothing that is negative about the wealth effect. the last thing i would say, and this is not unimportant as you know, you live in a world where psychology is very important,

how people feel about themselves, the confidence level is all very important and a positive economic and financial and stock market type of environment does help people make more aggressive decisions, helps them to take risks because they feel better and more confident. stuart: john, thank you. i want to get back to the politics of this and the iran situation. charles hurt is still with us. i know you've got to go but can you cram in another 60 seconds, last word to you? >> i think the real challenge going forward actually is for president trump, because of course, the situation, you know, he has a very strong hand in iran right now, but remember, he got elected promising to get out of the middle east and promising to get out of these scrapes around the world that have been so costly to us both in blood and treasure, and so he's got to figure out how to balance that, and if he is not able to -- he needs to be able to use things like the strike on suleimani to

strengthen his hand to get troops out, and if he doesn't, then i think that certainly it will be -- certainly his supporters will be disappointed if he doesn't figure out a way to make this into an exit for the united states. stuart: charles hurt, thanks for being with us. good stuff today. we appreciate it. thank you. ashley? ashley: a comment from the president coming out, not in a tweet, i may add, but from his press office on his executive orders on this iranian sanctions. he concludes by saying the united states will continue to counter the iranian regime's destructive and destabilizing behavior. iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. these punishing economic sanctions will remain until the iranian regime changes its behavior. the united states is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it. stuart: okay. changes its behavior. ashley: yes. towards the united states and other countries within the region. he said that two days ago at the press conference. stuart: pressure stays on until you get a change in bad

behavior. okay. do you have something new on boeing for us? lauren: yes. boeing, their 737 jet was the one that crashed, they will inspect the black boxes. so we know that the ukrainian foreign minister is there, has access to those black boxes, and boeing, the maker of the jet, will be able to inspect them, too. how damaged they are, we don't know if they were purposely damaged, we don't know. but there is access. iran is granting that access. stuart: to boeing people? lauren: boeing, dow jones is reporting that boeing is to inspect them from that jet and of course, awaiting more news. ashley: at first it was just themselves and ukraine because the airliner belonged to ukraine, and they said no to the united states, no to boeing. but they have changed. stuart: what we don't know is how much damage there is to the black boxes and whether they can indeed reveal the true story of what happened. soon to be revealed.

>> very important was the sanctions on steel, materials, manufacturing. that is going to specifically hurt the irgc, iranian revolutionary guard that controls a lot of the construction and weaken its capability for weapons manufacturing inside iran and inside iraq and also, change of behavior is also going to be required of the united states. i have to reiterate we must strengthen and deepen our alliance with the kurds, realize the sovereign kurdistan because that is the future to stabilizing that region. that is the only place in the middle east that's now growing in population. stuart: you are close to the kurds? >> i'm close to the kurds. stuart: are you a spokesperson for the kurds? >> i'm not, although i have met with members of the kurdish government including the deputy speaker of the house. i'm just a person that recognizes the largest ethnic nationality in the world, 48 million people, denied a state, 700 years of persecution. they have the story that they

share of the jewish nation and the creation of an independent kurdistan could be as monumental as the creation of the state of israel. it's something that every american soldier that's ever been there wants to see, any american that goes there wants to see and it would be a tremendous deterrent to an islamic iran, a rising islamist turkey and it would calm down the southern pro-shia area, too. it would be tremendous. stuart: "varney & company" has become a platform for the kurds. >> i agree. i have long advocated the united states does need a strategic partner in the region and a new kurdistan would be the perfect partner. they are democratic, they have equal rights for women, equal rights for minority, they took in the yazidis and the christians when they were being persecuted. they are very pro-american and they are rich. they have oil. they would be self-sufficient. stuart: steve hilton, you're back again.

what do you have? >> just a couple of points i wanted to pick up on, the topics you have been covering. first, this imminent debate, this endless obsession with the word imminent. honestly, it is a total red herring. let's just be clear about what's going on here. suleimani was an enemy combatant waging war against america. he's done so many attacks just in the last few months. his killing was completely legitimate under the rules of war. there's no need for it to have been imminent. so the whole debate around that is a complete red herring. second point if i may leap to an entirely other topic but one that's incredibly important and you and i talk about often which is your larry kudlow conversation. forgive me, i didn't see the interview, but actually, what he was talking about there is one example of what we are seeing in this trump economy, which is that it's really a blue collar boom. it's not just that statistic that's so fascinating around the increase in wealth for the lower end of the income scale. you see it in income rises as

well. every month in the jobs report we see these figures roughly coming in around 3% for earnings growth and that's pretty good. it's ahead of inflation. but if you look at it by income scale, it's the bottom 10% and the bottom 20%, their earnings are going up by numbers like 7%, 8%. it's a huge change, where those who are at the bottom of the scale are doing best under this administration. it's fantastic to see. stuart: okay. let me wrap up the money side of things for a moment. the dow jones industrial average as we speak is down 55 points. let's not forget that it did reach 29,000 earlier this morning. right around 10:00 eastern time, 29,000. you've got your hand raised. ashley: boeing, news about boeing, shaving about 33, 34 points off of that. that's just one stock. stuart: by the way, it took less than two months to go from 28,000 to 29,000. ashley: 37 trading sessions.

