maria: thanks for joining us, everybody, have a great day. "varney & company" begins right now. stuart: good morning, maria. good morning, everyone. daylight just arriving along the gulf coast, and we're getting a first look at the damage. laura arrived at a cat four storm, 130 mile-per-hour winds, gusts up to 150. we know the storm surgery moved a wall of water inland. headache charles said to be -- lake charles said to be, quote, severely damaged. it's an unfolding story. we're getting eyes on the damage, and we'll follow laura as the storm moves up into arkansas. we're on it. moments from now we'll find

out what the federal reserve is going to do to rev up the economy. big speech coming from chairman powell. odds are he's going to talk about inflation. he wants more of it. if that's correct, he'll be printing a lot of money. literally seven minutes from now -- make that nine or ten minutes from now, we will be allowed to give you the official word. and, by the way, that's what the market's waiting for. the dow jones average is coming off -- the dow is going to be down about 22 points, roughly that way. let's see what happens when we get the fed's announcement. the s&p, that's coming off its 18th all-time high. down a couple of points at the moment. the nasdaq is coming off its 38th all-time high. we did receive news of just over one million new jobless benefit claims last week, no noticeable impact on the market on that. that market, the investors, they're really waiting for the fed. five big tech stocks, they're coming off record highs. here they are this morning, premarket. apple is up some more, but

amazon, facebook, alphabet and microsoft, all of them on the downside. it has been an incredible run. it's the strongest six month rally ever, and technology dominates like never before. move on. what you're looking at now is a developing sports boycott. the milwaukee bucks walked away from their playoff game last night. it's a stand against racism, and it may spread. two other nba playoff games scheduled for last night postponed, three major league baseball games called off, five major league soccer matches postponed. it's a boycott. it's spreading. and sports events for the rest of the year, looks like they're in jeopardy. there is a lot going on, we're covering it all. "varney & company" is about to begin. ♪ ♪ >> president trump and vice president pence have lifted

americans. this is the man i know and the president we need for four more years. >> be a radical for freedom. be a radical for liberty. and be a radical for our republic for which i stand, one nation, under god, with the liberty and justice for all. >> heroism is self-sacrifice. it's not moralizing and lecturing over others when they disagree. heroism is grace, not perpetual outrage. >> in these challenging times, our country needs a president who believes in america, who believes in the boundless capacity of the american people. >> i want my daughter to grow up in president donald j. trump's america. stuart: it was another powerful night at the republican national convention. the high point, to me, was madison, in a wheelchair since he was a teenager, but he stood for the flag last night.

you saw it moments ago. later today white house press secretary caylee mcenany will join us. she's been on our show for many, many years, actually since she was just a law school graduate. now she's one of the biggest names in politics, and she'll be on in our 11:00 hour. let's get to laura battering the gulf coast with what's described as an unsurvivable storm surge in some areas. jeff flock is in lake charles, louisiana. he's seeing widespread damage. show it to us, please. >> reporter: it was a rough night overnight, stuart, and it's going to be a rough, god knows, weeks perhaps. just one of the hundreds, maybe thousands of businesses, homes, schools damaged. this is, i believe, an autozone. and it just goes on and on. it started in cameron, that's where it came ashore just south of here. look at this. broke withen glass, some sort of thing. and it just -- this is not just

a one-off. almost every structure you see in lake charles damaged in some i way, affected in some way by this. as i said, we had a rough night overnight. 150 mile-an-hour winds. you wouldn't want to stand out in that. and look what it's done. not only the businesses, but if you look back here, you'll see back in the residential areas, you know, this isn't the area, by the way, that got storm surge. s this is all from the power of the storm, the wind power of the storm. another business over here,s i think this is a health club over here. and this goes on for blocks and blocks and miles and miles. and we haven't driven half of it. there's 30 miles between here and cameron where the storm came ashore, and out all looks like this. -- it all looks like this. you know, there's going to be a heck of a cleanup here. sometimes, you know, stuart, we say when the storm over, we say, you know what? maybe we made too much out of that, you know?

chicken little or whatever, it wasn't as add bad as we thought. i think in this case it's going to be every bit as bad as we thought. stuart: all right, jeff, we'll be back to you frequently in the next three hours. thanks so much is. jeff flock right there. let's move on. big news on the virus front. the fda is giving what's called emergency use status to abbott labs rapid test, virus test. it costs, what, $5. it's the size of a credit card. abbott's stock is up 8%, and dr. marc siegel joins us now. dr. siegel, nyu professor of medicine, by the way. doctor, this has a 97% accuracy rate, and it's the size of a credit card. and you get the results in 15 minutes. is that a game-changer? >> this is a huge game-changer, stuart. and you know when i get excited, you know about it first. it's called binex now, and it's a lateral flow platform which

means it doesn't need big, clunky lab machines. it's actually something we may be able to use at home, and you're right, it's $5 per test, it takes 15 minutes to get a result, you're going to be able to hook it up to your iphone, so you'll be there in school or work and it'll say 15 minutes later you don't have the virus, and god forbid if you do have the virus, then you get away from everybody else. they're planning on giving 50 million doses of this in october, and tens of millions of doses in september. to give you an idea, we tested 25 million people in july, stuart. this is going to be double that amount in october. this is going to be the way going forward. this is huge. cheap, effective, quick and accurate, as you said, 97-98% accuracy. stuart: got it. >> this is huge. it's called an antigen test. it looks at the protein. stuart: okay, we got it.

doc siegel, thanks very much, indeed. chairman powell is now speaking. we can go to edward lawrence who will tell us exactly what the fed chair's saying. what have you got there, edward? >> reporter: fundamental shifts, the federal open market committee voted unanimously to change the long-rub goals for the -- long-run goals for the federal reserve, also the monetary policy strategy. seeking to achieve inflation that averages 2%. that means they'll let the economy run hot for a period of time to have the long-run goal back to 2% so households and investors can be secure that it will be that 2% target. also maximum employment. the fed will make decisions based on the assessment of shortfalls of employment from its maximum level. what that means, the change for shortfalls clarifies that the employment can run bo the realtime estimates of its maximum without causing concern for investors or people. also they're updating the strategy which includes acknowledgment that that are

challenges to monetary policy if inflation runs below on a large or long-term basis this. in the speech powell's basically saying there's no longer a need to raise interest rates if inflation is below the 2% target and the job market is improving. the framework will be reviewed every five years. now, in the speech powell says the maximum unemployment rate was blown away, the estimate. in 2012 it was 5.5%. 4.1% was revised down to by the fomc. now the economy has for the past two years run under 4% and no inflation whatsoever. he says that the people on the edges they've heard over and over, the minority community and those out of the labor force were brought in by this economy. and over the past two years that has changed the view, the mindset of the federal reserve. also he says he has every reason to believe that before the pandemic hit that the economic expansion would have continued the way it was going on that rocket ship level there. powell says the fed will be

prepared to still use the full range of tools going forward to support the economy. stu? stuart: edward lawrence, thank you very much, indeed. i want to bring in art laffer, art, i know you were listening to what edward was saying. my interpretation is this, it's going to print a lot of money. is that right? >> i wouldn't say that, stuart. but i would say what they're doing is trying to be very accommodating to the markets, and i think they're also saying that the phillips curve does not work. the faster the economy grows, the higher the inin-- inflation will be. ing they're tempering down. the phillips curve doesn't make any sense whatsoever. how can an increase in supply of something cause the price to rise, it's beyond me. i'm very pleased with their comments and glad they're being accommodative to the markets going forward. stuart: let me take you -- makee

i've got this right. if the inflation rate remains under 2%, you've got a pretty strong job growth. doesn't mean you've got to say you've got to raise interest rates, is that it? >> that is precisely correct. and that's good, good news. hong term it's really important that the fed doesn't squelch this economy. if you look at new unemployment claims continuing, it's just great. we are going to have very rapid growth and the thought that the fed might try to pull it back is really anathema to me. i'm very glad that they've come through with this, and it makes me feel a lot better. stuart: that's plain english. the fed will not change rapid growth. thank you very much. >> my pleasure, stuart. [laughter] stuart: see you soon. we haven't had much of a change in futures, bearing in mind the fed chief's message there. we're still down across the board, down 18 for the dow. and look at the nasdaq, really

pulling back after an extraordinary day yesterday, down 39 there. but no serious pullback. vice president mike pence delivered his speech from fort mchenry last night, and he showed a clear contrast between the democrats' doom and gloom messaging versus this. watch this. >> now, last week joe biden said that no miracle is coming. what joe doesn't seem to understand is that america is a nation of miracles. stuart: that sure looks to me like the president and the republicans know how to put on an uplifting show, and that's what we're going to cover all the way through this morning. we're also tracking the hurricane, laura, the devastating damage left behind. meteorologist janice dean tell us where laura is headed now. we'll be back. ♪ lace to be is stuck in-between. accelerate your investments or pull back?

