absolutely, it senses your movements and automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable. save $1,000 on the sleep number 360 special edition smart bed. plus, free premium delivery when you add an adjustable base. maria: thanks to this all-star panel. we will see you soon. have a great weekend, everybody. right to stu we go. "varney & company" starting right now. take it away. stuart: thanks, maria. good stuff. all right, everyone. good morning, one and all. i've got two news items and a negative stock market response. let's start with the news that broke around 7:00 this morning eastern time. the u.s. will move to block shipments of computer chips to huawei. china's most important technology company. the market came down on that because there's a possible reaction against apple and boeing and a couple of other dow stocks that's helping to send the dow down. then came the retail sales

numbers, 8:30 this morning. we knew it was going to be bad because bricks and mortar stores have been largely shut down, and it was bad. april sales down 16.4% in april after dropping 8% in march. so here's the market, with just minutes to go to the opening bell. red ink all over the place but not as bad as it was. the dow off about 180, 25 down for the s&p, 121 down for the nasdaq. that's of course inspired by apple, which is way, way down this morning. what we're looking for is how fast we can rebound on the other side of this really bad economic news. that's the other side of the coin. the great reopening. which gathers steam this weekend. there are only a handful of states that are still trying to enforce a complete lockdown. this will be a test of our willingness to get out and about, our willingness to travel, eat out and shop. this is important. we need to open the economy. we need to get back to work.

this weekend, i think it's a prelude to memorial day next weekend which is the unofficial start of summer. two sides to the coin this morning. on the show today, alex azar on the president's warp speed effort to get a vaccine. and larry kudlow on economic recovery and that brewing dispute with china. we have a lot to go at and we will. "varney & company" is about to begin. stuart: let's get straight to this news. the u.s. blocking new technology going to huawei. susan, explain the fallout from this, please. susan: so the department of commerce says they will try to limit the amount of high technology and components that are shipped over to huawei for use. we know huawei is on the u.s. trade blacklist and there are reports of physical shipments of high tech chips was actually blocked from being shipped over to huawei in china.

in retaliation for this, if we can bring up this tweet from the "global times" which is the propaganda mouthpiece, one of them for the chinese government, again threatening retaliation and they say shares of qualcomm, cis cisco, apple, boeing, sources of possible targets for retaliation amid u.s. moves against huawei that took place in premarket trading session. we know this is one of the pressure points for china. for instance, huawei employs close to 100,000 people in the chinese economy and they are one of the most important, if not the most important technology company that still, by the way, has links to the chinese government so if you pressure and squeeze this company by limiting the access to u.s. supplies and namely chips, that's going to bring this company to its knees. huawei, by the way, is the second to third largest smartphone shipper in the world and we know they are the leader when it comes to 5g telecom components and network gear that they have been selling to governments around the world.

stuart: tell me about this $12 billion factory that's being planned i think for arizona to make chips. bringing jobs back to america by the sound of it. susan: 1600 jobs, talking about a $12 billion investment over the next eight years. it looks like ground will start to be broken next year, 2021. it's set to open in the year 2024. this is a smaller plant compared to what tsmc does. they are the largest contract chip manufacturer in the world. they make those chips that go into your iphone. they are spending about $12 billion. they will make about 20,000 of these high tech silicon wafers. typically their big plants reel off about 100,000 wafers so this is a much smaller addition but look, this is something they talked about for awhile and i think it's a victory for the trump administration to bring back supplies of high tech components which is what secretary of state and even president trump has said he wanted to do. stuart: got that. susan, thank you very much indeed. the dow is now down 230 points right before the opening bell.

marc tepper is with us. is this just about china and the possible retaliation against some dow stocks, or is it also about that rotten retail sales report? >> i think it's about both. you know, with regard to china, i mean, china needs to be dealt with strongly and swiftly. they have definitely proven they lack transparency, integrity. you can't believe anything they say. they have been forthright moments ago, we may be months closer to some sort of treatment or vaccine and it's pretty obvious that they have just been intentionally deceptive along the way. they knew their economy was going to be down 20%, they wanted to make sure the rest of the world wasn't up. look, we need to retaliate, that's obviously weighing on stocks right now, but there's a lot of other stuff going on right now. really, the main thing we're looking at is that the market has really gotten ahead of where the economy is, and if we just continue to open the economy at a snail's pace, at some point, you know, the market's going to

say hey, economy, it's time to show me you are actually doing what's priced in right now. stuart: that's the story of the next couple of weeks is how fast we come back and open the economy. stay there, mark. i will get back to you in a second. i want to bring in retail analyst gerald storch because look, we've got this 16% drop in retail sales in april, following an 8% drop in march. ubs says 100,000 bricks and mortar stores close in the next five years. but look, gerald, what i'm interested in is this weekend and next weekend and whether people come back and start shopping again. initially, the reports are they are very cautious about going back. what are you seeing? >> well, look, retail sales were down. that proves what happens when you close all the stores and terrify people so they don't go out and tell them not to go out. we proved that they don't shop. now, what's amazing in a different way is that 80% of the sales from last year were still there. i mean, we lost 20% of sales. so what were they shopping for?

groceries, that was good, but the internet. stuart, this is the first time in history e-commerce has hit 20%. it's up to 20% of retail sales when you exclude cars and gasoline. new milestone there. that was up sharply. that's going to last. they will keep doing that. there are other reasons. i think in a recessionary environment which we are kind of in right now at least for the short term, people are still going to go to walmart, to dollar general, those companies are going to do great. there is also one more nugget in this report that we saw which is that the building supplies and materials category was up year over year so people are still going to work on their homes. home depot, lowe's, do things on the outside. people will come out, they will come out slowly, they will look around, you know, see what their fellow countrymen are doing, they are going to social distance, they are going to be smart and it's going to come back. the consumer will lead us out of this situation. stuart: real fast, is it going to happen quickly? it's a cautious return so far.

>> well, it depends on really whether or not we see a spike in cases. if it continues to be low over the summer, the trends right now look pretty good almost every place, there are pockets here and there. if it looks like it's pretty good, i think people will come out in really heavy numbers. if it starts to spike again, they will do what smart people do. we have to count on people to exercise independent, smart judgment. that's what they will do. if it's safe, they will go out. stuart: thanks for being with us on an important day. always like it. see you soon. thank you. now, this is in my opinion a very big weekend for reopening. 11 states including washington, d.c. easing restrictions as of today. take me through some of the major reopenings, ashley. ashley: let's take three of those states, stu. let's begin with new york. as we know, one of the hardest, if not the hardest hit state from the coronavirus, already today, may 15th, outdoor recreational activities can begin. landscaping and gardening,

drive-in movie theaters, if there are any still out there, you can go use those. louisiana, now, this is another state, especially in new orleans, that's been hit hard. interesting, churches, restaurants, gyms and museums, movie theaters and barber shops, hair salons, nail salons at 25% capacity. this is signs of real progress. then let's look at oregon on the west coast. furniture stores can reopen today. also art galleries, jewelry stores and boutiques, child care services as well, summer school and summer camp. you start looking at these items, you get a sense that we are definitely heading in the right direction. stuart: i agree with that. thank you. now, let's look at abbott labs. i think that stock is down. yes, it is, down over 2%. there are questions about the accuracy of the abbott fast test. what do we have on this, lauren? lauren: the fda received 15 reports of false negatives and

an nyu study found much of the same. bottom line is if this rapid test shows you have the coronavirus, you test positive, you have it. here's the problem. false negatives are coming up. the change abbott is making and by the way, it's the second change to this test, is that if you get a negative, you should also take another test to confirm the negative. upshot also, the president, president trump and the vice president, this is the test that they do take. it gives people hesitancy about the results. stuart: thank you very much indeed. i'm going to ask health and human services secretary alex azar about the abbott test and also about this possible executive order that brings drug manufacturing back to the united states. that was big news and we of course are on it. the new york stock exchange opens, reopens, i should say, the floor, that is, may 26th. it's been closed since march 23rd. we have the new york stock exchange president, stacy

cunningham, on the show next hour. what's that floor, the trading floor, what's it going to look like and the obvious question, do we really need to reopen when we've got electronic trading going pretty strong? right now, the dow industrials are down over 200 points, 238, to be precise. lot of red ink coming up. busy day breaking news and we have larry kudlow on the show. i want to know what he thinks about the future of our relationship with china and how fast we can bounce back and reopen this economy. joe biden doubling down in his first interview since being exposed as one of the top obama officials unmasking michael flynn. watch this. >> i was never a part or had any knowledge of any criminal investigation into flynn while i was in office, period. not one single time. stuart: there was no followup to that, by the way, on msnbc. this is going to be a problem for the biden campaign and i'm going to go right at it in the my take top of the next hour.

speaker pelosi, her $3 trillion relief bill is her party's starting offer, that's what she says. the president says it's dead on arrival. the house votes on it in just a few hours. i want to know what texas congressman lance gooden will actually be in the next stimulus package, not the pelosi package but the next one. it's friday. just getting started. was a verg period of time. up and down. depression to exuberance. and you could name many, many cycles like that over the years. my generation, having come through so many wars and so many things... persistence. it's the heartbeat of this country. stick with it. ♪ tums ver(bell rings)la stick stick with it. when heartburn hits fight back fast... ...with tums chewy bites...

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well, it's an 1800-page liberal wish list. it strikes me it's hardly salvageab salvageable. just to give you an example of the absurdity, it mentions the word cannabis 68 times, more than the word jobs or hire are

mentioned in the entire bill. it's a parade of absurdities that can hardly be taken seriously. stuart: just in a few hours, the house is going to vote on that $3 trillion bill. let's bring in congressman lance gooden, republican from the state of texas. congressman, look, we know that there's a lot of stuff in the $3 trillion bill that you don't like and a lot of other people don't like and it's going to be dead on arrival so let's move on to the next stimulus package or rescue package, call it what you will. what do you want to see in it? >> i want to see fixes to the problems with the small business administration's loan programs. we have heard nightmares, democrats and republicans have been disappointed in treasury and the way they have implemented that. i want to see relief for state and local governments, not necessarily in the way the democrats have put it in this bill, and i also, republicans, we want to help get people back to work. we want to fix the unintended consequences of continuing to pay increased unemployment

insurance. we want to help american families that are struggling but at the same time, we don't want to help people stay at home and we don't want the government helping the unemployed compete with private industry. we've got people that don't want to work because it makes no sense if they can get more money from the government and democrats are focusing on things like making sure illegal immigrants get paid. it's crazy. stuart: so you do want to push more money out there. you have already got, what is it, five or six trillion from the federal reserve, three trillion from congress. you want more trillions of dollars going where you want it to go, but you are in favor of another big package? >> i don't love it. i think that we are going to eventually get there. that's my answer to that. i don't like that we're spending trillions and trillions of dollars. i don't know any republican that does. but i can tell you we are going to pump the brakes. the senate has already said there's no way they will even pass anything on their side before memorial day. there was talk we would be done and finished with the next package by then. that's not going to happen.