stuart: thank you very much for commentary right there. important stuff, because when have you ever seen a rise like that so fast, so furious and it's still going on. okay. we are down right now, but we did hit 29,000 not too long ago. now this. i can't wait for next tuesday. the democrats' debate in des moines, iowa and the main topic is supposed to be the economy. this is going to be fascinating. right now, we have solid growth, historically low unemployment, rapidly rising wages, low interest rates, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. you got it? there will be seven democrats on the debate stage. what are they going to say about all of this? two words. income inequality. that is their answer to the trump boom. a common theme will be the economy is not working for everyone. as long as there's anyone living paycheck to paycheck, as long as anyone's economic demands are not fully satisfied, this

economy is a bad economy. nonsense, of course. but that's their line. well, if the economy is so bad, what will they do about it? how will they turn it around? every single candidate wants to tax the rich, tax big business and spend trillions going green. they will not even try to explain how this would make everything magically okay. what they want to do is gin up the emotion of jealousy. you've got more than me, that's not fair, we're going to take it off you. ironic, isn't it, that two of the frontrunners are billionaires. tom steyer, who made his money as a hedge fund manager, has spent a fortune on ads and it's worked. he's moved up in key polls. he's bought his way on to the debate stage. then there's mike bloomberg, the uber billionaire. he spent over $160 million already and is now one of the leaders of the pack. here he comes next week, income inequality.

the economy doesn't work for everyone. a couple of billionaires who made their money on wall street buy their way into the race. here it comes. if you can bring yourself to sit through that debate, and that's a long shot because the tv ratings have been falling dramatically, but if you stick it out, keep this in the back of your mind. the jobless rate is the lowest in generations. wages for the lowest paid workers are rising fastest and three out of four americans, us, we believe the economy is doing just fine. keep this in mind. the best way to destroy prosperity is to put a socialist in the white house. how about that. ashley: wow. stuart: here's the person who is going to give me some applause. rnc's cassie smedile. am i right or am i absolutely right? >> absolutely right and then some, stuart. but you're right, these democrats are going to twist themselves into pretzels trying

to make their argument about why we should move to this socialist model and they are going to be skirting around the facts that this economy is working for so many millions of americans because donald trump has made deliberate decisions, policies decisions to make it so, to empower the american people to be in charge of their lives. that's why we're not just seeing record low unemployment rates for every sector of the country but you touched on that all-important number of wage growth. that's what we continue to see rise. it drives the democrats crazy that donald trump is not only delivering results for the american people but it's key results that are really hard to come by like that all-important wage growth. stuart: steve hilton, come into this, because you and i were brought up, i think, in a similar environment in britain and that was a neo-socialist environment in which jealousy was the rage. working class people looked at the upper classes and said the rich just keep on getting richer, you've got it, i want it, i'm going to take it. you have seen all of this

before. i don't think it works in america. >> no. it doesn't. and i also remember, as you will, margaret thatcher changing the culture around that with that incredibly simple statement that she made when she was trying to turn around the socialist nightmare that britain had fallen into, which is that you don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. that's just a fact of life. the facts of life turn out to be conservative, as she also said, and i think that that pro-enterprise, pro-growth, pro-aspiration, pro-opportunity mindset and agenda and policy results that you are seeing from this president are infectious and i think that by the time you get to november, whoever the nominee is, people will see that they just want to keep this going. they don't want to go back to something else. they don't want that resentment of the rich. i think that what you are really seeing here from president trump is a really exciting intellectual revolution because what has produced this is not

just the traditional conservative ideas on cutting taxes, for example, and cutting regulation which is a big part of what we are seeing. the other reason that you are seeing this tremendous economic success is the non-traditional policy agenda that he's put forth, particularly on immigration but also on trade and on china, because that isn't part of what republicans have talked about but putting those things together has produced what i talked about earlier, this blue collar boom in which you referenced just then, which is it's the lowest paid who are doing the best under this president. stuart: i think we need another british accent on this. somebody else who was born and raised in -- ashley: i just remember the '70s for sure. and into the '80s. my gosh, the trains were on strike, the garbage collectors, i remember sitting through power cuts when the power folks went on strike, four hours on, four hours off, sitting there by candlelight listening to radio. and margaret thatcher came along, busted the unions, put everything into the private