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stuart: we're going to follow laura foru all morning long, and right now we're bringing in janice dean tracking the storm in our weather center. janice, where is it now and where is it going? janice: central louisiana, it's going to go up towards arkansas, and we're going to get a piece of laura as we get into the weekend here in the northeast. so a widespread area going to feel the effects, but right now we are dealing with a category two storm when it made landfall last night around one a.m. central time. it was a category four storm, 150 mile-per-hour sustained winds. that ties the record for the strongest storm to ever hit louisiana and the damage is going to be extensive. here are some of the wind gusts this morning, lake charles, 134 miles per hour. that's 30 miles inland, so that's really impressive. cameron, where we had the

landfall, 127 miles per hour. these are all winds from louisiana, alexandria 86 miles per hour. we're still seeing hurricane force winds there as well, the core of those strongest winds, and behind it almost like a cold front that's moving into parts of louisiana and mississippi. we're going to see the potential not only for heavy rainfall, but tornadoes. so these are tornado watches for the next several hours including the city of new orleans. we typically see weak tornadoes with these topical systems when they make landfall, so so there's a tornado threat as we go through the day today. that's going to continue into tomorrow and into saturday and sunday as the storm lifts northward. it's moving around a 15 miles per hour right now, but it's going to start to accelerate as it pushes across the ohio, the tennessee valley and towards the northeast. so there's the latest track. as you can see, it is weakening, it will continue to do so quite rapidly as it doesn't have a wears source anymore.

and then it's going to -- a water source anymore. and then it's going to transition into a tropical storm, a depression and then an extra-flop call system as it -- tropical system. so we're going to get some strong wind gusts with this system on saturday and sunday. flooding, flood advisories are going to be posted for much of louisiana, parts of texas and through arkansas where they could get upwards of 4-6 inches of rainfall. i know i've seen isolated amounts of over 10 inches of rain. so we'll be dealing with this storm, unfortunately, friday and even into the weekend. and then we have a wave behind that in the atlantic, stuart, that we're going to have to watch with. we're not even into peak season, if you can believe it. back to you. stuart: all right, janice. i consider myself warned. thank you very much, indeed. we'll see you later. okay. look at futures. they've turned around. the market, investors clearly like what powell is saying. basically he's saying, look, we're not going to squelch a rapid economic recovery by

raising rates. the market loves it. up 90 now on the dow industrials. look at draft kings, please. down this morning 3.7% after playoff games, nba playoff games were canceled last night, the mares boycotting over the death of jacob blake in wisconsin. and two teams, the lakers and the clippers, they may boycott the rest of the playoffs. come boo this, ash. looks to me like the whole nba season may be in jeopardy. ashley: yeah, it certainly feels, stu, that it's gaining momentum. as you say, the milwaukee bucks opting to boycott game five of the series with orlando, and then other teams quickly followed that lead. all in protest of the shooting in wisconsin. bucks' guard george hill said that, quote: we're just tired of the killings and injustice. and when the bucks announced that boycott, orlando refused to accept a forfeit win, said, no, we're not going to do that. the milwaukee bucks put out a

statement that said this: despite the overwhelming plea for change, there has been no action. so our focus today just cannot be basketball. by the way, houston, oklahoma, that game also was called off as was lakers/portland. those three games supposedly will be rescheduled, but as you say, we don't know. now let's get into major league baseball. the brewers in milwaukee did not go out on the field against the reds yesterday. and the reds, also, agreed not to play. ryan braun said, listen, we saw what the bucks decided to do and, frankly, that inspired us. that motivated us. at some point actions speak louder than words. the mariners and padres, dodgers and giants, two other games that were also canceled. some major league players just decided not to play even though their games went ahead. as you mentioned, mls, five games postponed.

there is certainly momentum. it's going to be interesting to see where this heads. stuart: ashley, thanks very much, indeed. tonight the last night of the republican convention. ivanka trump, mitch mcconnell, alex johnson and, of course, president trump himself. art laughter's come back with us -- art laffer's come back with us. what are you expecting from the president tonight? >> i'm expecting him to lay out the whole plan for the future and all of the positive things he's going to do in his second term. i think he's got some really exciting things coming, stuart. transparency, he's going to do tax reform, all sorts of other good economics, and i think the markets are today hit with a lot of very good news. but i think ivanka's going to be upset with you when you mentioned that she's speaking tonight and they're all heavyweights. [laughter] just joking, just joking. stuart: all right. art laffer, thank you very much, indeed. >> really good news today. stuart: i think the investors liked your interpretation of jay

powell when you said he's not going to squelch rapid. economic recovery, the market loves it. thank you very much, art laffer. >> thank you, stuart. stuart: plenty of green, up 100 for the dow. look at the nasdaq, fantastic day yesterday. it was up nearly 200 points. up another 40-odd points today, 12,000 on the nasdaq. can you believe that? we'll be back with more. introducing stocks by the slice from fidelity. now you can trade stocks and etfs for any amount you choose instead of buying by the share. all with no commissions. stocks by the slice from fidelity. get your slice today. in a highly capable lexus suv. at the golden opportunity sales event. gets zero percent financing and make no payments for up to 90 days on all 2020 lexus models.

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♪ ♪ stuart: we are three minutes away from the opening bell this morning. we're going to see some nice green when we do start to trade. our next guest says he's tired of the naysayers. d.r. barton with us. spell it out. >> oh, these people that think the markets and the economy are disconnected. of course they're disconnected. we're in a disconnected world right now, and you can't ignore all of the money that's flowing from central banks and from governments into the world and then finding where it's treated best which right now is the u.s. stock market, and that's going to keep propping us up. to talk about the disconnect means you're sitting on the sidelines missing this bull run. stuart: so you are staying in the market, and you think we're

going higher even as what we approach -- as we approach what may be a chaotic election. >> i believe so, stuart. at the election if we had some contested election, the markets will not like that. however, leading up to that time, we're going to see all kinds of things happening. the white house is going to do everything they can to keep the markets buoyed because president trump has hitched his wagon to market performance throughout his presidency. he's been very consistent on that. so i believe we're going the see more upside heading into november, stuart. stuart: d.r., i'm going to get to the opening of the market in a moment, but before we do, is in any of the five big tech stocks that you would sell right now? any of 'em? >> i would not sell a single one of 'em, stuart. they are winning the game. they will continue winning the game. double-digit revenue growth, enough said.

stuart: yeah. we've got them on the length side of the screen right now. all of them are up except facebook which is holding at $300 a share which is an extraordinary performance. d.r., stay there, more for you coming up. i do want to make a small correction and make an apology as well. moments ago we said that jacob blake, the man shot by police in milwaukee, i'm sorry, in kenosha, wisconsin, had died. he has not. he is still alive. we understand that he is paralyzed from the waist down, but jacob blake is still alive. want to make that very clear. my apologies for the misunderstanding earlier. all right. we open the market in 30 seconds. we're going to see a lot of green. just look at that. left-hand side of the screen, dow is up maybe 80, s&p up another 5, nasdaq adding to yesterday's huge gains. see that level? nasdaq at 12,000. really extraordinary. the bottom line today on this market is jay powell, who is in

a peach right now, and he -- a speech right now, and he said, i'm interpreting this, he's not going to squelch a rapid economic recovery by raising rates. that's very important to investors, they're buying stocks this morning. here we go, 3, 2, 1, thursday morning, we're off, we're running. let's start with the big board. when those stocks open, we'll have a clearer picture of where we're going. look at them. the vast majority of the dow 30 in the green and the dow is up about 90 points in the early going. that's about a third of 1%. the s&p 500 coming off 18 record highs, up again this morning, up 5 pointeds, 3,484, all-time high. how about the nasdaq? that's coming off 38 record highs, it's made another one, up 17 points, 11,682. got that? that's another 16-point gain for the nasdaq. we're going to show you big tech, why not about? because that's been making a