it will be june. republicans are prepared to work with democrats across the aisle and get something passed, but we don't want to get in a big hurry because we have so much money that's already been appropriated that hasn't even been spent yet. we want to see how that trickles through the economy. we want to make sure that whatever package comes out next ensures we are helping americans get back to work. democrats in today's bill are just throwing everything in there to appease the far left base so they can say they have done something. this bill that will pass today, later this evening, hwill go absolutely nowhere. stuart: let's talk about texas, your state. texas opened up to some degree on may 1st. since then, there has been a rise in coronavirus cases, 15,000 since the reopening on may 1st. do you feel like that's an acceptable risk, to open up the economy means more cases? is that a risk that you are prepared to accept? >> i'm prepared to accept the risk because that's my decision

to make. there is no burden on senior citizens to leave their home. the senior citizens i represent, they didn't need the government in the first place to tell them to stay home. they were going to do that any way. the vulnerable population needs to stay home if they choose to stay home. people that are able to work, need to be able to work. that number you quoted, it's not a huge spike. texas has been pretty steady and the goal was not to have a cure and this disease be totally eradicated before we open back up. the goal was to make sure our health care facilities were not overwhelmed and the curve was flattened. that's exactly what happened. there's no shortage of ventilators or hospital beds in texas right now. the horror stories up in your area, in new york, are just not happening in texas. we are prepared to get back to work. stuart: lance gooden, republican, texas, thanks for joining us. thank you. next case, protests at the capitol building in michigan overnight. tell me more. ashley: it's gotten real ugly in michigan. this stay-at-home order does not expire in michigan until may 28th. it's been in effect since march 24th. there are those that say it

needs to be relaxed. the capitol building in michigan was closed, the legislative session was canceled. this after death threats made online against michigan governor gretchen whitmer. it's gotten so ugly, those threats made by protesters who say they are attending a judgment day protest at the capitol now. the michigan governor has asked her legal advisers whether they can, in fact, ban firearms from within the capitol building. if you remember, it was the sight of lawmakers on the legislative floor while protesters were up in the gallery with guns flung around their shoulders. law makers saying we don't want to be wearing bulletproof vests, they don't like the situation. the question remains, can they ban firearms from the capitol building. they are not sure legally. in the meantime, you know, it's crossed the line, to say the least. stuart: you know where i stand on this. i'm absolutely opposed to that kind of intimidation of law makers of any stripe. i don't think you should do it. it's distraction. thanks, ash.

let's move on. potential bad news for the big delivery names on your screen. what's this, susan, the president wants the postal service to raise the delivery fees that they charge to the amazons of this world? susan: that's right. they want them renegotiated with amazon, fed ex, ups and the like. usually the postal service does the last leg delivery, last mile delivery, meaning delivery straight to the door, but president trump is not happy about the fees they have been charging by the likes of amazon and namely to jeff bezos. he's called the postal service a joke, the whipping boy of amazon, and we know the postal service is set to lose around $13 billion a year because of the depressed volumes when it comes to personal and marketing mail and packages because of the pandemic spread. so president trump and treasury secretary mnuchin also withholding a $10 billion stimulus payment over to the postal service because they want them to renegotiate the fees before they give them some of this stimulus money, and they have said before they want these

fees quadrupled, according to president trump. trump has also installed a new postmaster general as well, the finance -- he is the finance chair for the 2020rnc convention. don't forget, the postal service employs 600,000 across the country and this is a big deal for jobs across america. stuart: got it. thank you very much indeed. futures are off their lows, even though we got another pretty bad number on the economy. for industrial production, that is, down 11.2%. that was the biggest drop ever and it was in the month of april. futures coming back a bit. we are down 179 now on the dow. we'll be right back. looks like they picked the wrong getaway driver. they're going to be paying for this for a long time. they will, but with accident forgiveness allstate won't raise your rates just because of an accident, even if it's your fault.

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stuart: we've got three minutes to go, we will open the market at 9:30 and right now we are down 200 on the dow. big tech names, we check them every day, you have to, that's where the money is, and look at this. facebook's down, amazon's down 10, apple is down $9, just on the cusp of $300 a share. netflix, even netflix is down after reaching a series of record highs recently. and alphabet as in google, down about 13 bucks. big tech, down. that is premarket. how about the price of gas? i'm afraid to say it keeps on going up. the national average is now

$1.87. lauren, come into this, please. what's gas buddy saying about how many of us will be driving this summer? lauren: they did a survey, they found a third of us are taking a summer road trip, but the number could be more for two reasons. number one, so many people, half the people are still undecided about their summer plans as they watch the country reopen or not, and number two, yes, gas prices, they went up four cents this week but they are still a dollar cheaper than last year so they are trying to take advantage of that. stuart: absolutely. what about memorial day? are they saying that -- lauren: don't you want to know. stuart: yeah, tell me. what have they got for that? lauren: well, this is going to be the real temperature check, if you will, about americans wanting to get out and aaa typically does a study, how many people are going to travel this many miles for memorial day. they're not doing that this year because they can't. they don't have the data because of the coronavirus to make a good estimate. i can tell you that the

financial crisis during the recession, it did hit a low of 31 million. aaa says it's going to probably be worse than that, but they can't tell for sure. this is going to be the real barometer of the angst and pent-up demand for americans, how safe do they feel about going out and are they going to go somewhere. stuart: well, i would like to answer that personally and say i'm going to be out and about big-time with gas at $1.80, i'm out and about, case closed, but i don't know about my fellow americans. i suspect that they will be out and about but i don't know. on your screens, jc penney. i believe it's been halted. news pending. it is possible that they will announce bankruptcy as of today. we dmont that for sure but it has been halted. last trade was at 17 cents per share, down 12%. jc penney halted over pending bankruptcy news. okay. we've got 20 seconds to go.

we open this market on a friday morning. we are coming off a gain yesterday. the dow is still well above the 23,000 level. look at that number. we are still expecting a loss of about 200 points. we have some retaliation against some american big tech companies. that's dragging the dow down. some dreadful economic news as well. here we go. we are open on this friday and right from the get-go we're down 200 points. that's a little shy of a 1% drop. i can tell you that the vast majority of the dow 30 are in the red. they are down. we've got about 26 -- no, sorry, six up, 24 down. that's the state of play. we are off .9% for the dow. how about the s&p 500? it is down .97%. the nasdaq composite, i think you've got a big drop there. big techs are way down. that indicator is off 1.1%.

story of the day, we are going to block some technology going to huawei. in return, they are threatening to retaliate against our big tech companies. briefly, the story again, susan. susan: a senior u.s. official announced this new huawei export, control on this export ban on high tech chips will go live today at 2:15 p.m. this is a big deal for a big global tech company like huawei. the second or third largest smartphone shipper in the world and also the largest provider of network gear when it comes to 5g telecom communication systems. this is a way to basically pressure and squeeze the chinese government. they did this with zte just 18 months ago, again, another big network contributor and they also brought that company to its knees so huawei needs these chips in order to survive and this is a way i guess, a negotiating tactic, i would say, probably with the chinese government over coronavirus. stuart: the chinese, was it the foreign ministry, i'm not sure,

they specifically named apple and others as a possible target for retaliation. susan: the propaganda machine is going in overdrive in china so the "global times" says china could retaliate for this by squeezing apple, boeing, which sells a lot of planes still in china and qualcomm, one of the largest chip makers as well. so it's tit for tat and i feel like we are back to that trade war battle. stuart: thanks, susan. got to move on to jc penney, still halted. there is talk of a bankruptcy filing as of today. have we got anything else on this, lauren? lauren: yeah, we are expecting that bankruptcy filing. don't know that it happened just yet. look, jc penney is trading at 19 cents a share. they have $4 billion in debt. they have been working on a loan to allow them to get through the bankruptcy process and keep their stores open where they can be, or at least doing online orders. 800 stores, 90,000 workers. the trends, the theme here is,

and we saw this when you look at the retail sales numbers, the companies that were struggling before coronavirus, the virus hit them hard. the way out of this, we do not know because if customers weren't going to the stores before a store like jc penney or j. crew or neiman marcus who have filed for bankruptcy, are they going to feel safe and go to those type of stores now? retail sales minus 16.4% in april. doesn't look good for a company like penney's. stuart: let me sum it up for the department stores like this. the writing i think is on the wall. all right. let's move to the airlines. maybe the writing's on the wall for some of them as well. ashley, we have got new social distancing on planes being emphasized by a member of congress, i think. i think -- wasn't a member of congress really upset about full planes with the middle seat occupied? ashley: yes. yes, it was that twitter photo from the doctor returning to san francisco from new york. the plane was packed.

he said a large number of people on that flight were scared and did not like what they saw, and peter defazio, congressman from oregon, a democrat, chairman of the house transportation committee, said if i was traveling five hours in a tube seated within inches of my fellow passengers, i would be scared, too. he is leading a campaign to basically lobby the airlines to try and leave the middle seat open. right now, that's not a problem. the average number of passengers on those flights that do take off today is 31. but as we come out of this pandemic and start to get back to work, and maybe travel starts to pick up, it's going to be costly for airlines who are already burning through millions and millions of dollars of cash every day. now you're asking them to take out a seat. that means ticket prices are going to go up. stuart: i think you're right there. i don't think -- well, look, their revenue just won't make it. that's a fact. boeing launched this confident travel plan trying to

get passengers back on their planes. briefly, what is the confident travel plan? ashley: they are just trying to encourage airlines to take the necessary steps and of course, boeing makes the planes, they service them, they say we can work with airlines to give the kind of confidence that will have passengers getting on without any trepidation, have that without hesitation, boeing says. they are going to work with them on how to properly sanitize planes both on the flight deck and in the cabin. also, the wearing of masks, you name it, they will work with the airlines. it's all about that key word we talk about, confidence, getting people to the point where they know if they get on a plane, they will be treated properly and appropriately given the pandemic. also, hepa filtering. they are talking about hepa filters keep out 99.9% of the particulates. i know what you are going to say. including viruses. but what about the .01. stuart: okay. my point is, boeing's stock is

down to $171 as we speak. that's been beaten up big time. i've got a head line here about tesla. a million mile battery. that sounds remarkable, susan. explain. susan: million mile battery, low cost, that's set to roll off the china production line, according to elon musk, later on this year, maybe into early next year, and might actually go into the future model 3s that they build at the shanghai factory so elon musk says they will be working with a chinese technology company on this, low cost, million miles, has second to third lives which will be great because then it will allow tesla first of all to run longer on these new batteries but also to bring down the cost so it will be in line with what you pay for a gasoline type of car. right? stuart: so it's not a battery that gives you a range of a million miles. it's a battery which will last for a million miles -- susan: which is equally as important, i think, because in

the future, instead of giga factories, you will have terra factories which will be 30 times bigger and more automated than the current giga factory which is already pretty impressive. stuart: it was a grabby headline from elon musk. he does that a lot. susan: well, you have to understand electric vehicles. a million mile battery is right now a holy grail. if he can get that, that will be very impressive. stuart: yes, it is. you're right there. you've got that. in our le11:00 hour, we have da ives on this possible new battery. check that market, please. we are now, what, seven minutes in. dow industrials down nearly 1%, .9%, off 216. the ten-year treasury yield this morning is .60%. the price of gold is $1751 per ounce. the price of oil is $28 a barrel. some confidence that worldwide demand will return.