sector and things got a whole lot better but it was a miserable existence, that '70s, prior to the thatcher government was awful. stuart: i'm just going to break in here. i've got this news,it's just developing, just coming at me. articles of impeachment will be sent to the senate next week. in other words, the delay is over. what's the source of that, please? lauren: nancy pelosi. stuart: that was a statement from speaker pelosi. a letter to -- a letter from -- to the democrats from speaker pelosi. the articles of impeachment will be sent next week to the senate. lauren: it was three weeks ago, december 18th that president trump was impeached and now with all these other developments, she says she's asked jerry nadler, chairman of the house judiciary committee, to be prepared to bring to the floor next week a resolution to appoint managers and transmit the articles of impeachment. stuart: cassie smedile, you just heard the news.

the articles of impeachment to the senate next week. your take on that? >> so much for urgency. nancy pelosi has lost this issue with the american people. she has been losing the support of those in her own caucus and even some democrat senators. she knew she had no political leverage. it was the right thing to do to finally send them so we can finally get on with the business of this and get back to the business of the american people. i guess we are glad they are finally, this is finally starting so we can get back to the priorities of the american people that they actually care about. stuart: steve hilton, my conclusion is speaker pelosi bent to the pressure of other democrats who were getting tired of the delay, what is in fact a pointless delay. she caved. did she? >> she did and that's the second time she's caved because she caved on impeachment itself. she resisted it because in her heart, she knew this was not going to work out well politically for them. she's basically right about that. she caved to the far left and

extreme -- extremists in her party a few months ago just to let the whole thing happened. she caved again to send them across to the senate but the real point about all this, i think, is that it just feels so much like yesterday's story. it seems to me that the whole country has moved on from impeachment. the whole thing didn't work, it feels like a colossal waste of time. yes, we are going to go through the motions in the senate. yes, the president is going to be cleared, people just want to get back to actually serious, substantive matters and this whole political farce is just going to, i think, help the president in his bid for re-election. stuart: okay. i want to just give one last word to keeshgsqanta ahmed. you have been sitting here patiently. go back to the presentation from pompeo and mnuchin. you happy with it? you comfortable with it? it's good? >> i think it's excellent. i think it demonstrates a lot of power, authority and restraint on the united states part. we're not looking for an open war with iran or anybody else in this region but it also sends a very clear message if you are

c cantankerous in the area, if you are going to target allied ships, drones, saudi arabia's largest oil installation facility, there will be grave consequences and we have to remind the world that we will take action when it's required, and we do protect our citizens and our allies to the nth degree and will continue to do so. stuart: thanks very much for being with us today. it was your first time on the show but it was a good one. >> a pleasure. thank you. stuart: thank you very much indeed. thank you. all right. john allison, the guy who is handling money on the program today. john allison, what happens next week when these articles of impeachment go to the senate, when we have the democrats debate and they will be talking about income inequality, does all this wrap it up, does this interfere with the bull market? >> no. i'm sorry to sound so boring but once again, the fact is that impeachment or anything flowing

from it, not just for this administration but going back in history, does not affect markets unless it affects the economy and the financial system, and there's nothing indicative of that in this impeachment thing. the discussion of inequality is something that's been going on for several years, it's not just part of this campaign and so i don't think this has any impact in it. what i would be worried about, if you want to get worried about something, look at the underlying companies and see how well they're doing. they are doing well but if one had to look somewhere, i would look there. i just don't see it right now, and when i do, if i'm on your show when something bad happens, i will certainly tell you. stuart: you know, john, i have to straighten you out on something. there is absolutely nothing boring about a bull market run like the one we've seen. and that's a fact, young man. >> okay. i will second that one. okay. stuart: deuce. i call it deuce. john, thank you very much indeed. appreciate it. i'm staying on your money. i want to take a look at apple. i'm doing this because that's the stock of the last year and a

half, frankly. it's been on a tear. it's gone past $300 a share. it's at $311 right now and we have a guest on this. he says apple's success was built around music. oh, wait a minute. wait a minute. come on, come on, come on, come on. michael hagelow, what is this? apple's success built around music? get out of here. >> a little bit. words, music and performance. stuart: i will give you that. >> okay. fair enough. i wrote a book live from cupertino and it really kind of takes you through the story of apple. i was at all three apples, apple computer, which was the lounge act, apple inc. which was the steve jam band. and i was at tim cook's apple which is a concert band. so i've got a little perspective there. stuart: tim cook has been a fantastic ceo. >> tim is. stuart: who would have thought he could take over from the great steve jobs, the visionary, and fulfill the vision? because that's what he did. >> but often in music, as you