run. they're coming off record highs yesterday. apple, microsoft, amazon up some more, alphabet, facebook down just a little bit. take a look at abbott labs, very important story. the fda gave their rapid antigen test emergency use status. it costs $5, the size of a credit card, you get results in 15 minutes. abbott stock, investors love it, up 8%, $111 a share. to amazon, they're coming off an all-time high yesterday. susan, what did that do for jeff bezos' net worth? >> he's now the world's first $200 billion man. already the richest man in history, two years ago in 2018, but then splitting his amazon stake with his ex-wife mckenzie last year, with her 4% amazon holdings, now the world's richest woman worth around $66 billion. and wednesday's rally means amazon is also the second most

system valuable company in america now overtaking microsoft. amazon worth around $1.7 trillion. and if as for bragging rights, bezos is now worth $78 billion, more than bill gates at number two, zuckerberg and musk, elon musk, now make up the top four and members, select members, elite members of the $100 billion club -- stuart: i wonder what aoc -- >> tax 'em more! pay your fair share. stuart: i'm sure elizabeth warren will be weighing in. >> she would actually have authority if she was treasury secretary. stuart: talk to me about tesla, please. surging this morning, $21.88. they just went past another corporate giant in terms of values. >> yeah, johnson & johnson. speaking of pharma, a goods company, $400 billion and counting. now the eighth largest company

in the country, and wealth was created this year, up over 400%. lots of catalysts here. first-year profits, the s&p 500, surging sales of electric cars, battery day next month also likely to showcase advanced battery technology, a bubble's being used to describe tesla, and tesla has by far the outstanding amount of short interest and short positions in the stock. the most shortest stock on the planet at oh $21 billion, so they have 50% more short interests than apple at number two which has only $14 billion in shorts. means the amount of money betting that the stock will fall. so still, a lot of naysayers despite the rally. stuart: yes. but you've to the to have a strong stomach and bet that --

>> a lot of money. huge. and so you would say that elon musk beats the short? stuart: so far. dow's up 93. despite huge earnings, sales force -- okay, now terrific stock market performance yesterday. despite all of that, they're going to do some layoffs. ashley, how many jobs cut? ashley: yeah. 1,000 jobs will be eliminated. that's about 2% of the work force. what's interesting about this, and as you mentioned, it comes after a blowout earnings report with revenue up 29% year-over-year, but the workers in question, those affected workers will have 60 days to find another job within the company. so the number of cuts could be well less than that 1,000 number. for those who don't find a new job, they will be given a severance and paid benefits for six months. sales force says it is, quote, this is great company speak, they say we are real locating

resources to position the company for continued growth, also adding that it's a strategic shift that reflects the impact of the virus on how and where our people work. basically, a thousand positions are being eliminated, but some of those workers may be able to move within the company, stu. stuart: going to, ash. thanks very much. i want to bring back d.r. because i want to talk about the federal reserve. i keep saying the same expression, the fed chair is saying he's not going to stamp out any rapid economic growth by raising interest rates. that's clearly what the market really liked, because we're up over 90 points for the dow. this is a federally. is that right, des moines r.? >> -- d.r.? >> oh, you hit the nail on the head, stuart. if we look back just a couple of days ago, jay powell said they were going to relax their insistence on a 2% inflation number. you were, you might recall that. that is just bleeding over into

what we're hearing, he's broadening that out this morning. and what that really means is that, in fact, if we go above 2%, that means we're going to have to start raising interest rates, we're going to have to start tightening monetary control. based on everything that's going on now, we might let that slide for longer. the markets take that in conjunction with what he's saying this morning and going, yeah, we love it. stuart: it seems like the fed chair is, the response to what he's saying is helping the market, and it seems like president trump's going the try to help the market as well because he's predicated much of his first term on financial success and wall street's success. so the market had two things going for it, the president and the chairman of the federal reserve, that's why it's up so much. >> that and you throw in congress. i mean, congress is still, it's still debating, we often forget, they're still debating another stimulus package. so you get congress throwing

money at the global economy or u.s. economy, and that money, a lot of it, is going to find its way into the stock market, for sure. stuart: yeah. and don't forget, throw in the abbott labs' 15-minute get your results back test, i think that's a miss for the market overall. d.r., thanks very much, indeed. here's where we are seven minutes into the session. we've got the dow up almost a half a percentage point, that's to 120, 130 points. 28,470. in other words, we're less than a thousand points away from the all-time high for the dow industrials. and we've got records on the nasdaq and s&p as well. now you know her as a white house press secretary. last night kayleigh mcenany delivered a powerful speech revealing her personal story with us all. roll tape. >> when i was 21 years old, i got a call that changed my life. it was my doctor informing me that i had tested positive for the braca ii genetic mutation.

stuart: right. our show has been on the air for ten years, and in the early days kayly mcenaney was one of our frequent guests. i'm thrilled that she will be joining us this morning in our 11:00 hour. the face of the nba, lebron james, now positioning himself to be the face of social justice end again. he's leading players to boycott the entire season over the smoothing of jacob blake in kenosha, wisconsin. we've got the full story. we're tacking the path of laura all morning long. keep it here on "varney & company." ♪ ♪

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stuart: here's something else that may p the market, which is helping the market, fox news has confirmed that speaker pelosi and mark meadows will speak by phone this afternoon about a virus aid

package. that helps the market. we're up 155 for the dow. earlier we set new highs for the s&p which is holding onto the new high. nasdaq though is down 10. how about amazon, microsoft, tesla? they all hit record highs today, yesterday, the day before. look at microsoft, 221. look at amazon, 3445, and tesla's at 2216. fed chair powell addressing the issue of inning nation at the virtual jackson hole event earlier today. i want to bring in market watcher dennis guardman. i know you're big on gold, and i think that what jay powell had to say today is probably good for the price of gold in that he says, look, we need to -- we want inflation. we want some inflation, and we're prepared to do whatever it takes to get some inflation. that's good for gold, isn't it?

>> not a question, stuart. gold was trading a little bit lower before mr. powell began to speak, and it just soared to the upside. 1982 just a few minutes ago, it's still up seven or eight-tenths of 1% of yesterday's close. clearly outpacing what's going on in the nasdaq. what he had to say was presumptively bullish e of inflation generally, clearly he's going to allow and so are the other fomc members, and it was especially noted that the young lady who is the chairman of the kansas city federal reserve bank, esther george, who's been the most hawkish of the members, was on track with this also. so we're going to sponsor a stronger inflation, mr. powell will use all the tools available to him. up went gold. stuart: the price of gold has gone up during the pandemic and over the last couple of years,

but you wouldn't make as much money in gold as you would have made if you got into the big tech stocks. >> no question. stuart: are you -- [inaudible] >> i do not understand high-tech. i will never understand tesla, for example, selling more than the value of gm, ford, fiat chrysler combined. that makes no sense to me. if other people are making money, i wish them well, i hope it continues in their favor, but it will continue to move higher without me, and if it moves lower, it will do so without me also. i'm not old enough -- i'm not young enough, i guess i should say, nor high-tech specialty enough to understand what's going on there. god bless 'em, i hope they do well. stuart: yeah, well, i don't understand technology, but i got into it, and i did quite well. >> well done. stuart: okay. thanks very much. i had some help. dennis, thanks for joining us, we appreciate it. we'll be watching gold closely. thank you, sir. facebook says that apple's new iphone update will cause

problems for facebook's online advertising. can you explain this, susan? >> i will try. so apple used to allow facebook and google and other on line advertisers to access a unique phone id that allowed apps on facebook and google's advertising platform to track where users go and what they search on the internet. apple's new ios software update, facebook and google won't be able to access this unique id anymore, so that means they'll no longer be able to target ads to users by using this data. facebook says that could mean the money it makes by providing apps with this type of information could drop by 50%. and remember that nearly all of facebook's profit comes from advertising? but supplying apps with this type of data from this unique id is just a small slice of it, i don't think it's human. it does intensify tensions between facebook and apple who have locked horns over privacy.