$28.55 on oil. have you seen this? a drone that will soon be able to deliver meals and groceries to the folks in north carolina. the company behind it is fly trex and the head of operations joins me on the show later. they are doing it now. still to come, national economic council director larry kudlow on the state of our relationship with china. we also have economist stephen moore on that as well. steve hilton on the revolt against the draconian lockdown restrictions. joe concha on the media silence on the flynn controversy. then a question. do you remember this? president trump unveiling the abbott labs testing kit in the rose garden. now the company making changes amid inaccuracy concerns about that test. health and human services secretary alex azar talking about that after this. it's a thirteen-hour flight, that's not a weekend trip.

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i think we're going to have a vaccine by the end of the year and i think distribution will take place almost simultaneously because we've geared up the military. stuart: there's the president speaking about having a vaccine for the virus by the end of this year. and by the way, today, the white house is announcing a public/private partnership to make it happen. health and human services secretary alex azar joins us now. that's a moonshot, mr. secretary, to have a vaccine out there, tested, and verifiably good, it works, by the end of the year. isn't that a stretch, sir? >> well, it is a stretch, stuart, but as you know from talking to the great business leaders in our country, you fail to achieve 100% of the goals that you do not set. and president trump, you know, he heard from these drug manufacturers and you know how they do their work. they want to do a phase one trial, then they will wait, do a phase two trial, and wait, and a

phase three trial, then they will start thinking about commercial scale manufacturing. he said that's not acceptable. we've got to use the full power of the u.s. government and the private sector here to compress all of those timelines, reduce inefficiency in development and use the power of the u.s. government to produce at risk scale hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine even while we are running clinical trials to prove they are safe and effective. stuart: are we bringing all the private enterprise drug companies into this and anybody else who's got an angle on it, everybody's coming together for this effort? >> absolutely. thanks to the president's leadership, tony fauci invented a vaccine that's already in clinical trials, we have over 100 vaccine candidates that have been discovered. what we are doing now is narrowing those down to the core group and we will place huge multi-hundred million dollar bets on and scale massive vaccine production so that we by the end of the year, we hope would have one or more safe and effective vaccines and hundreds of millions of doses.

stuart: tell me about abbott labs and their test. because we are getting reports this morning that there are some false negatives, i think is the correct expression, a high number of false negatives. now, this is a test which the president proposed and backed earlier. is this a failure here? >> not at all. we are just being very transparent about our regular regulatory processes. we got 15 adverse event reports. these are something manufacturers submit if they get any type of negative information about their product. so we at the fda and the manufacturer are going to be studying and tracing those down. we just wanted to be transparent about that fact. the manufacturer's doing post-market studies as we do for any emergency use authorization product. but it could be as simple as user error. with this test you're not supposed to collect the swab, then spend time transporting it to get to the test but we've got to get to where the evidence is. we've got to get to the bottom of it. we still have confidence in the test or we wouldn't have it on

the market. stuart: what about we hear talk of an executive order that would make sure that key drugs are manufactured here and not in china. now, we hear talk about this. is there such a thing as this executive order? >> well, not being the president, i will leave executive orders and their announcement to the guy who actually gets to sign them, but i will tell you that for the president and for me, bringing to the united states pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity and treating drugs and other critical personal protective equipment and other medical supplies as part of our strategic structure in the united states is vital. just yesterday i traveled with the president to allentown, pennsylvania to announce a whole new next generation strategic stockpile program because when president trump came in, the cupboards were bare in the strategic stockpile. he will assure for any future pandemic that we replenish them and assure a 90-day supply in our distribution channel so that that doesn't ever happen again.

stuart: the media yesterday made a big deal out of the whistleblower, rick bright, who said dark days are ahead, the u.s. is going to see its darkest winter because of the virus, and because of what the administration did not do in response to the virus. what's your response to that, mr. secretary? >> you know, this guy's now claiming that he has unique knowledge about how dangerous this virus was when literally everybody at hhs, everybody at the white house, was saying and working from the exact same knowledge and the exact same perspective. he was part of a choir of people singing a tune and now he's out claiming he was a soloist. what happened, president trump, we took this seriously, we acted on all of that knowledge and information, we procured personal protective equipment, we drove vaccine development, we drove testing to historic levels, all of the things that he says we should have been doing, president trump was doing and achieved. so i just -- i just don't know

what on earth he's talking about. it just doesn't hold water what he's saying. stuart: what about those states that have reopened, i think in terms of texas, and in the few days since they reopened, the number of cases of the virus in that state, texas, have actually gone up? is it worth the risk? >> well, it's way too early to draw any kind of epidemiological conclusion like that. we have to get this country open again, stuart. you know, it's not health versus economy. it's actually health versus health that we've got to focus on. yes, there's risk from the disease as well as from spreading, but there's significant risk to health from these massive shutdowns. you know, possibly aren't getting cancer screenings. kids aren't getting their vaccines. we have mental depression and suicidality issues. we've got to get this country back functioning. we can do so safely but without continuing extreme measures. president trump and i are both committed to getting this country working again and

through the leadership of some of our great governors we are going to get to see and test different models. stuart: alex azar, as always, thanks for being with us this morning. we appreciate it, sir. thank you. >> thank you, stuart. stuart: yes, sir. gop senator richard burr, stepping down as intelligence committee chair. the fbi seized his cell phone. he's accused of selling stocks right before the pandemic news broke, and preserving his profit. we are on that story. the media barely covering the flynn case. for three years, they breathlessly told us that the trump campaign colluded with russia. now that top obama officials are involved, it's not worth reporting? is that the way it goes? joe concha here on the lack of coverage in the mainstream media.

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stuart: well, we've come back a little. we were down 250. now we're down just 44 points. there are some negatives hanging over the market, but we have come back 47 points down. advertisers, a third less -- look, we hear that advertisers are going to spend a third less than usual in terms of television advertising, down about 33%. that's a big number. mark douglas is with us. this is his area. i would have thought that if they're spending much less on

the tv networks, that's real bad news for the networks, but you don't see it that way? >> no. good morning. so the thing to understand is that the way advertising is bought, it traditionally is what they call up front so basically advertisers commit before the start of the year how much they are going to spend on the year. so up front advertising is going down, but there are other trends that are going up. the big trend, it doesn't mean the advertisers are not going to spend. the up fronts come with big discounts. the advertisers want flexibility. what they are saying is we are willing to pay more to get that flexibility so they can manage their businesses through the crisis. this is a long-term trend. bob iger from disney is actually moving disney towards less up-front and more what's referred to as spot pricing for advertising. so that's one big trend that actually is fwogoing to increas revenue for television networks. there are other trends also.

stuart: the advertising revenue that the networks bring in will surely depend a lot on how fast we go back to work and how fast we open up the economy, and how fast we emerge from this chasm, this economic chasm we're in now. what does that look like coming out on the other side? >> yeah, so there's actually another change happening. so one thing is that google and facebook [ inaudible ] and i think a lot of people were surprised that they did a lot better than was expected and the reason for that is they get a lot of their revenue from direct response advertisers, basically e-commerce companies, other companies like that. so that's now happening in television. that's what my company actually does. we make television a direct response to advertising channel. that trending is way up. companies like mcdonald's actually announced they are going to increase ad spends in order to gain market share through this. so you have this trend for big traditional advertisers, want to do less up front but you have this counter-trend which is we

always talk about streaming television, the spending on that is increasing very rapidly, especially among the advertisers that traditionally would spend with google and facebook. that's a big trend also. stuart: interesting. mark, i'm glad you always keep us informed about these trends because they're important. mark douglas, everybody. thanks for joining us. appreciate it. big show for you. here's what we have coming up. tammy bruce talking about the biden problem. stacy cunningham on reopening the trading floor of the new york stock exchange. she's the president there. national economic director larry kudlow and bar rescue guy john tapper. it's a jam-packed friday. we will have a whole lot more for you, all that coming up in the next hour. ... when we started our business

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and it's ready to go. our costs for shipping were cut in half. just like that. shipstation. the #1 choice of online sellers. go to shipstation.com/tv and get 2 months free. stuart: all right the markets been open for exactly one-half hour and we've paired the losses , we were down 250 now we're down 65 for the dow industrials a lot of negative news to the retail sales down 16 %, industry production down 11 %, tensions with china, then they retaliate against our big tech companies, because we're blocking chips to huawei, all of that took the market down but we have come back a little bit. i have a read, at least ashley does on consumer sentiment. now that looks forward, ash so what are you seeing? ashley: well, as you can see on the screen, 73.7 in maine, and we take our comfort where we can , stu, the estimate for this and i know you love it

but it was 68, which was a lot lower so coming in at 73.7 on sentiment just a little up-tick on a more positive side. not a great number don't get me wrong compared to historically where we were pre-virus but nevertheless, a little better-than-expected. stuart: okay now we've got another number this is on job openings this is the so-called j olts report. susan i know you've got the number but tell me is it relevant at a time when losing jobs is right and center. >> it's backwards-looking so this is a march report for job openings 6.19 million jobs that were available. a little bit down from the february number, which is not surprising february had 7 million job openings but again this comes off what we saw in march in terms of 1,000 people losing their job, the jobless rate in the month of march jumped up to 4% and in un was a record high for unemployed 20 million and the jobless rate was up 14.7% so this is a backwards number, who knows if this number is still relevant at

this point. stuart: i don't think it has much impact on the market i think it was the consumer sentiment number a little better-than-expected, i hate to use that expression, and now we have the dow down just 70 points oscillating i'll call it that. the new york stock exchange will partially reopen on may 26. joining us now, the exchange's president, stacey cunningham. welcome to the show, it's good to see you again. >> it's great to see you stuart nice to be back on the trading floor this morning. stuart: i'm sure it is. now i'm sure you're going to have social distancing, i'm sure you're going to make space for everybody, it's a partial reopening, you're maybe even taking temperature checks that kind of thing but my question is , why do we need the floor of the new york stock exchange? why do we need to have it back? >> it's a good question many people don't realize how much additional value the floor adds to how stocks trade each day. that level of human judgment layered on top of the model we have with our market makers who aren't standing next to me on the floor today but usually are,

as well as those state-of-the-ar t technologies that we run our platform on that level of human judgment we get to the floor leads to better price discovery, more efficient markets had means investors save money to the tune of $15 million a day we've been able to measure since we closed the trading floor. stuart: when you say a partial reopening, what does that mean? >> so we have roughly, we're going to come back with roughly 10-15% of the total population of people that typically work in this building with a skew towards the trading floor so about 25% of the trading floor and then further skewing that toward the members that are most impacted by the floor closure, so when you think about the people that are on the trading floor, there's a mix of groups. we have the market makers that are typically standing these posts because they are responsible for overseeing trading in each company that's listed on the floor, and we also have market floor brokers that are independent businesses in many cases and so there's small businesses with fewer than 20 people that work there. they are typically around the

trading floor. that's where we're putting most of the weight into who gets to come back first, because those businesses are not able to earn an income during this time and i think that's an important message for all businesses in new york city and america more broadly, when we think about how do we come back, let's focus on those that are most impacted first, and start there, so we can still limit the number of people that are interacting but get our economy restarted. stuart: got it stacey cunningham , you'll be back, partially reopening may 26. thanks for being with us today. >> yeah, but it's important to note, stu business is still happening. we had abc therapeutics,ipo remotely today. stuart: okay we got it and we look forward to may 26 stacey thank you very much indeed. all right, everyone now this. joe biden, he did a virtual round table with three state governors, and then he appeared in an hour-long virtual town hall on msnbc. for him, few people are likely to have seen either performance.