see with folks like mick jagger, here's a great businessman, great musician, so tim, steve was a mick jagger. tim is the masterful manager. he's the masterful one to take talent and do things that others didn't know to do with it. so tim, he's a spectacular guy. he is definitely spectacular. stuart: when you said it's all based on music, it's not real music. >> well, it's -- stuart: ensemble, so to speak. >> indeed. but mi'm a former drummer, i know, that's not a real instrument. you know, i came to this with that perspective, that's how i joined apple, and i searched for what to hang it on, and the nine chapters of the book are all about how great music is made but how apple is made. rhythm, storytelling, all of these components of music, are part of the culture of apple. i say this all the time. apple is not a company, it's a

band. stuart: okay. but look, it's the outstanding company of our generation. >> indeed. stuart: that would be my opinion. do you think it's still in place to remain the outstanding company of our generation? >> i think at $450, $500 a share would be absolutely -- stuart: you are a market analyst to boot? >> no, no, no. but there's such a culture and there's such a catalog of great tunes in it that absolutely, especially with leadership, with tim, it's going much, much further. stuart: that is a very good analogy. >> thank you. stuart: caught me off guard. >> did it? stuart: yes, it did. >> that's hard to do. stuart: no, it's not. in a rock and roll day like this, it's very easy to catch me off guard. >> well, i appreciate that. stuart: michael hagelow -- >> as a first generation american, i have struggled with the name. my immigrant mother -- stuart: from?

>> germany. father from hungary. yeah. stuart: welcome to america. >> thank you. thank you. stuart: great having you on the show. >> a great pleasure. stuart: sure thing. we have seen a remarkable day and i want to wrap it up with our remarkable guests. steve hilton, i know you have got to go because you've got a show coming up. but you give me the last word on what you have seen in all aspects today. go. >> well, i think what we've seen is this president showing that he is a transformational leader of this country on every single field imaginable because you are seeing it diplomatically, in foreign policy, militarily, economically, you name it. he's changed the way the presidency works with his personal style, more transparent than we have ever seen but he's more importantly changed the presidency and the agenda of this country substantively in a way that i don't think is sufficiently appreciated. the massive success on so many fronts at the same time i think

is pretty historic and i think it sets him up incredibly well for an election campaign later this year. stuart: just give me 20 seconds, is boris johnson of a similar vein to donald trump? >> i think the thing that unites them is this kind of irreverent approach that says i don't have to do it the same way it's always been done, i've got a different approach. i think he's absolutely the same kind of leader and what's really important is that he's a positive leader, after the dreary years of theresa may where nothing happened and nothing got done, it was all gray and frustrating, you've got someone with energy and positive drive and i think it's going to be a fantastic few years for the uk. stuart: all right. an excellent 20 seconds there, young man. very good indeed. now, i've got news, as if this is not an active news day. we've got more? lauren: the u.s. envoy to iran says it would seem that iran has concluded its response for the killing of suleimani by the united states.

stuart: i'm sorry, could you say that? lauren: the u.s. envoy brian hook says it seemed that iran has concluded its response for the u.s. ill canning of soleimani. if you remember back when this all started on january 7, iran's prime minister said iran took and concluded proportionate ate measures in self-defense so now we're seeing word concluded again, iran had responded this week and now it appears by this statement that it's over. stuart: k. t. mcfarland still with us that sounds positive to me. >> very positive and what it says i think is a signal that they have been sending from the very beginning of the week which seems like a month ago that they actually want to go in a different direction, and so if they're saying that we've concluded our response, what is the next question? what's next? i think act 2 becomes a u.s. iranian negotiation of some sort. stuart: that would be spectacular. i have to say thank you to all

of our guests there's so many i can't name them all individually in the 10 seconds i've got left but ladies and gentlemen thanks very much for being with us on an extraordinary day. 29,000 on the dow, articles of impeachment going to the senate, what else? ashley: sanctions. stuart: neil it's yours. neil: you name it, thank you very much stuart varney a nice weekend in the meantime we've been clawing these these latest sanctions we've added to the iranians and think it might be a reason we backed down from the brief moment we were above 29,000. there's a lot of the detail and we'll get to that in just a second but a lot of it has to do with the fact that the u.s. is now designating at least a dozen to two dozen iranian metal producers and chinese interests that deal with them, including mining companies and the like, we don't know how many chinese interests, we don't know how big that impact could be on china, but all of this is timed around the meeting next week