tim cook has said before that our customers are not our product, and privacy is a human right. cook's comments extremely glib. google, meantime, will block the use of cookies where you search on search engines, and that will be i him nateed in chrome -- eliminated in chrome starting 2022. stuart: good explanation. i followed it all through. >> wow! stuart: hold on, i've got one more, the makers of fortnite and apple. i'm not quite sure i understand this, but i know that the fight is escalating. go ahead. [laughter] >> that's right. no fortnite game updates for any players, and some of them use the iphone. i wouldn't say all, but no updates starting today on the iphone, and that's the result of a legal battle between epic games and apple over the fees apple charges in the app store. the showdown started after epic

games allowed players to make purchases directly in the app itself. they both responded by removing fortnite from their stores. epic sued apple. they say if they remove the in-app direct payment story, you can play the game. finish epic has so far refused saying it's fighting against apple's monopoly. i haven't had a chance to ask you what you think of this, who do you think is in the right here? some would say, look, apple is not a utility, they're a private company, they built the iphone, the app store, and this is the price you pay to use the app store. stuart: i'm with them. i think that's a strong argument, and i would go with it. >> why does apple need to charge 30% commissions if i'm epic games, i made fortnite, i brought on the 400 million -- stuart: that is a picing

question as opposed to a principle question. >> google charges 30% too. so if apple does it, does google have to do it then? stuart: i don't know, but pricing -- >> they have every app on the app store. do you know how many there are on the app store? stuart: a lot. >> 84% are free but the rest have to pay? i'm just saying. stuart: okay. it's a hell of a fight at that level, those guys going at it. thanks, susan. it seems like the democrats' only pitch to voters is that joe biden will end so-called trump chaos. however, "the wall street journal"'s dan henninger with us today, he says joe biden cannot restore normalcy. he's in the 11:00 hour this morning. hurricane laura causing major threats to areas of oil production. what does that mean to you at the gas pump? yeah, we've got that story coming up next. ♪

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stuart: all right. we've got a nice -- look at that. whoa. the dow is now up 244 points, 28,574. that is your level. and, by the way, at that level it now turned positive for this

calendar year, 2020. what a year it's been. hurricane laura slammed the gulf coast, winds of over 130 miles an hour. the storm really shut down much of the oil production in the gulf. what's that going to do to gasoline prices? i want to know about that. here the head of petroleum analysis at gasbuddy, patrick dehaan, frequent guest on the show. patrick, i remember some previous hurricanes like katrina, the aftermath showed a real spike in the price of gas almost all over the country. what are we going to see after laura? >> well, you know, stuart, obviously with covid-19 reducing demand, it's not going to be quite as bad as, say, a katrina or a harvey as we saw in 2017. but the national average just now is at its highest levels since march partially because of the outages that hurricane laura is leaving in her wake. about 2 million barrels has been shut down. a little bit of good news, some

of the west side of that storm into texas refineries may have not received a whole lot of damage, so that refining capacity could get back online, but the national average may rise about 5 or 10 cents a gallon as those outages start to play out at retail pumps across the country. stuart: yes. but 5-10 cents maybe on the upside, that is not a catastrophic impact on us consumers. it's not that bad, is it, patrick? >> it really isn't. when you look at hurricane harvey in 2017, prices shot up 35 cents a gallon in just a matter of a few days, so a fairly money disable response -- money dane response. some of those remindlies in lake charles and louisiana that received some of the heaviest winds are some of the nation east largest, so we have to wait for damage assessments to happen today, but it does look like some of the refineries into texas may resume production fairly briskly. stuart: patrick, we're going to leave it right there. thanks so much, path rig.

patrick. by the way, the dow is now up 240 points. it is the final night of the rnc. look at the all-star lineup for tonight. rnc's senior adviser, "fox & friends" weekend cohost pete hegseth, caylee -- caylee mcenany, all of those on our show today. president trump knows how to put on a show, doesn't he? there were clear differences between the dnc's, i'm going to call it the hate trump festival, and this week's rnc. i'll go at that in my take, which is next. or what's trending. get real-time insights in your customized view of the market. it's smarter trading technology for smarter trading decisions. fidelity.

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stuart: this is called a rally, up 260 on dow industrials and there's gene for s&p -- green for s&p and nasdaq. jay powell said something in q&a session which moved the market some more. edward lawrence, what did he say in. >> the economy responded faster in may and june. he also said that the economy will be able to rebound very quickly. that's the term he used quickly, when the coronavirus is handled, however, travel and airlines will need more help. it would take years for those economies to recover, for those industries to recover and unemployment rate in those industries will be little bit higher and congress should look to help those industries going

forward but the overall economy will recover. stuart: microsoft up another 6 bucks, 227 here. look, i'm just scrolling through here but -- >> stu, microsoft could be shift in fundamentals the market is seeing. people are doing more distant business. they are not going to travel. they will use microsoft meetings, they are going to use zoom technologies, possibly not travel as much and do remote working. that could be the push there where they are seeing down the road. stuart: you're right. sky blue and sea of green. thank you very much, indeed. the hurricane, jeff flock on the ground in lake charles, louisiana, serious devastation. what are you seeing now, jeff? jeff: i'm walking down a street called plantation drive in lake charles, i tell you what,

charles, there isn't a house that isn't damaged in some way but i have not found a house yet that's not damaged in some way, some bigger than others. maybe you see this one here. a tree falls on your house, a lot of trees down and trees on homes. you know, this isn't the area that got the surge, cameron, that's where the surge came in. 28 miles plus from the coast and still you could see how strong that hurricane was, pretty amazing. just on a lighter note, perhaps, 25 miles an hour, when laura came through here last night she was 125 miles over the speed limit. stuart: we got it jeff, we do understand. thank you very much, indeed, a human story with all the damage. thanks, jeff. top of hour we have the latest read on mortgage rates, all right, ash, this is your number, what is it? ashley: it is, every week,

2.91%, stu, the last week it was 2.99, we are heading back down again. by the way the 15-year, i checked on that quickly, 2.46. look, the low rates continue to be catalyst for home buying, there's no doubt. home-buying season is normally in the spring because of pandemic it got pushed to the summer months and it's believed that that will continue into the fall and with the economy the way it is and what we heard from the fed, those low rates will be around for a while, and so, again, 30-year fixed rate mortgage 2.91%. stuart: that's exactly what he said, low rates around for long time to come. i think this is a leading indicator, pending home sales. ashley: it is. i have all sorts of numbers. yes, pending home sales for july up 5.9%. that is very important. up year over year. last month it was 6.3%. so maybe little slowdown but

before june we had four straight months of no gains, so we are definitely turning a corner, the demand is there, the low mortgage rates are there and these are contrast on existing homes. in july, up 5.9%, housing i think, has been one of the bright spots, the biggest problem we talk about every day, every week, is the lack of inventory, not enough homes on the market, otherwise the numbers would be bigger. stuart: yeah, it's a seller's market, that's for sure. ashley: yeah. stuart: big news coming from tiktok, the ceo kevin meyer, has resigned, susan, can you tell me why? susan: he says it's because of the political environment has sharply changed in recent weeks so he's out after 3 months in the job. he only joined in may from disney leaving top job there ahead of streaming to become ceo of tiktok and chief operating officer of tiktok chinese parent bite dance. it wasn't the global role that he had signed up for and that

mostly probably to president trump's dick to be ban. tiktok is still negotiating with separate buyers, microsoft and oracle and president trump's order has set date, september 15th, for tiktok to find a buyer and then 90 days after that to close a deal and price tag ranging ranging from o $50 billion depending on geography at play. and tiktok sued the white house and if tiktok can win a delay past november election, that actually might help lift the price tag of any sale of tiktok. new york times reported that surrounding tiktok sale was microsoft with his executive order. stuart: i wonder if it has nothing to do with microsoft which is ahead 4 to $5. susan: you should look past cheap money. when you alter how you raise interest rates and looks like interest rates will stay low for a long, long time, cheap money, cheap loans, cheap mortgages and also cheap moneys for investors to buy stock and that's why you're looking at the broader

market including in microsoft as well. stuart: up 230 on the dow, thank you, susan. that's the latest on your money. now this. this president knows how to put on a show. last night with force, dynamic production, it looked good with uplifting message, made you feel good too. it was such a contrast with the democrats and what they served up last week. that was a hate trump festival, dire warnings about the future. i hope you saw this, madison has been in a wheelchair since teenager. last night he stood up, you don't think that resinates with america? that man just stood up. he's 25. he's running for congress and he stands at a wheelchair. vice president pence appeared

from fort mchenry, he had a live audience. that's important because it's another contrast with joe biden setting speech in historic location, flags flying and audience of real people really sets him apart from biden basement. this kind of thing is very important in politics. the democrats used to be good at it, now they are drowning in anger and trump hating. how about policy, another contrast, the democrats offered tax hikes as some kind of revenge against the rich and wicked corporations, they offer the destruction of whole industries in the name of lie mate change mitigation. how dark request -- can you get? republicans, tax cuts, prosperity and end to violence in our cities something that joe biden had avoided talking about but it was the fight against the virus that really showed the contrast. gloom and doom and lock it all down again from joe and this from vice president pence. watch this.