whenever he speaks without a teleprompter and a set script, he runs into trouble, and he really has not mastered technology. i'll start with this round table hard to watch. the same kind of glitches appear that have plagued her virtual temper town hall last week. he looks uncomfortable sometimes lost but that does not go down well with voters young voters in particular and the three governors who are with him, they were all about continuing the lockdown. there wasn't much talk or encouragement for really opening things up opening the economy which is clearly the current trend. then, there was the town hall on msnbc, oh, dear the host, lawrence o'donnell is one of the leading trump haters on a trump-hating network. perhaps he felt obliged to have a single question about biden's role in the investigation of general flynn. mr. biden replied, i was never a part of have any knowledge of any criminal investigation,

period. not one single time. that was it. no follow-up. no question about why biden had unmasked flynn eight days before he left office, back in 2017. essentially, it was a one-hour discussion with one question about general flynn. privately, democrats are worried about their candidate, but he's getting all the protection that they can muster. speaker pelosi, not getting around to any more questions on on the sexual assault allegation eequation. the media won't ask probing questions about flynn and the impeachment any as o is forgotten. i'd like to hear what he thinks the impact of massive tax hikes be or the impact of the green new deal. i guess we'll have to wait for the presidential debate for that. meanwhile, the democrats worry about biden's focus, and by the way he confused virus deaths with job losses on msnbc, and what they are worried about is

the choice where he has to find a woman who will ignore or deny tara reade's allegation. this candidacy has a real problem. let's bring in tammy bruce. does she share my opinion? i've said for a long time that i'm not sure he's going to be the candidate when push comes to shove in november. everybody tells me yes, he's going to be the candidate there's no question about it. where do you stand on this? >> well i do think that if they were thinking in a normal framework they'd realize that this is an individual whose not going to do well. now in all honesty, i don't think they believe they can actually win in 2020, but they've got to try to rebuild their party, because it's apparent that after this time, you know, you had eight years of obama where you should have had great strength, but obama decimated the party with obamacare that's when they lost their entire back bench of talent in 2010 and it never really returned. so this is really a dynamic that

you're seeing because it seems as though the establishment is so desperate to have someone they know they can control, or really won't interfere with the bureaucracy running the country. americans in general, including democrats, if you can ask anybody in california or new york, know that leadership matters, and leadership can have an impact on you, so you've got two fronts, quickly with biden. you've got the video technical front which does not lend any kind of confidence to the decision-making of the party, and of the candidate, and then as you've mentioned great opening because joe biden is not generating confidence when he tells you that we've lost 85,000 jobs, then that's the number of deaths in the country because of the virus. stuart: if they run him, and i'm sure they will, i've got it, that when they run him and he loses, doesn't that open the party up to the left wing, to the socialists who say that they can't win we're going to take over. that's how we construct the

party if joe biden loses. >> well that's it, you know, the only way this would have it be a shift and it could be is that just prior to the convention, is having his wife or a team of people come and say look, he's not doing well. he doesn't feel well, or for some other personal reason he's going to withdraw. there's no way to do it on the floor of any live convention they are already talking, stu, about cutting back. i understand we have a number of people attending the convention but there's also going to be a floor fight on the platform, but ultimately they could, in fact, replace him prior to the convention if the candidate is the one making the request, and then they would have to of course address the delegate dynamic and have an agreement effectively a pre-brokered convention but with the agreement and understanding of the nominee himself. stuart: i would just love to listen to some of those conversations. i would just love to be a fly on the wall.

>> i have a feeling we will. this is the kind of thing that would make the news, people are going to be disgruntled. we'll hear a lot and for the democratic party, they've got an option of trump, who will redo this great economy and that in the end is what americans care about. how will my family be in a year, and in two years and that's how they make decisions. stuart: tammy bruce, always great on a friday morning great to see you today. thank you, sir. thank you. stuart: check that market out we did come back nicely, down 250 now just down 67 points. take another look at jc penney, the stock was halted earlier pending news, investors think they are going to file for bankruptcy probably as early as today. $0.19 a share, buffets book, now they have officially launched their zoom competitor, which is called messenger rooms, and we knew about this some time ago it's official, it's launched today. facebook is down $0.80 that's it

cvs, they are going to open up more than 50 virus testing sites , that stock is up what about 1% at $62 a share that's c vs. tesla, i like this headline, reportedly working on a new million mile battery that could last a lifetime of course. this seems like a wild headline from elon musk, doesn't it? i'm asking tesla bull, dan ives about it in our next hour. if you want to find out how the russia collusion fiasco got started, don't bother watching the mainstream media. they're not interested, our next hour is a media watcher and fired up about this story and next i'm going to talk to the top white house economic advisor larry kudlow i want to know more about the economic comeback, how fast it's going to be and this new dispute with china, we'll be back. now is the time for a new bath from bath fitter.

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stuart: well, well, well, that sell-off didn't last long because now we turned positive for the dow and positive for the s&p. okay we just dipped back to the negative side. we have negative headlines earlier this morning took the market down, now we've re bounded and as of right now, the dow is up 15 points. we got our headline coming in from jc penney i think the stock is still halted what's this lauren bankruptcy? lauren: still halted at $0.19 no so what the coronavirus has done really has been a retail reckon ing. its accelerated that for so many struggling retailers so, what jc penney has donald they've been doing in advance of a bankruptcy filing which reportedly could come as soon as today they are looking at strategic alternative s and they're able to do so because of the five-day business day grace period that they have before they have to make some interest payments on debt that is old, and none of

these strategic alternatives have been implemented yet, but it looks like there's a wind ore of opportunity here for them to figure something out still stock halted because news is pending. stuart: can you imagine trying to run a department store at the best of times? lauren: no. stuart: and the worst of times in the middle of a country wide lockdown? it takes its toll does it not? that's for sure. lauren: yeah and that's the big question, if these companies can stay in business, stuart and reopen how do you get the shoppers to go back to them, if you look at smaller companies, the smaller companies can say is it worth it when you see consumers skiddish and retail sales dive so this is and i think those are the best words for it retail reckoning for so many companies that have to decide how to do business in the new normal if they were struggling beforehand. stuart: well said, lauren. a retail reckoning here it comes got it. and we look at the automakers, they are set to reopen their factories or at least some of them on monday, but ash, i think

they can't open up until they've got mexico resuming production of what parts and stuff? ashley: yes, indeed. and there's been a wrench thrown in those plans, because the mexican government said production cannot begin until june 1, under their reopening plans and as you say, gm, ford, fiat chrysler announced they were targeting next monday, may 18 for partial reopening and now we have to wait and see what the mexican government's decision does to that plan. you know, look they rely heavily on mexico for auto supplies, parts and vehicles for that matter. especially the pick-up trucks of gm and fiat receive their pick-up trucks from mexico, so now, after announcing they were hoping to get at least partially reopened the production of the factories not talking about full-blown production but at least at 25-30% capacity, now we have to wait and see whether the mexican government decision kind of puts that on hold again. stuart: that's all we need.

thanks, ash. ashley: yeah. stuart: the overall market as you can see has now turned into the green. well the dow has at least we're up 16 points. there you have it we just turned around. now let's bring in the top economic advisor in the white house, and that be larry kudlow. larry, great to see you again. good to see you, sir. >> good morning stuart thanks very much, appreciate it. stuart: i think that this weekend and the following weekend, memorial day weekend, they are going to be really big and important indicators for us going back to work, opening the economy, getting a little expansion going again. do you see it the same way because i think this is an absolutely key time for bouncing back. >> well, i agree actually the indicators are pretty good. the infection rates are flatten ing out, their growth rates are coming way, way down so that's a positive and i think , you know, there's a sense out there, kind of a spirit culturally you'd call it where

people want to come out. they've ready to go, we want them to be safe, we want them to be very safe but i think the spirit of it is let's get going, and americans are ready to move, and by the way, we may start seeing some little better economic numbers, little glimmers here and there, but we'll face the contraction in the second quarter. the virus pandemic contraction but i agree, at the margin right in front of us, i do think the country's opening up. i think the country is really listening to president trump's leadership and that's an awfully good thing let's go. stuart: give me the glimmers you talk about glimmers, larry. what we saw this morning was a huge drop in retail sales in april. big drop in industrial production. i don't see a glimmer there. what are your glimmers? >> no i think you're right. look the economy is essentially still in freefall because of the shutdown. there's no question about that and the pandemic contraction inq

2 is going to be very difficult. no question about that. i'm not saying we've turned the corner yet. unemployment numbers, claims, 36 million, i was just looking though continuing claims, stu, a little lighter, lower than people might have thought, and on the claims numbers themselves , the weekly claims, they have been on a pretty steady down trend for the past what, six, seven weeks and the worst was the first couple of weeks and since then its gradually come up. there's still bad numbers still heartbreak numbers don't get me wrong, still hardship numbers but i'm looking for glimmers at the margin. i noticed one of wall street's best economists ed hyman, he runs surveys showing a little bit of improvement in home builder, a little bit of improvement in truckers, a little bit him in shipping i'm watching that carefully he's a brilliant guy and old friend of mine you probably know him as well, so yes, we are still

essentially in freefall, but i'm just looking for these glimmers at the margins. stuart: do we need another rescue, or call it what you will, stimulus package? >> well stu, what i think we need and what the president has been suggesting, although the policies have we haven't started formal negotiations, informally let me just remind everybody, the meeting with teleconferences with democrats and republicans from the house and from the senate, and the governors and the mayors and so forth so we've had good conversation, but look, i want to see incentive-oriented torque for this economy. the cbo and a lot of private forecasters are lacking for 20% gain in the second half. i still believe that's a reasonable number. i want to go through that and transition into a huge 2021 which is what the president has been talking about. to do that, stu, we're not going to spend our way out of that any more than we spent our way out

of the depression, although this is not like the depression. this is about a virus, not about past economic policies but i'm just saying things like payroll taxes to boost take home pay for workers, things like capital gains taxes, not just for the stock market but we've got assets that have fallen 30 or 40%, so suppose you bought one of those poor assets that have sunk whether it's a factory , a business, an energy company, they are all over the place, why not get a couple years break on capital gains if you buy it between now and the end of the year? or , for example, we've learned that the offshoring should be turned into onshoring. we cannot rely as extensively as we have in the past with respect to overseas countries including china, and still have to be held accountable. so, maybe, this is a maybe, maybe the corporate tax rate of 21% should be lower by 50% to

about 10.5% for corporations who are coming back home. maybe, that's something to look at. certainly for businesses at home , i don't care whether you're a large or small business, stu, if any pandemic- related covid-19- related medical supply, ppe, testing, you name it, anything they do to restructure the interiors of their companies , that should all be immediately expensed and we have to make sure, by the way, that the 100% immediate expensing that was passed in 2017 is made permanent. it starts phasing down in 2022. can't allow that to happen so regulatory changes, we've got to have regulatory restrictions, liability restrictions, a lot of these restaurants and small businesses. stuart: isn't that the most important thing, larry? >> it's one of them. stuart: it's a ball of wax here. >> well look, it's a very key part. these are themes the president

has been talking about. these are themes that we are working out internally, we have a small economics group working on these proposals for the president, to be refined we're not going to jump in, as everybody said, secretary mnuchin, myself, others, we're not going to jump in on a gigantic negotiation right now. we're not going to spend another $3 trillion since we don't know what the last 3 trillion has actually produced. we have to assess that, but when we get around to it in a few weeks, perhaps, we will negotiate. i want to put as many growth incentives into this economy, so not only do we have a v in the second half of the year, but i want a blowout. i want a huge increase in growth next year and that requires incentives through investors for workers, for risk takers, for entrepreneurship that is the american way to do this. stuart: thank you very much. larry kudlow great to have you with us again, we love that talk

about blowout 2021, and i can't think of anybody whose not in favor of that. anyway, larry thank you, sir. >> keep the faith, stu appreciate it so much. stuart: thank you very much. totally different subject. see that thing on the screen right there? that is a drone. it's coming to a town in north carolina, delivering meals and groceries complete with zero contact service. we'll tell you how that thingworx. it's actually in use, but first, bar rescue john tapper joins us how do you reopen a bar for social distance? isn't that a contradiction and when will we see las vegas open up? he has an opinion on that, more varney after this.