>> last week joe biden said that no miracle is coming. well, what joe doesn't seem to understand is that america is a nation of miracles. we are on track to have the world's first safe effective coronavirus vaccine by the end of this year. stuart: along those lines we have encouraging fuse on virus test, abbott labs get emergency use approval for 5-dollar tests, you get results in 15 minutes. 97% accurate. it's the size of a credit card. dr. marc siegel on the show in last hour calls it a game-changer, watch this. >> it's a lateral platform which doesn't need big clunky machinery and doesn't need approvals and something that we may be able to use at home and i tell you how it's going to work.

you're right, $5 per test, 15 minutes to get a result. we tested 25 million people in july, stuart, this is going to be double that amount in october, this is going to be the way going forward. stuart: they are looking at labs and looking towards 50 million tests, test kits i will call them in october, pretty good. back to the big-tech names, microsoft, amazon, tesla, all hit fresh all-time highs earlier this morning. amazon's pulled back a little but the other power ahead. i can't believe microsoft, up another 5 bucks as we speak. gary kaltbaum joins us. is that the right way to phrase it and do you see any side of meltdown? >> i think it continues. short-term, though, we are about as extended as possible so we would not be surprising if we get pulling here and settling

down and a couple of things have happened in the last 3 weeks that mirth a lot. yesterday salesforce.com blew away the number. analysts have to raise guidance for not only salesforce.com but adobe and microsoft, everything in the space and that's important. number 2, technology is actually broadened out not just big tech but medium-size tech stocks have been kicking in gear also. i think that will have legs notwithstanding on basis. stuart: do you think what powell said is helping the market a lot? >> i think everything he has done is helping the market, printing the money, using the word unlimited has always helped markets and i think it's going to continue until there will be an end game. you just can't continue to distort price and print money, which by the way is all things

-- in the end things will turn out well. longer-term i'm worried about what he's doing. stuart: understand, gary kaltbaum, thanks for joining us. thank you very much. we will show you salesforce reporting massive quarter, made $5 billion worth of revenue, that was the first time. that hasn't stopped them from shedding a thousand people from their workforce. that's just 2% of the workforce. salesforce backing down 9 bucks, 3% today, they had fantastic performance yesterday. democrats praising joe biden and kamala harris for promising sweeping gun control reforms. she's concerned about second amendment rights and she will be on the show in our next hour. president trump deploying federal agents to kenosha, wisconsin after police shooting of jacob blake and the violent

protestors. live report. plus, nba, i should say this, some playoff games, nba playoff games were postponed and many others may be postponed. the milwaukee bucks refused to play, walked off the court, the reason, the season could be in jeopardy. more varney after this businesses are starting to bounce back.

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stuart: down 2% today. that follows postponement some of the nba playoff games. the milwaukee bucks boycotted, they walked off the court last night over shooting of jacob blake in kenosha, wisconsin. breaking this hour white house adviser jared kushner says he will be calling lebron james

today. that's an important development, not sure the significance but they are getting together on the phone. fox news kristina coleman is with us. we just talked about postponement of nba playoff games. which other leagues, sports leagues are showing some postponements in christina: two major leagues, nba board of governors is meeting to discuss this. nba teams in florida took a vote last night, most of the teams decided they wanted to continue playing but the la clippers voted to boycott until the end to have season and it's unclear whether more will be postponed. total of 3 were postponed yesterday after the milwaukee bucks refused to play game 5 in protest of blake's shooting and in solidarity, games in mayor league baseball, tennis matches have been postponed. the la lakers released a

statement saying in part, 80% of nba players are black men, we cannot love them for the joy and entertainment that they bring to the world, yet silence and felt to use our platforms and resources to amplify their voices when they demand the justice and equality that america has promised us all. many athletes are also speaking out on social media, lebron james like you just mentioned tweeted in part, we demand change, sick of it, you can see his whole tweet there but not everyone is a fan of boycott. strikes only work if capital controls what you want changed. nba has zero control over the justice system, nor should they. there's no logic to the decision, not to play and no tangible result the nba can provide. democrats weighed in too, bernie sanders says he supports the players striking and presidential candidate joe biden tweeted that these moments demand moral leadership and the players use their platform for

good. also at this point it's unclear if more games will be postponed and when the postpone games will be rescheduled, stu. stuart: it is an exploding situation. that's a fact. thank you. i want to bring in black voices for trump advisory board member. paris, always good to see you, welcome back. what do you make of the latest protests and the possibility that it'll end the nba season? >> well, i don't think this has anything to do with the protests. i think this has to do with the violence, looting and the rioting. that is what the president is concerned about and that is what people in everyday america is looking at and saying, we do not want to have rioting. we don't want to have violence and we don't want to have lawlessness an shootings and deaths as a result of people calling out for action. so that is the issue and we have to be focused on this. if joe biden seems to think that this demands for more leadership

why doesn't joe biden says we need to stop the violence, stop the rioting and call the democrats to stop defunding the police which are leaving cities all across the country and communities that look like me unsafe. that's leadership. he's not doing that. president trump is the only person who has acted after the death of george floyd. tim scott tried to make action. durbin called it lip service. if they want to have change call on democrat leaders to stop the violence, stop the looting and that might help because maybe people will come together and watch the -- watch the unity on the basketball court and have something to do rather than going out and destroying black communities by the lawless rioting. stuart: that's a very interesting, paris, i want you to stay there for a second. i will come back to you later. right now i want to go to kenosha, wisconsin, i want to

get the latest there. the president says he's sending in the national guard to keep law and order. we have our own grady on the ground, what are you seeing this morning? >> stuart, one of the worstly damaged businesses over the last couple of days but last night was one that was relatively calm given what we have seen since sunday. no major outbreaks of rioting, no violence like we saw over the last couple of days, perhaps one of the reasons is as you mentioned, the curfew, it was more strictly enforced, it was moved up an hour to before daylight and there were more law enforcement officers here including from the federal government as well as hundreds of more national guardses must bees and something that vice president pence spoke about last night. >> violence must stop whether in minneapolis, portland or kenosha, too many heros have died deafening our freedom to

see americans strike each other down. we will have law and order on the streets of this country for every american of every race and creed and color. [cheers and applause] >> and we have an update from the shooting that happened 2 nights nag -- ago where protestors were shot. we know the first who was arrested for first-degree murder. a 17-year-old named kyle will be charged in first-degree murder in shooting that happened 2 nights ago among protestors and rioting here in kenosha. again, last night relatively calm. stuart: got it, let's bring in paris again. the president is sending national guard. what's your reaction to that? >> i think the correspondent layed it out perfectly.

the lawlessness, rioting was not there because there was increase presence of the police, because president trump has acted and people on the local level are responding. when you impose curfew and more police presence it's deterrent and that's a good thing. when people like officer dorn shot and killed because of protest that is were going on that led to rioting that's an example and widow is speaking at the convention at the republican national convention, we need to remind people that the lawless cannot stand. i'm glad president trump is standing up for the community and residents that have had enough of the violence. law enforcement needs to be there to keep the order, to keep the peace and protect the citizens and protect their businesses. it's a good thing. stuart: you know, paris, now, joe biden had not mentioned the violence at all. he certainly didn't last week but last night maybe drawn out by the rnc people, he did decry the violence. he said, look, the right to protest is a good -- you have to

keep it but we don't want to violence. he did address it finally last night, paris. >> yeah, but that's lip service because you know why he still has a platform that supports defunding the police, so he can say no violence finally from his basement. mrs. trump said that days ago at the republican national convention but at the end of the day, the democrat platform, the democrats in congress and the democrats trying to run for president are saying, defund the police which means translation, black communities, you will unsafe, black mothers you should be afraid because the police won't be there to protect you because diverting resources away. that's what joe biden should be talking about and joe biden should be encouraging city council and democrat mayors not to support but he won't do it because he doesn't have the leadership or character strong enough to stand up to the radical left of his party to say you know what, defunding the police is not good for the black community and not good for

america. he won't do it. stuart: paris, always a pleasure to have you on the show. come back soon. >> i sure will. stuart: white house secretary kayleigh mcenany good friend, last night she shared something deeply personal, take a listen. >> when i was 21 year's old, i got a call that changed my life. it was my doctor informing me that i had tested positive for the genetic mutation. stuart: i think that was uplifting speech she made last night and she will be with us on this program today in our next hour, kayleigh mcenany. we are tracking laura this morning. we will be taking you live to port arthur, texas right after this.

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this morning in big upside market. the news is white house chief of staff mark meadows says if congress doesn't do anything to stop the tens of thousands of layoffs, then the president is going to step in with an executive order to help airline workers. ash, do you have anything more on that? ashley: yeah, do i because this has been a continuing issue as we get closer and closer to september 30th, that's when the initial round of protection for the airlines, $25 billion that was presented back in march, that runs out, so come october 1st, major carriers in the united states, look, we need more help because passenger volumes are still down 70%, we are having to park a lot of our fleet and that means job layoffs, furloughs, leaves of absence. look, american says it will have to lay off 19,000 jobs or furlough those employees come october 1st. delta says it's going to have to release 2,000 pilots.

you see alaska airlines, 4200 employees. overall total of 75,000 workers in the airline industry could lose their jobs if congress doesn't come together and provide some sort of help and as we already know airline travel is slowly upticking but has seen its stall out recently and believed it cannot get back to normal maybe not until 2024, but the way, american says 23,500 workers, i just saw this, had left through buyouts, early retirements or leaves of absence. a lot of pressure being put on the government by the airlines and as you just pointed out, there could be some sort of executive action if congress can't agree on what to do and to get this federal money out. stuart: got it, ashley, thank you very much, indeed. the rally continues, keep an eye on bottom corner. let's get to laura, landfall made in the gulf coast a few

hours ago. charles watson in port arthur, texas, charles, can you show us the damage there, please? charles: yeah, stuart, port arthur was able to evade a brunt of what laura caused because it's surprising because throughout the night we were experiencing winds of 75 to 80 miles per hour. you could literally see trees bending and winds howling. this building right here, there was some concern whether it would be able to make it through the storm. right now you can see construction material ripped off, portions to have roof but that seems to be the extent right now. it is still standing. now yesterday evening governor greg abbott sent 2c130's in for last-chance rescues to evacuate people from port arthur but now the evacuation order has been lifted for jefferson county which includes the towns of beaumont and port arthur, more

than 600,000 people between texas and louisiana are without power. that number could grow and folks are probably going to have to wait a while for crews to restore that power safely so they are going to have to rely on hurricane kits for a little while longer, stuart. stuart: i call that good news in the sense that port arthur didn't get near the damage that we saw from lake charles, louisiana. sir, thank you very much for joining us, we will be back to you, thank you. you can't forget the california wild fires, there are more wild fires broke out last night. what's going on susan. susan: 50 additional new fires in the past 24 hours. it's been called effectively suppressed as of wednesday afternoon according to california state government but the fires have destroyed an area so big, as big as delaware which is 1.3 million acres according to the states. firefighters, at least 7 people have died so far for the near 700 fires that have been reported and the number is

likely to unfortunately go up. nearly 1700 structures have been destroyed so far, more than 4,000 people have been evacuated and this year might be a record year for california fires. it's already burned through two-thirds of as much territory into 11 days than all of 2018 which was the worst year to date, so we are already way ahead and two biggest fires burning right now are closest to silicon valley which is the richest concentration of value in the entire world, so one is right now burning in the east of san josé and one north of san francisco and more structures and economic damage, of course, will be burned through. stuart: one crisis after another in california, isn't it? susan: every year there's obviously fire, fire season but that's extending with dry air. stuart: now you have blackouts and you have the virus. now the dow is up 289 points. powering ahead. investors like what jay powell

had to say earlier today and i think they probably liked the news on the virus test, 5 to 15 minutes should get the result. that's quite something going on there. show me tesla, please. tesla has been all over the place. today it's up 57 bucks, above $2,200 per share. i need an update on the virus, look at amazon too, $3,435 per share. right, let's get to europe and the virus. ashley, i'm hearing about a possible second wave in europe, is that right? ashley: yeah, it's started to come in from a number of countries, french prime minister says the country is facing, quote, undeniable surge in covid-19. paris is now considered a red zone wearing masks in all of the city will soon become mandatory. right now only in certain districts. mask-wearing by the way in stay

of mersaille in the south. he says plans also in place, not good news for reimposing a lockdown. elsewhere germany is saying it is now considering stopping major public events until the end of the year. now probably till the end of the year. police recorded a record number of new virus cases in italy. the country that was so hard hit by the virus early on is now reporting the most new infections in over 3 months and globally now nearly 24 million cases. i want to get back to france, quickly, stu, because despite all of the dire statements from the french prime minister, they have maintained that schools will go ahead and reopen next month regardless of what's going on with the virus, so -- >> stuart: that's interesting. ashley: interesting how europe copes with it. stuart: the french are going to bite the bullet on going back to

school in classroom, that's very interesting. ash, thanks very much. ashley: yeah. stuart: the market is moving higher. remarks by the fed chairman powell earlier today saying the recovery came sooner than expected. look, the bottom line for what jay powell said is this and i'm going to use the same expression all over again. he's not going to stamp on any resurgent economic surge, economic recovery by raising interest rates. that's what he said and that's important and that's why we are up. we are following the hurricane as it moves now into arkansas. yes, it's unfolding story, we will bring you the latest all the way through the show. back in a moment. ♪

stuart: the fed chair really moved the market to the upside today. he's going to print a lot of money and he's going to keep interest rates low as far as the

eye can see. you want to borrow money, it's going to be real cheap. come in mark grant, mark, market extraordinary, all right, mark, that was -- what the fed chair had to say was obviously music to investors' ears because the market has gone straight up. do you approve of what he said? >> stuart, you have to be realistic about this. this is music to some investors' ears and when i say that it's because what the fed is doing is the right thing to do, they are lowering interest rates, it's a borrower's bar -- paradise, however, for seniors, retirees, pension funds, university endowments there's no yield spending more in bond markets and consequently it's causing all kinds of problems for people because they can't get any more yield and the only sector that's left to find double-digit yields closed in funds but they are

complicated and you have to know what you're doing and there's a flip side to this coin, if you will, it's great for equity market, you're seeing traditional bondman, no question, for the fixed income investors, insurance companies i said and other people this is a very difficult moment because interest rates are so low. stuart: and he will keep interest rates low. i uses the expression as far as the eye can see. >> will be in low-interest environment. stuart: you want some inflation, right? >> you want some inflation because it has to do with the growth of the economy but he also made it clear today that the 2% number wasn't locked in stone anymore and that he's willing to be flexible about how the fed uses inflation at this point. stuart: we need a little bit of

inflation. a bit like that? >> exactly right. that means the economy is growing and with this pandemic which obviously the medical -- it's been a huge shock to the financial system and i think the fed is doing what it should but as i said there's a flip side to this coin, great for borrowers and not so good for fixed investors who are living on fixed income. stuart: i hope you forgive me, i will use one of them. you say this, your reputation is everything, guard it with your life, your word is your bond and also your future. there's no amount of money, none, that is worth tarnishing your reputation. you're a great writer, mark, i will give you 20 seconds to say

more. >> well, the first thing i would say is thank you for your note and i hope that -- two, i try to get across to people not only the ways you can make money or things that i warn about to keep away from but method of conduct that i think everybody on wall street should follow and that's what i expressed yesterday. stuart: i should tell our viewers that i sent your rules of conduct and rules of life to my daughter angela who is fox nation producer and i think she's read them and taken them to heart. thank you very much, indeed, mark grant, you're all right. >> thank you, stuart. always a pleasure. stuart: see you soon. i've got breaking news on the tiktok. is this the bit -- bidding for tiktok? susan: that's right, more players, wal-mart and softbank, another list, microsoft, twitter reportedly in talks to buy tiktok.