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stuart: 10:30 eastern time as you look at the market i'll recap what larry kudlow just told us he's looking forward he hopes for a rip roaring 2021 when the economy really comes back looking for 20% growth in the economy from the low in april and may, and that's by the end of this year, then the rip roaring 2021, and one point we did pick up on was you're ready to get things going is reduce the corporate tax rate to 10.5% for companies that come home, okay? quite incentive right there.

didn't effect the market we're still down about 50 points. check jc penney it has resumed trading and i understand they have made an interest payment is that correct, justin? >> they made a $17 million interest payment and the training was halted, their back trading again, they're up 46% and made the interest payment got it. now this. one of new york city's iconic restauranteurs is danny meyer, and he says, get this , he expects restaurants, his restaurants in new york, will remain closed until there's a virus vaccine. that's a long time away. bar rescue guy, jon taffer joins us now, jon, that's a non- starter. if you have a restaurant and you have to keep it closed for months and months on end your restaurant goes out the door doesn't it? >> not necessarily stuart. we're spending an awful lot of money sustaining the business

during a period where we have such limited revenue potential, so i could see the business decision rather than investing my money in sustaining which i might not be able to sustain for a very long period of time so maybe i should wait until the revenue potential is greater , and apply my resources to reopening then. so it's not an illogical strategy to me in many cases it makes sense. stuart: okay, especially for that kind of restaurant, which he runs, that's a white table cloth operation which you don't do well with social distancing like that. okay, now, let's talk about social distancing in a bar. how do you do that when bars reopen, how do you do social distancing when you're sitting there drinking your beer? >> well it's a major problem, stuart and the problem that i have is we've clumped the bar business industry together with the restaurant industry and we call them restaurants in general discussion, but in the restaurant regulations, you're not allowed to sit at a bar, you're not allowed to walk up to a bar, you're not allowed

to be standing around a bar, so the bar has been rendered irrelevant within the restaurant regulatory model right now, so to open a bar right now, you can't have people standing, they can't be at the bar, they can't be sitting at the bar, so you wind up with tables around the room and people can be served drinks in those tables. stuart that reduces capacity hugely, by far more than 50%. consider this. the average bar makes about 70% of its revenue 16 hours a week. friday night, saturday night, maybe one other week night, maybe sunday for football, so if they lose 60% of their potential during those 16 hours a week, there's no other hours to pick that up, so that's lost revenue. stuart: not to mention, the difference in ambiens shall we say of a bar full of people having a good old drink and scattered around tables. hold on a second, jon, i want to get this in because i think of you as mr. ticket time.

the length of time it takes to get the order to the chef to get it out on the floor. listen to this , at the red lobster in pennsylvania customer s got rowdy after some people had to wait in line for three hours for curbside pick-up. john, look at that we've got it on the screen right now. that three hour wait, and i've heard similar complaints about the wait time for pick-up, that's a real killer for the restaurant. >> oh, completely stuart. people will be inconvenienced to some degree and stand outside to wait for curbside pick-up but there's a period of time that becomes unreasonable. you know, stuart i cut this up in third. i think a third of the marketplace comes out right away. i think a third of the marketplace is reserved and they want to watch what happens with the first third, they want to see there's no surges, they want to see how the restaurant operates, and then they'll come out. but there's the third-third and i call them the certain third. they're not going to go out until there's a vaccine or certainty, and that's the audience that is a little more affluent, has a little more

disposable income, so it impacts the luxury sector of dining, i think, at a far greater level. stuart: i just want to say, jon, we all feel for you, because your industry is bars and restaurants and what to do with them and i think you've been hit as bad as anybody, if not worse, and we feel for you, jon, and we hope you can keep coming on the show. stay in there, fellow. next case forget curbside pick-up. we've got a company offering food and grocery deliveries, using a drone, and it's doing it now. fly trex is the name of the company the head of u.s. operations joins us now. okay,wes, this is good stuff we love to hear about this take me through it. how does it work? i think you're doing it in a particular down in north carolina, right? >> good morning, stu thanks for having me on the show. that's correct. we're actually flying in a number of locations first in our home country of israel, we're conducting operations with civil aviation authority there.

we're running operations in iceland, those operations have been ongoing for three years. underneath the north carolina pilot program, we are operating or planning to operate a part 135 operation out of holly springs north carolina and due to covid and the coronavirus, we started an operation in grand forks, north dakota so that's where we're conducting operations today. stuart: okay so who do you deliver for , restaurants or stores or no, you're shaking your head. who do you deliver for? >> the customer, right? so we're looking to serve people in their backyards from various grocery stores and restaurants. the ideal situation is servicing many restaurants and many stores that way you can reach more customers and reach their desires. stuart: oh, there's a big deal in america at the moment about delivery charges. some people complain that they're out of hand.

what's the delivery charge for a drone? >> [laughter] surprisingly so, we're looking to maintain the standard, right? so around $3 or $4 the way that it began with the original delivery fees. right now in north dakota we're doing the deliveries, for free, because we understand that people are in a tough time right now and they don't want to go to a grocery store themselves so we're doing it in a safer manner , and we're doing the deliveries, free of charge. stuart: okay and the zero personal contact i take it? you don't touch, see , or even feel anybody, right? >> that's correct. we deliver on a lowered mechanism so we deliver from 65 feet, and the operators wear the correct protective equipment , masks, gloves, we approach the stores and we ensure that there's contactless delivery. stuart: the view raws was your opportunity and you took it, well done. thanks for joining us we appreciate it. that's flytrex i believe. thanks for joining us.

>> flytrex. i'll get it in there. stuart: california restrictions easing. but la could be shut down for three more months there's a headline for you. why are they dragging their feet to reopen? i'll ask steve hilton he's our california gain and he joins us next hour. first though i say joe biden has real problems. is he definitely going to be the candidate for the democrats? i'll ask that question, more varney after this.

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i trust 'em, i think you can too. trust aag for the best reverse mortgage solutions. call now so you can... retire better we cannot rely as extensively as we have in the past with respect to overseas countries including china, and still have to be held accountable. so, maybe this is a maybe, maybe the corporate cash rate of 21% should be lowered by 50% to about 10.5% for corporations who were coming back home. maybe, that's something to look at. stuart: okay, you heard that on this program because this is

where he said it. he wants corporate tax relief, if companies bring their operations back to the united states of america. at 10.5% corporate tax rate, not sure he gets it, but he'd like to have it. got it. check that market, this interview did not make much difference if any difference at all on the stocks we're down 80 points for the dow jones industrial average. now we're just getting a couple of tweets from the president here is the first one. i am proud to announce that new jersey transit will receive $1.4 billion in funding to assist in their continued operations and to keep moving in the new york-new jersey area. the largest single federal transit grant to new jersey transit ever, together, we will prevail. and there's this tweet on chicago. chicago'scta has big federal resources heading its way to keep the transit system operational and to keep people moving where they need to go. $817 million will aid the economic recovery, buy made

in the usa. this follows his pledge to new york city transit yesterday, getting mass transit sanitized and up and running very much crucial to the major cities and their reopening, two tweets from the president and now this. joe biden was one of the obama officials who unmasked general flynn. come in mark teason, american enterprise institute resident fellow and a guy i often see on television and who i much add admire. >> the feeling is mutual stu. stuart: flattery is the mother's milk of television. now, mark, it may seem like an odd ball question to you but bearing in mind all of the problems with the biden candidacy are you convinced that joe biden will be a candidate for the democrats in november? >> you know it's a question that i've been asking myself and a lot of americans have been asking for months, and everything that would have map ped out another candidate along the way seems to like not

effect joe biden, and the reason is because the democrats don't have any alternative. the alternative was bernie sanders or you know, someone like that that would have taken the party made the party completely unelectable, so you ask yourself, what would derail a joe biden candidacy? well maybe, allegations that he sexually assaulted somebody, no doesn't seem to be having any impact. maybe that he would have some terrible gaf that shows he's mentally unfit for the job so if he's hiding in this basement for the likelihood of that is not very likely. so you know, from the democratic perspective, i think they've hit on the perfect nominee, because he's not really the democratic nominee. he's a figure head that nancy pelosi and chuck schumer and elizabeth warren and the progressive left will use to auto pen their agenda if elected it's sort of like remember the movie "weekend at bernie's" stu? it's weekend at biden. he's going to put a string on his arm and sign the laws that

they pass. it's perfect for them. stuart: but in all seriousness, if he runs and i'm sure you're right that he does run, and lose s, the democrats tear themselves apart because the socialists will say wait a minute, wait a minute. you ran and lost? make room for us, the democrats would then become a socialist party, surely. >> well they are already. i mean, he's the fancy wood vene er on the plywood table they are socialists and the party's become socialists and joe biden is just trying to make socialism palletable for americans who don't really want it. he's a trojan horse for the democratic socialism that's the purpose of his campaign, so we're already there it's just a question of whether when they come to acknowledge it stuart: do you think president obama, former president obama will get the same kind of pass that's being clearly offered to joe biden in the media?

>> i don't know. you know, president trump said he should be called to testify in this flynn case, you know, before the senate. i think it's a dangerous thing. first of all i don't think trump should be calling for that because he's going to be a former president one day too so if says that obama can testify then congress could call him and separation of powers. they are co-equal, executive as co-equal branch for congress so it's not appropriate for the president to be coming before congress. stuart: mark i just want to say something. i just hope that i never cross you, because that comment about the veneer on the top of a plywood table, that was harsh stuff,thiessen. >> [laughter] we're on the same side, stu. stuart: so i'm told. >> i'm glad to be on team stu. stuart: okay we'll take it mark it was a real pleasure having you on the show thanks so much. >> thank you. stuart: look at planet fitness. have we got their stock up there

i think we do. yes, we do. way down, since the january 31 of this year. the ceo says new memberships sign-ups are on par with last year. the companies reopened around 50 fitness centers in states where they're allowed to do so. okay not sure where the stock is now. next, the vitamin shoppe, the vitamin shoppe says they're selling more vitamins people want to say healthy. the ceo is on the show, next. technologies advisor. me too. me too. and if you're a small business, we're with you.

standing by you every step of the way. bye bye.

stuart: quick market check we've been open for business for one hour and 22 minutes and the dow is down just 95 points got that. now this , the vitamin shoppe says it sold more than 1.3 million units of immunity support vitamins i believe that's a lot, and the company's ceo sharon lighty joins me now. sharon, first of all this is immunity support vitamins. what's that like, vitamin d? zinc? >> yes, yes, all of that. stuart: well what is it? >> vitamin c d zinc,elderberry,

obviously a lot of information out in the news about how people can support their immune health as people become more and more health conscience to handle what's going on in our pandemic and so we certainly have seen a rush on those type of products in our business. stuart: i mean, compared to say last year, the same time last year, is this a gigantic spike in this particular kind of product? >> yes, yes, for sure. we're absolutely seeing a lift in those types of products and so what we've been doing is trying to do everything we can to manage through the supply chain as quickly as possible to get back into stock, because need less to say when this all spikes at the end of march and early april, it took us quite by surprise. stuart: yeah, when this thing started, and we're all locked down, because of the virus, i can understand why people would run out very quickly and get your vitamin c, and vitamin d and zinc. i thought there was a supply

problem and short ans in some stores. how did you get around that? >> yeah, we definitely had shortages. we've been very fortunate to have terrific relationships with their vendors where they fast-tracked product into our distribution centers and whereas our normal process would have taken us a week or two weeks to get product back out to the stores for some of the products such as vitamin c, we fast-track ed that product to the dc's and then two days later we were able to have product back on the shelf, so the team has been incredibly agile and very involved in trying to kind of get this product to the customer as fast as we can into our stores, into our website, and fortunately for our stores, you know, we have, we are on reduced hours, we're not open everywhere. we've been dealing with a lot of the same things that other retailers are doing, but through the way we've been able to communicate to the consumer, we have buy online pick-up in-store , we have curbside delivery, we really want to do everything we can to support our customers and our communities

through this time. stuart: what do you think happens when the virus goes away , but when the lockdown ends , and we come back to something called normal, i think it be legitimate to suspect that vitamin c,d, and zinc won't sell quite as well. >> that may be the case but i do think consumers are much more aware of their own health and i also think that as we come out of this , you're going to see them move more into what we call the sports nutrition side of the business, around fitness and kind of getting back into kind of outdoors after we've all been locked down for a period of time so i do think there will be a balance but i absolutely think there will be a much more awareness around people's own health and immunity and making sure that that stays up as best as possible so that people stay healthy. stuart: i think you're absolutely right on that one. sharon lighty, the vitamin shopp e, thanks for joining us we appreciate it. >> thanks for having us take

care. stuart: see you soon. drive in movie theaters, that makes a comeback and we're going to take you to one in new york and it reopens, tonight. and then there's nascar, it's back, this weekend marks the first live race in two months no plans in the stands, they got that but you can watch this thing on fox. first though, my take on how we might punish china, for the virus response. the third hour of varney & company coming up, next. a bath fitter bath is installed quickly,

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stuart: here we go, it's 11:00 eastern time and the markets have been open for 90 minutes. we've got a downside move at the moment, off 150 points for the dow industrials. we've got a lot of negative economic news this morning. industrial production, down 11% in april. that's the biggest drop ever. we had retail sales in april down 16%. that's huge. it follows an 8% drop in the month of march. so bad economic news this morning. we are clearly in some kind of chasm. tesla is reportedly working on a million mile battery that could change the course of the electric cars or electric car market forever. actually, it sounds to me like a really nice headline from elon musk. million mile battery. how about that. well, market watcher dan ives will join us about that headline

shortly. and congressman-elect mike garcia joins us, too. he's the first republican to flip a house seat in california. that's important. in california, since 1998. mr. garcia on the show today. it's a huge day for reopenings. 11 states and d.c. will ease restrictions today, ease them even more. that includes parts of new york state which is the hardest hit state by the virus. now, last hour, larry kudlow told us people really want to come out and reopen. watch this. >> the infection rates are flattening out, the growth rates are coming way, way down so that's a positive. i think, you know, there's a sense out there, kind of a spirit culturally, you would call it, people want to come out. we may start seeing some little better economic numbers. there are little glimmers here and there. stuart: mr. kudlow also

suggested cutting the corporate tax rate to 10.5% for companies which bring their operations back to america. we'll have more on that in a moment. first, this. how do we punish china? we don't like their deceptive response to the virus, we don't like them stealing our technology and we don't care for their drive for dominance in key industries. what do we do about it? several senators on this program who have appeared here said they want to take china's money, sue them, says martha mcsally. don't pay them what we owe them, says marsha blackburn, and don't buy chinese products, so says rick scott. well, look, we've got news on china's punishment this morning. item number one, the u.s. has blocked the sale of some computer chips to huawei. that's china's most important technology company. that is straightforward punishment. cut them off because we think you're using huawei to spy on us.

the market came down on that because of the possible reaction against apple and boeing but that was a kind of punishment. there's this. a taiwanese chip maker will break ground next year on a $12 billion factory near phoenix, arizona. that's straightforward. bring the jobs back. mike pompeo says this bolsters national security at a time when china's trying to control critical industries, which brings up the supply chain problem. china does indeed dominate critical industries. they control 80% of the ingredients for pharmaceutical products, for example. the president's reportedly preparing an executive order that would require certain vital drugs and treatments to be produced in america. we haven't produced penicillin here in 50 years. the relationship with china is a key part of the president's re-election strategy. there's plenty of anger about china and the virus. mr. trump says if they had handled it differently, the worldwide catastrophe could have been avoided. he wants to hold them accountable.

my opinion, lawsuits won't work. both sides would field an army of lawyers and you know the proceedings would drag on for a decade at least. refusing to pay back the money that they loaned to us, that would be a financial catastrophe. america has never reneged on its debt. if we did that with china, who would lend us money again? far better to bring back the jobs, far better to shift supply chain, far better to block their spying activities. let's get right to it and bring in economist stephen moore. stephen, welcome back to the show. good to see you. what do you think is the best way to punish china? >> well, i agree with you that china does need to be punished. they need to pay reparation payments to the united states because of their sinister behavior over the last three months that has spread this germ warfare. whether they did it intentionally or not is really not that important. what matters is that they

deceived the world and caused potentially trillions of dollars of losses for the united states and other nations. i'm totally with you on that. i agree with everything you said except maybe one thing. i do think as a last resort, as a last resort, the non-payment of some of those bonds that they hold is something that i would hold in reserve because they have done so much damage to the united states but i like your approach. the most important thing is why don't we do this. why don't we replace china in the supply chain with taiwan, with thailand, with singapore, vietnam, india, countries that we can trust that are not enemies of the united states, and they are much more reliable, but i also love the idea of bringing as much of this manufacturing back home as we can. but i also believe in globalization. i mean, we don't want to, you know, just have everything made in america because we would see massive increases in prices. we don't want to see increases

in drug prices, especially not right now. stuart: i've got to say, i'm really scared about the idea of reneging on our debt. that really would be an absolute last resort. >> last resort. stuart: all hell breaks loose in the financial markets if you do that. excuse my french. can i ask you just to hold on for a second. i've got to get back to today's retail sales numbers. on the screen, down 16.4% in the month of april. what else was in that report, lauren? lauren: well, everything was shut. i want to go into the details. clothing stores, their sales fell 79%. electronics, down 60%. furniture, i thought people were fixing up their homes, down 59%. the one category that rose, sign of the times, online sales up 8.4% in april and as a result of that, the shippers, ups, usps, amazon and fed ex, are

overwhelmed. they weren't prepared for christmas in april. christmas in march. christmas in may. with so many people getting essentials and non-essentials by ordering online. stuart: got that. down 16.4% in april. all right. negative news indeed. thanks, lauren. come back in again, steve. look, there's a lot of this negative news and we know we are in a chasm. i got it. can you point to any glimmers of hope for a reasonably rapid rebound for the economy? >> well, i'm frankly surprised retail sales weren't even down more than 16%. after all, stores across the country have been completely shut down with some few exceptions. so you know, look, the lesson here is if you shut down an economy you will have really negative news when it comes to industrial production and retail sales. the good news is right now, stuart, about 30 states are open or opening up for business in the next couple of days. i think seven states opened up today. so the trend is very positive.

you still have these stubborn blue state governors like your governor in new york, like the new jersey governor, pennsylvania and michigan and california, that's a problem because we are a 50-state economy. if you have new york and california and illinois shut down, that's 20% of the economy right there. but i think the positive news is because people haven't been able to go out and shop, because people haven't been able to go out to a restaurant, i haven't been to a restaurant in two months. two months. we're dying to get out. so i do think there's a bit of a pent-up demand and i think larry kudlow is right. once people feel like it's safe to go outside, sometime probably in the next few weeks, i think you're going to start to see some of these stores and some of these restaurants and some of these other businesses come back. the problem is you're still going to have to do social distancing and think about this, stuart. if you have a restaurant and you can only serve every other table, to keep people apart from each other, you are only 50%, and that's only at best break-even for a lot of restaurants. stuart: i think a lot of them are going to go out in this

situation. stephen, i'm out of time. it's always a pleasure to have you on. don't be a stranger. wherever you are, don't be a stranger to "varney & company." >> have a great weekend. stuart: got a reopening story for you. the mall of america, the largest mall in this country, back in business on june 1st. all right, lauren, what's it going to look like come june 1st? lauren: social distancing signs everywhere, specific doors to enter and exit from, and this is what steve was talking about. 50% capacity, that's the limit. officials are concerned that because customers may be skittish to go out in a public place, they might not even hit that half capacity level. at least not at first. but as you noted, largest mall in the country in minneapolis. other shopping centers can open there on monday. mall of america waiting until june 1st. stuart: okay. got it. i just wonder if it doesn't destroy the enjoyable shopping

experience when you've got to keep your distance and you can't have many people. not very attractive, i don't think. anyway. another american icon that's getting back in business and that will be nascar. this weekend marks the first live race in a couple of months. fans of course can watch it on fox. can't be there in person. grady trimble, same question to you, what's the race going to actually look like? reporter: it's going to look a lot different than what fans are used to. you mentioned the stands are going to be empty. everyone will have to wear masks, even the drivers, unless they have their helmet on which covers their face. teams will be limited to 15 people at the actual track. even the broadcasters who will be calling the race on fox, they will be at a remote location. nascar adding plans for races through the end of june. none of those will include fans. then in the world of golf, pga golf doesn't officially resume until mid-june but this weekend, there's a charity skins match with rory mcilroy, ricky fowler

and a couple of others. there will be no caddies in order to enforce social distancing so if you want to see ricky fowler carry his clubs probably for the first time since he was a kid, that will be your chance. i think people are starving for live sports so they will be tuning in in high numbers but they are also interested to see what sports look like with social distancing policies in place. of course, these two sports, golf and racing, kind of lend themselves to that. it will be interesting to see what mlb, nhl do and nba once they restart. stuart: that's a different kettle of fish, really. because the fans make such a difference to those games. all right. grady, thanks very much indeed. now, i'm looking at the markets this morning and i see gold and silver up in price. i can't put it on the screen right now but i will. i know they're up. susan, look at that, gold's up 11 bucks, silver is up quite significantly. why? susan: they are being used as hedges against the uncertainty of the path of the coronavirus.