this might be a nonstarter since softbank isn't american institution since they want american buy the other take over from tiktok but we heard from "the new york times" that things have gotten so messy because of president trump's executive, that was both surprise to both microsoft and tiktok and have sped up the bidding process and a lot of people have now been interesting after hearing that, that includes black stone reported by "the new york times" as well. they were looking -- yes, steve looking to get and low bid. sources telling reports that it's $20 billion in the range now. if you're just buying up the u.s., canada, new zealand and australia but we are expecting a deal pretty soon and kevin mayer who only joined from this year he or she now stepped out. he we wanted to make this announcement along with the sale next week but sped up the process because he wanted to spread up the news himself.

stuart: they have $40 billion cash. they could take tiktok easily. the price gain for microsoft has something to do with bidding. susan: they are going along with broader tech rally and microsoft has the cash but they would still have to -- reportedly bring in the early venture capitalists investors in tiktok because they have to, they want to keep their stakes. stuart: can you show me amazon? i think we have several headlines coming out of amazon. they are down at the moment. give me the headlines. susan: they are opening first amazon fresh grocery stores, not whole foods in los angeles as la's woodland hills, it's supposed to be the cheaper version than -- cheaper than whole foods. they are targeting a different shopper than whole foods and target a different segment. think of competitor to to

albertsons and kroger. now all of which are currently being used right now for online order fulfillment. they have sr. the stores ready. we don't know when they will open but the same size as whole foods. the interesting part here is the technology that'll be involved, new dash carts, high-tech carts where you put in all the foods and groceries and walk out. yeah. is that the right, did you measure that correctly or weigh that properly? stuart: i'm a man of the future. you would be surprised. quick check of beauty supply company, down 5, nearly 6%, why down so much, ash? ashley: well, they say that working on selling or at least shutting down most of their factories and they say they will outsource most of the operations basically the company says we are going to become light and

nimble and they reported loss $1.1 million and they have executive and she will be taking over september the first, the fifth ceo in the last 5 years. it's interesting cody bought proctor&gamble back in 2015 but was supposed to be a game-changer for them and left them with a lot of debt. it has been a struggle. stuart: down it goes 5.8% as we speak. new york governor cuomo slamming cdc for removing travel quarantine recommendations. the virus cases are steadily decreasing, so where is the holdup here in new york? where is the holdup? where he -- we will discuss. so the question is i hear a lot of this, does nancy pelosi take

the reins as president until the result? judge andrew napolitano will set the record straight on that after this what do you think? i don't see it. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ so you ready to hit the road? i don't know. just get on your bike... and ride! no!

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stuart: it's still there. solid gains all across the board. we have been in business coming up 90 minutes. dow is up nearly 300 now.

nasdaq is up 1117 and s&p 17. i see a lot of green today. now, there's been a lot of talk about delayed election results. they don't know the outcome for months literally. all rise, the judge as in andrew napolitano joins us today. judge, i hear this all of the time. it's all over the internet. if january rolls around and there's no election result, constitutionally speaker pelosi steps in and becomes the acting president, is that right? andrew: well, good morning, stuart, always pleasure to be with you. it might be right. president trump's term ends at precisely -- current term ends at precisely noon on january 20th, 2021. if the electoral college has not yet named a successor, presumably either donald trump or joe biden, then whoever is the speaker of the house would become the acting president of the united states. the

democrats retain their majority in the house and it appears likely that they will, but if they do, and if they choose mrs. pelosi knowing at that point that they're choosing the next president of the united states, then it would be she. they may choose somebody else or may not have the majority, the republicans may have the majority but stated simply whoever is the sitting speaker of the united states would become president at noon on january 20th, 2021 if the electoral college has failed to elect someone. stuart: okay, so supposing speaker pelosi becomes the president, at that moment, just suppose, how long is she acting president? andrew: until either the electoral college choses a successor to donald trump or declares that it is unable to do so in which case the election for president goes to the house of representatives, not for a majority vote, but for a vote by

state. so each state delegation would vote on their own, independent of the way the popular vote in the state went for either joe biden or donald trump. actually they could vote for anybody and whoever had a majority of 26 states would then become the next president of the united states until january 20th, 2025. that has happened. that's how thomas jefferson was elected the first time around in 1800, that's how b hays was elected. stuart: judge napolitano, thank you, sir, come again soon, good stuff. thanks. andrew: all the best to you, stuart. stuart: big show coming up for you including kayleigh mcenany, good friend of the program, she made powerful speech last night. we will show you the speech and she's on the show and etfs

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[background sounds] stuart: wow, look at that, really powerful winds. hurricane laura slammed into the gulf coast, a monster category four storm arrived overnight, very early hours of this morning. it's the second strongest storm on record for the state of louisiana, and you can just see it right there. the hurricane is now a category one storm but still dangerous with winds at more than 70 miles

an hour. all right, it's now threatening tornadoes, flash floods in texas and louisiana, some places seeing more than a foot of rainfall. right now nearly a half million people are without power, could take weeks to restore all power to all people. live team coverage this hour. jeff flock is in lake charles, louisiana, casey steegal is in galveston, texas. what are you seeing now, jeff flock? >> reporter: well, you say it's going to take weeks? you're absolutely right, stuart. i don't see any way anything else is possible. when you look at this kind of damage and devastation really, i mean, i a hate to use that word, it's overused, but if this is your house, it's devastation. it's a catastrophe. how did this happen? look at this, this is a tree that fell over, and this is a lot of what happens here, you know? the ground is very soft in this area of the country, very moist, and you get a lot of wind, 150 mile-an-hour winds?

yeah, well, that'll happen. hey, tomas? come on over here. this is not a one-off. sometimes we go to a storm and you find, you know, two or three places where there's serious damage can. [laughter] it's everywhere. this is the back end of this. this is all brick that came off of this, and look at this. they've got ruptured, a ruptured water line. that's a copper water line there that's ruptured. and it continues. i mean, there is -- i just talked to that fellow over there who said he's lived here for 70 years, he went through rita, the he never saw anything like this. rita was bad too but, i don't know, by my estimation this could be worse. stuart: got it. jeff flock is in lake charles, louisiana. casey stegall joins us live from galveston, texas. casey, what are you seeing there? >> reporter: well, stuart, as you heard, laura made landfall a little bit more to the east than originally expected. they were talking about it coming right up the

texas/louisiana border. it ended up going a little bit further into louisiana, and so you just heard jeff flock talking about the impacts there. right here in galveston about 100 miles from the border of the texas and louisiana line, the sun is shining, blue, beautiful skies, and we've already seen surfers heading out into the water because the mandatory evacuations have been lifted. no real flooding or any major damage to speak of here. but about 100 miles away, again, in beaumont and port arthur, texas, also orange, texas, we understand that there has been some damage primarily from wind. the initial assessments show that the flooding is not major there, there's no neighborhoods or homes underwater, but there are an awful lot of downed trees and power lines and emergency crews working to get that lifted and that recovered. initial damage assessments tell us that about 400,000 texans are

without power right now. and that number has grown a little bit since we have been out here this morning. but the evacuation orders have all but been lifted here in galveston. all of the people over in the beaumont/port arthur area as well that were told to get out ahead of this category four storm making landfall, those people are now allowed to go back into their homes. so a much better scenario here in texas. you hate to be trite, but a lot of people here are saying that we dodged a bullet here for now. stuart: well said. casey, thank you, sir. see you again later. later this hour we'll speak to the mayor of galveston about his plan for rescues and recovery. that is coming up in just a few minutes from here. all right. check the price of oil, refineries on the gulf coast, a lot of them shut down as the hurricane rocked the renal. the region. ashley, where are we now with oil production?