we have gold prices nearing their peaks that we saw in april which we're also closing in on their highs in eight years. also, we have silver trading at two-month highs as well. this is because of the resurgence we have seen in south korea and china with coronavirus cases, also all that money taking place around the world with central banks and what about the economic outlook since we got retail sales today, record low when we saw declines in spending. i also want to point out another commodity. bring up oil. now, oil is back up, we spiked some 4% earlier in the session, back up to march levels before the stock market collapse, and people are picking up energy plays, so-called value plays, ones that have been beaten down, haven't come back up like technology. so the energy, financials and industrials getting pretty good bids at the end of this week. stuart: 28 bucks a barrel on oil as we speak, up over $1. got it. i'm going to get back to jc penney. earlier, the stock was halted. it's reopened. long pause in trading.

they made a $17 million interest payment but they are still exploring what are called strategic alternatives. that's good enough for a 38% gain for jc penney which amounts to eight cents higher to 27 cents. take a look at the white house. less than one hour from now, president trump is expected to speak about vaccine development. he wants one done and out there within this year. calendar year. later on today, he will unveil the brand new space, what was that again, space force flag. okay. can't wait for that. for the first time in more than two decades, a republican flips a congressional seat in california. it happened in a mail-in election, something president trump is clearly against. watch this. >> the level of dishonesty with democrat voting is unbelievable. now they want to send out vote by mail. who's going -- who knows who's signing this stuff? stuart: well, we are going to be

joined shortly by congressman mike garcia, congressman-elect, i should say. i'm going to ask him what he thinks about the president's comments on mail order balloting, so to speak. he won despite it. take a look at on your screen, that is a surfer in the water wearing a face mask to protect against the virus. this is in california. the state may not fully reopen for months. well, the los angeles part of it, at least. what does steve hilton think about that? he's next. how they gonna pay for this? they will, but with accident forgiveness allstate won't raise your rates just because of an accident. cut! is that good? no you were talking about allstate and... i just... when i... accident forgiveness from allstate. click or call for a quote today. unlike ordinaryveness wmemory supplementsr? neuriva has clinically proven ingredients that fuel 5 indicators of brain performance. memory, focus, accuracy, learning, and concentration. try neuriva for 30 days and see the difference.

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stuart: let's take a closer look at california's reopening plan. beaches in l.a. county are going to be open, but the city, the city as a whole, could still be shut down for another three months. hey, ashley, what's going on?

three months? what's with that? ashley: yeah. yeah, dragging their feet, to say the least. california was the first state to issue a stay-at-home order and now appears to be -- to want to be the last state to actually reopen. the l.a. county beaches are open to exercise and other recreational activities, but the cal state university system could very well cancel in-person classes in the fall, basically going entirely to online education in the system. it's interesting because other counties now fed up with what the governor is saying, are pushing ahead with basically phase two level reopening, because they say this is ridiculous, we have got to get our businesses going. you have a confusing mish-mash from what's coming out of sacramento and what we're seeing is we saw those protests recently down in huntington beach. i think the pent-up pressure is there but l.a. county didn't get the memo.

three months, which would take us essentially into midto late august. stuart: extraordinary stuff. thank you, ashley. i want to bring in steve hilton. he's a california guy, often talks to us about california subjects. i've got to say, steve, the level of frustration throughout california must really be on the boil here. >> absolutely. words really aren't available to describe the level of frustration, because for one basic reason, stu, which is that it seems so unscientific. it's the exact opposite of what we are constantly told which is that these decisions are based on the data, on the science. if you look at what's actually happening throughout the state, there's no way you can link the actual decisions to any kind of data. for example, right across the state, including in l.a. county, which is the hardest hit, remember we were told that this is all about relieving pressure on the hospital system.

there has been complete stability in the hospital system there. there hasn't been anything like the kind of pressure and overcrowding that we have seen in new york. the actual percentage of hospital beds occupied by coronavirus patients in california across the state is just under 7%. so the idea that this is necessary in order to do what we were first told which is to make sure we could cope with any rise, is just ridiculous. and in the rural parts of the state where you are seeing the first signs of the fight back, there are literally counties with no cases, no deaths, barely any impact of the disease at all, yet people are being told they have got to stay home, their schools are closed. that's of course a disaster. in those areas often they don't have reliable internet so they can't do home schooling either. i think you are going to see a real revolution against all this because it's not based on science as they keep telling us. stuart: i don't want to be labeled a conspiracy theorist but i do see something rather sinister in this. across the country, it is democrat-run states that are

last to open up. either they don't want to open up -- the sinister thing the me is i think they like controlling us. i think they like having us under their thumb. am i crazy here or what? >> no, i think you are completely right. because it validates in a sense their entire world view that government can run everything, can do everything, who needs the private sector when you've got government to look after everybody, so that's why they are so casual about this. there's another important point. yesterday, governor newsom presented his budget for the year. there's going to be a $54 billion shortfall, budget deficit because of the drop in revenues and the increasing costs. he's looking for a quarter of that to be met by the federal government. that's many, many billions of dollars. actually, he also made the point that in previous budget situations where you had a big shortfall, in 2003, 2009 and

2011, the proportion was actually less than what you've got now but he's still asking for a bailout even though there was no federal bailout back then. they love doing all this and they want the federal government to dig them out of the financial hole that it's causing. the whole thing is completely outrageous. stuart: we have mike garcia on the show just in a few minutes' time. he's the guy, the republican who won that special election in southern california. do you think he won in part because of the anti-lockdown feeling in california? >> i really think that's a big part of it. because you are seeing people realize now that this single party rule that you've had in california has -- power has gone to their head and they think they can do anything. there's no check, there's no accountability. i think people want more political balance, they want a check on these democrat leaders at every level of government in the state. that's why that was such a terrific result and i think it's

a sign that you are going to get a revival of the republican party here in california, and this has accelerated it because people are sick of how the democrats are running the state. stuart: i have been waiting a long time for it. maybe it's finally about to arri arrive. we shall see. mr. garcia is on the show very shortly. steve hilton, thank you very much indeed. see you soon. and on sunday nights. got you. from california to new jersey. the governor, phil murphy, says that beaches can reopen just in time for memorial day weekend. alex hogan is with us. alex, i'm going to ask you the same question i have asked others. what's it going to look like on those reopened beaches? >> stuart, it's going to be a very different look. the memories that you made at the beach, they won't be exactly like the memories that you will make this year but come memorial day, all state land across the ocean and lakes will reopen but again, there will be new restrictions. so these new rules mean there will be no frisbee, no football on the beach, no contact sports at all.

along the boardwalk, places like this here, we are also seeing no arcades, no rides and towns will limit the crowd sizes of people who actually go on the beach. governor phil murphy announced the news on twitter saying the shore is central to our new jersey identity and we want to ensure that families can safely enjoy it this summer. but it's more than just the identity, of course. it's also the financial institution that funds a lot of these small towns so again, that is a huge economic impact that people here are just hoping to see. stuart? stuart: they don't want the lose the entire summer. they have lost enough already. thanks, alex. good stuff. thank you. as more states reopen, more families are indeed hitting the road and heading to a drive-in movie. watch this. >> this one is cute. let's keep him. >> come on! you've got car insurance, right? stuart: ah, now, that movie, "sonic the hedge hog" is the movie that will play at the

warwick drive-through this season. that drive-in reopens tonight. we will speak to the owner and ask the same question. what's it going to look like? she will tell us. the media barely covering the michael flynn case after years of reporting that the trump campaign colluded with russia. joe concha coming up on that. check apple. a taiwanese chip maker will break ground next year on a $12 billion factory in arizona. this is a win for president trump and america. dan ives, apple watcher, next. ♪

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stuart: where are we now, two hours into the trading session this friday morning? all right, i'll tell you. we're down 150 points on the dow. it's been like that for most of the morning, down 100 to 250 points. that's where we are now. let's get to tesla and bring in dan ives. dan, i'm sure you saw this headline. tesla -- it was on reuters -- a million mile battery. a, what do you make of it and b, is this just another headline from elon musk getting some publicity? >> yeah, look, i think for musk, and this is all going into they will have a battery day over the

coming weeks, that continues to be the core dna of tesla in terms of continuing to stretch out what battery usage is going to be on the core model 3 going forward. i think they are going to continue to sort of stretch this out. it's part of the innovation going on in giga out in nevada. i think this is sort of a drum roll of battery day. i think that's the key to seeing a four-digit stock in terms of some of these announcements which could take it above $1,000. stuart: it's the holy grail of the electric car industry, isn't it, to have a battery that's capable of running you for, what, 400 miles on a single charge? that's the holy grail, really, isn't it? >> fundamentally, for musk and tesla, that's been part of the golden brand and that's how they have also navigated here even versus competition both in the u.s. and globally, and this is just further and further that sort of competitive moat they built, expanding that. stuart: have they got this battery? >> i think right now, they are

continuing to innovate on the battery side. i think that continues to be a longer term goal. i think ultimately, going into the battery day, these are some of the things they will talk about in terms of innovation going out, six, 12 months, even a few years. you look at detroit and gm, what they're doing, right now there's an arms race in the battery side and everyone is going after tesla in the ev market that's only 3% to 4% penetrated. stuart: earlier this morning, the u.s. blocked a shipment of chips to huawei, china's leading technology company, and they immediately turned around and said look, we're going to take reaction against the apples of this world, and apple went way down. is this a permanent threat to apple? >> look, apple continues to be caught in the storm. especially in china. if you look at foxconn and the

supply chain, that is the corridor for iphones. there is some trepidation around apple but as we talked about many times over the last year, in terms of the u.s./china trade wars, i think the bark is worse than the bite but it does speak to apple, more and more pressure for them to take some production out of china, either into india, vietnam or potentially the u.s. stuart: you are still sticking with $350 per share, apple, by next year? still? >> oh, yeah. i continue to think either an iphone xii with pent-up demand the other side of this dark valley, the stock could have a 4 in front of it. that's why the stock continues to hold up despite the covid-19 dark clouds, because that pent-up demand in the service, a stock that's $350 in my opinion as we look out. stuart: dan ives, welcome back to the program. always good to see you. see you again soon. thank you, sir. appreciate it. now this. the media, the media, outraged with the coverage of what

president trump calls obamagate. they say the coverage of the unmasking of general flynn is a conspiracy and a distraction. look at cnn's brian seltzer. roll it. >> so disappointed to look at what we are seeing in right wing media that there's such an obsession with the deep state and these revelations about the russia probe and this business about michael flynn. they are treating the michael flynn story like it's a bigger deal than the deaths of 2,000 americans a day. i find it befuddling. stuart: laughable. i'm sorry, utterly laughable. gentleman on the right-hand side of the screen covers the media for the hill and he's a professional at this and i'm laughing at what they're saying here. it seems to me that obama and biden get a free pass. >> well, stuart, that is precisely correct. look at it this way. if you want to answer the question why isn't this being covered, picture this

hypothetical in your mind. president trump and his administration leaves office in 2021 or 2025 and as they're leaving, two weeks before, they decide they're going to spy on and investigate and eventually unmask the identity of a senior member of a democratic administration. picture what the reaction would be like. then on top of that, also someone within that administration who unmasked that particular person then leaks to "the washington post" or a leading publication the name of that person and what the so-called investigation looks like and then that person is fired one week, two weeks into his job, thereby embarrassing that administration and ruining the life of in this case, a general flynn. when you leak that sort of information to the media, stuart, that's a ten-year felony. i would think that journalists are supposed to speak truth to power, right, and government secrets and boy, all this stuff about coverups and so on, that's juicy stuff for journalists, particularly when you have the

former head of the cia, fbi, dni and the vice president all listed as part of the people who wanted the unmasking, i would be very curious if i were a journalist and probably would want to investigate that and not downplay it and say coronavirus is the only thing we should be covering, no other stories are allowed and if you do that, you are insensitive to the deaths of 2,000 people. it's a silly analysis from a silly critic. stuart: i have given extensive coverage to joe biden's problems, the #metoo problem, the sexual allegation problem, the flynn problem. there's a ton of problems for this guy. i have often asked the question is he really going to be the democrat standard bearer or will his problems overwhelm him and they will get somebody else. what do you think? >> well, you know, it would be hard to replace him at this point, right. he does have all those delegates. he has run a campaign for over a year. he beat out something like 20 something other candidates. to take that away from him at this point, he would have to

voluntarily step aside. i couldn't see the democratic establishment actually saying you know what, i think we can get andrew cuomo in there or hillary clinton or pick your democrat here and fill that particular spot in. but look, joe biden is probably one of the most underwhelming candidates in modern history. you probably have to go back to michael dukakis because he is so poor in interviews and his ability to articulate basic thoughts. remember this, stuart. you are not going to get this version of joe biden if he's elected. you get joe biden in his 80s and that's something that really should make everybody pause and say wait a minute, is this person really up for the job. if you asked me eight years ago if he was, i would say of course, joe biden is sharp, pretty good politician, not great but i can see him as president, sure. now, i think a lot of democrats have big doubts on whether joe biden can handle this and then if he's put in a one-on-one with donald trump when things get back to normal, if they get back to normal particularly on a debate stage, you would have to

think at this point given his performances it probably won't go too well for him. stuart: great year to be in the media, is it not. joe concha, great to have you on the show. >> never a slow pace. thank you. stuart: thanks very much. check out the white house. president trump is going to make a big announcement from there about the vaccine. he wants one by the end of the year. after that, he will unveil the brand new space force flag and you will see it right here live on, to business. high school graduations canceled all round the country but celebrities are teaming up to give them virtual speeches. watch this. >> you have graduated. you finished what you started. congratulations. stuart: that's matthew mcconaughey, of course, part of a virtual graduation on facebook. we will explain it all coming up for you. first, though, congressman-elect mike garcia, he flips the house seat in california in the middle of a

pandemic. we will ask him did the lockdown revolt help his victory. he's next. in my line of work, i come face to face with a lot of behinds. so i know there's a big need for gas-x maximum strength. it works fast. relieving pressure, bloating, and discomfort before you know it. so no one needs to know you've got gas. gas-x

stuart: we are headed a little further south. now we are down over 2 e200 poi. we had some negative economic news this morning on retail sales and a couple other items, industrial production, very negative. we are in a deep chasm right now. the question is, can we rebound later. that's the question for the market. for the first time in more than 20 years, a republican has flipped a congressional seat in california. let's bring in congressman-elect mike garcia. this is the man who won a republican in california. i'm still scratching my head about this one. but look, did you campaign on an anti-lockdown platform? is that -- did that help you? >> actually, no. not at all. we didn't campaign on an anti-lockdown. we actually were in compliance with it the entire time.

we pivoted to a virtual campaign effectively even before the lockdown was instated here in california. we were doing virtual town halls, making over 500,000 phone calls in the midst of the lockdown and being very delicate and sensitive to the supporters and donors looking out for their safety as a priority. look, what resonated with folks was the message, right, lower taxes, less government, less regulation, especially now during the coronavirus. this is when we need to be taking care of the taxpayers and small business owners here and in sacramento, my opponent was not doing those things. she was raising taxes, raising regulations and making it tougher to live in california. so that was the message that won the day for us. stuart: do you think this is going to go anywhere? i don't mean to ask the question in a negative sort of way but look, i have been saying for years and years and years it's very hard for any republican to win any election anywhere in california and i have been

right, because you don't win. all of a sudden you win big, i think you won by about 12 points. is this a real opening for the republican party in california? is it just a one-off shot? >> no, i think it's a renaissance. i think this is a rebirth in our party. i think there has been an awakening not just among republicans but you know, the middle third of california that has no party preference, they just want to continue to be able to afford to live in this beautiful state. we are starting to see things happen at the national level that have been happening in sacramento and california for a long time and people are tired of it. stuart: forgive me, mike, forgive me for jumping in like this, but you represent now the northern part of los angeles county. you represent a constituency that's full of the elites. i can't imagine the elites voting republican. >> well, you know, my constituency is actually very middle class and it's a large area, it's also a part of ventura county.

there's nothing about this demographic that i would consider to be elitist. i think they are just, they are aware of what's going on and on the heels of katie hill, folks are paying attention and really vetting the candidates now and there's a stark contrast between the candidates across the board and they want a patriot. they want a political outsider, someone who is qualified, someone who owns a small business who served in combat but also in the boardroom and knows how to run a business. so i think people appreciate that, you know. we were unfortunately not able to campaign in person as much as we wanted to, but we evolved and adapted and overcame despite that, and you know, the margin of victtory was surprising but that's a tell-tale of what folks are thinking right now. we have the reagan library in our district. this is the land of reagan and it is a rebirth of not only the party but also an awakening of folks in the district who are thirsty for real leadership. stuart: once again, congratulations, mike garcia. hope to see you again on this program. thank you, sir. >> thanks, stuart.

appreciate it. good to be back. stuart: got it. look at facebook stock. it's down a buck at $205. now, they are holding a virtual high school graduation. they have a special commencement speaker. lauren, how does this work? is it one speaker for all graduating high school students today? is that how they do it? lauren: several speakers, for all graduating high school students today and actor matthew mcconaughey, his special message, listen. >> don't bother yourself too much if you're not quote sure what you want to do in life. i'm 50. i still have many days when i'm not quite sure what i want to be. live in a way now where you can look back later and say i think i handled that pretty well. congratulations. all right, all right. lauren: i handled that pretty well, no prom, no graduation ceremony. the class of 2020 sure is an

original. oprah winfrey will give a keynote address. she's the commencement speaker. there will be a performance on facebook and instagram by miley cyrus and look, usher, cardi b., simone biles, what a list of celebrities to congratulate the class of 2020. stuart: not quite as good as the real thing but i'm sure a lot of people will take it. thanks very much. our next guest -- lauren: i feel bad. major life moment. stuart: it is. it is. definitely. our next guest hopes that the cheap gas we're enjoying will drive people to her drive-in movie theater. we will go live to warwick, new york, where they are getting ready for opening night at the drive-in. that's tonight. we will go there next. every financial plan needs a cfp® professional --

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the most important song in the history of music. >> this ought to be good. ♪ ♪ tell you what i want what i really really want ♪ stuart: okay. you saw that movie. the warwick drive-in theater in new york reopening this weekend. i believe that's the movie they going to see. the lady on the right-hand side of the screen is beth wilson, the drive-in theater owner. okay, let's get right to it, beth. what are the rules for reopening your drive-in? >> our rules, we have to be social distanced, make sure you wear your mask.

stuart: can i roll the windows down in my car? >> yes, you may. as long as you are six feet apart from everybody, you are more than welcome to. stuart: how many people per car? >> it's usually a family. we can take, you know, two people or four people. as long as it's your group of people, you are more than welcome to come. stuart: all right. what kind of business you expecting? >> we are completely sold out of online tickets for tonight, saturday and sunday right now. stuart: sold out completely? now, do you have -- >> sold out completely. stuart: do you have the same capacity as you would in normal times? >> no. we have dropped back to half capacity. our big theater, we can fit about 150 cars. our second drive-in, we can go to about 100 cars. our third drive-in is about 45. stuart: we have heard a lot about some movie theaters bringing back very very old,

classic movies because hollywood's production of current movies are at a stand-still. what kind of movies are you bringing back? >> right now, i'm playing movies that came out for christmas and early spring. before the shutdown happened. and then we are looking to bring in some of the ole classic movies again also, until july 15th when our industry opens back up for movies. stuart: how about concessions? i want coke and popcorn. can i get it? >> yep, our concessions are open. we are work onniing on an app f this evening. hopefully it's up and going. if not, we have our regular snack bars open as long as we are social distanced and wearing our masks, we will be fine. stuart: i wish you the best of luck. thanks for being on the show. this is a real breakthrough for many people. i think you will do well, put it like that. thank you, beth. >> thank you so much. stuart: sure thing. take a look at this. we are showing you mccarron

airport in las vegas, of course. they have a vending machine. you can pick up items like gloves and hand sanitizers by the tsa checkpoint. my producer says you have to touch the buttons. okay. all right. a reusable mask costs, what, 15 bucks. a disposable one is eight bucks. that's mccarron airport in vegas. more after this. now more than ever, you need technology you can rely on. and people you can rely on. i'm a dell technologies advisor. me too. me too. me too. and if you're a small business, we're with you. we are with you. we're with you. we want to help. so we'll be right here. at home. answering your calls. providing support. and standing by you every step of the way. bye bye.

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candidates that have been discovered. what we're doing now is narrow ing those down to the core group that we're going to play huge, multi-hundred million dollar bets on and scale massive vaccine domestic production, so that we, by the end of the year, we hope would have one or more safe and effective vaccines and hundreds of millions of doses. stuart: now that's alex azar on the show earlier this morning talking about this huge push to get a vaccine in place by the end of this year. that's very important stuff, as you heard him say, they are maximizing all kinds of resources to get this moon shot done. and by the way, at 12 noon coming up very shortly, president trump is about to talk about this , the moon shot vaccine effort, he'll be talking about it literally seconds from now. by the way one quick news item governor cuomo of new york just said new york beaches will be open, i guess that's in time for the memorial day weekend that's next weekend, that will

put him, new york rather, in line with new jersey; however you can use the beach for exercise only. you can't put a towel down. you can't sit. you can't soak up the sun. you can't do that. i've got a problem with that, but neil it's yours. neil: but can you carry a bunch of food items and multiple therm oses, because you're getting your exercise. stuart, have a safe weekend but i think stuart is right that's backwards but we'll see what happens anyway we're also focusing on what the president is going to do this marshall plan for planning a vaccine, az ar among those saying the government is making multi- hundred billion dollar bets on this. the hope is that whatever they're betting on that turns out to be worth investment, and that they don't come up at a sinkhole here but again the past on this is fleeting because we haven't seen much of it in this country save the marshall plan itself,