ashley: well, we know that offshore production in the gulf, about 8ing 4% of that was shut down ahead of the storm, but those oil rigs can withstand some pretty wicked weather. so as soon as it's safe, those workers will get back on the rig, and they will start their work again. the big question is how much of the refinery infrastructure in texas and louisiana has been damaged and how long will it take to get them back online. the only bright spot, if you like, is the crude inventories are still 15% above their five-year average. gasoline inventories still 5 above that five-year average. so because of the demand disruption that we've seen because of the pandemic, there is a bright spot, that the impact of this storm may not be as bad as it could have been in other circumstances. but don't take it lightly, there are some huge refineries in louisiana that could be offline for an amount of time. listen, we just had patrick dehaan of gasbuddy on earlier in the show, stuart. he said maybe we could see a

5-cent to 10-cent rise in the price of gasoline, but really not a huge jump as we've seen in other times when with we've seen a big storm come ashore like this. but we're still assessing the damage and the big question is how long will it take to get the refineries and all those other infrastructure back online. stuart: price of oil down, down 2%. there you have it. thanks, ash. take a look at some of the stocks that are moving because of the hurricane. i'm going to call them hurricane stocks, but they're affected by it. home improvement stores like home depot e and lowe's, both of them actually on the downside this morning. and then there's generac, the backup power generators, thousands losing power from the storm, they're down 1.6%. and the online car company, copart incorporated, i don't know whether they're a hurricane stock or not, but they are up 48 cents at $102 a share. look at the overall market,

please. this is a rally. we've got a lot of good things going for the market this morning. first of all, we have jay powell. jay powell is basically telling the world this morning that there's maybe a bit of a change of course at the federal reserve. they're not going to raise interest rates anytime soon even if they see inflation picking up, even if they see a strong economic recovery, they're not going to stamp on it with higher interest rates. you're going to have low rates as far as the eye can see. that is one major plus for the stock market for this morning. i think it's the most important one. what else have we got? >> that's right. getting back to powell, what they're doing is they're changing their policy. they have two mandates which is employment and inflation. now they're going to average out inflation targets of 2% over certain years. that means -- stuart: they can go above 2%. >> that's right. stuart: as long as the average -- >> that's right. that means interest rates will be low for a long time. cheaper loans, cheaper mortgages and a lot more money flushing

around the economy and the stock market as well. also he talked about employment, and he expects employment to still be adversely affected by covid. however, he does expect a quick rebound when we get to that turning point, so that was also positive for the markets as well. once we get to the turn around, we'll get there quickly. stuart: i think there's one other positive, not being considered so far, and that is ab9 bot labs. they have been -- abbott labs. they have been given emergency use authorization, i think is the correct expression, for a new virus test. it takes -- you get the results back in 15 minutes. it costs -- -- it costs $5. it's 97% accurate, and they plan to have 50 million test kits available, to put it like that, by october. that's real progress here. the stock is up 6%, and think what that means for the country. if you've got a rapid test, i think that's pretty good. that goes a long way to help the recovery. >> i just want to show where we are with the markets, over 1,000

points away from the dow hitting a new record high, and the s&p 500 now on pace for a fifth straight record close. the nasdaq on pace for a sixth straight record close. so your 401(k) is doing pretty well in a year when we're seeing a pandemic, mind you. stuart: 100 million americans have a 401(k) and/or an ira. don't just tell me only the rich win -- >> and that's just the ira and the 401(k)s. the others have pensions, right this. stuart: absolutely. new york's governor cuomo says the cdc was bullied into scrapping checkpoints. who's the one playing politics here? we'll certainly discuss that. white house press secretary kayleigh mcenany opens up about a personal crisis at the rnc. watch this. >> during one of my most difficult times, i expected to have the support of my family.

but i had more support than i knew. my phone rang again. it was president trump calling to check on me. i was blown away. stuart: yeah. kayleigh mcenany will join us on this program shortly with more on her moving personal story. ♪ if it's easy to get lost in the economic uncertainty. the volatility. the ambiguity. the moment calls for more. and northern trust delivers more. with specialized expertise. proven strategies rooted in data and analytics... and insights borne from over 130 years of successfully navigating economic turbulence. giving you clarity. inspiring confidence. and helping you uncover new paths forward. northern trust. wealth management.

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back then. her mom watched and critiqued our performances. i sometimes wave to her mom during the interview. well, then kaylee went off to harvard into the belly of the beast for young conservatives. she came through it okay though and four months ago became the president's press secretary. last night kayleigh delivered a powerful speech at the republican convention. she revealed a personal story that was uplifting for us all. >> when i was 21 years old, i got a call that changed my life. it was my doctor informing me that i had tested positive for the barack ca ii genetic mutation, a mutation that put my chances of breast cancer at 84%. i followed in my mother's footsteps, choosing to get a preventative mastectomy. as i came out of anesthesia, one of the first calls i received was from ivanka trump. as i recovered, my phone rang

again. it was president trump calling to check on me. i was blown away. here was the heeder of the free -- the leader of the free world caring about my circumstance. stuart: that was then. this is now. kayleigh mcenany, right-hand side of the screen, back with us this morning live on "varney & company." kayleigh, that was a fine performance last night. i hesitate to call it a performance, it was a great speech with great feeling, and i think it went across very well. my question is what prompted you to go public like this? >> hi, stuart. you know, i remember being a woman grappling with the decision to have a mastectomy. it's very difficult. you go through a lot of turmoil, it's a big struggle. and i knew by bringing this story forward, i'd give courage to women out there who are making this tough decision. so that was my goal. and also just sharing who this president is. i mean, the fact that i talk to him a dozen times a day, i see him all the time, but the fact

that yesterday morning he specifically called me to say, kayleigh, this story's important, share it, put your heart out there and i support you with every step of the way, it was a really big deal. stuart: you only decided to go public with this and make that speech last night yesterday morning. >> well, i had decided a few days earlier with. i called the president, actually, last saturday and said i wanted to share this. he was very supportive, and then he called just to reemphasize yesterday morning i want you doing this, give it your all, give out your heart, this is important, and i stand by you and the millions of women -- quarter of a million women affected by breast cancer across the country. stuart: it was great to see you as a frequent guest on this program -- >> yes. stuart: -- wowing the world last night at the rnc. now, let me move on from there. the president's going to accept the republican nomination at the white house tonight. i've seen the early preparations. looks like a real extravaganza right there. what do you think he's going to say? do you know what he's going to say? >> i do. you know, this president is

going to spend a lot of time talking about what he's done over the last four years, but he's really going to i draw a contrast -- to draw a contrast between him and the democrat party, and he's going to frame this election as a choice. which america do you want to be a part of, one where there's law and order in the streets or anarchy. one where there's an american recovery or one where you have onerous regulation and overtaxation and struggling economy. we know that the obama recovery was the slowest economic recovery since world war ii. so by the end voters will decide which america they want to be a part of. stuart: kayleigh, thank you very much, indeed, for last night and for being with us this morning. >> thank you, stuart. and it's been great being with you over the decades. stuart: thank you very much, indeed. see you soon. >> thank you. stuart: all right. let's get to money because it's doing pretty well so far today. i'm looking at amazon on the screen right now, 3,441 per share. it's down 95 cents.

not much of a pullback, i'd say. look at sales force, down today after a record surgery in the stock price yesterday -- surge in the stock price yesterday. the company posted terrific earnings. they also announced they're cutting a thousand jobs, they're slimming down a little bit. that stock is going to go into the dow very soon. the tiktok bidding war is now heating up. this is a very important story. it's got repercussions all over the place. who's in the bidding war? >> well, a few weeks, possibly a few days we might see a sale of tiktok. so the bidding is taking place still between microsoft, oracle and one other surprising player that has jumped into the pool according to reports this morning,s and that's wal-mart teaming up with soft bank. now, this might be a nonstarter for the white house because they want a purely u.s. buyer of tiktok. now, the latest report in the last hour is suggests that oracle and two venture capitalist groups are right now set to announce a buy and a

purchase for $20 billion. and this is for the regions of the u.s., canada, new zealand and australia. finish now, one other report, again this is coming thick and fast this morning, suggests we're going to see a deal in just 48 hours, and the buyer here likely to be microsoft in the range of maybe $20-30 billion. we know that "the new york times" has been reporting about the chaos surrounding this forced sale of tiktok because of the president's executive ban on tiktok, and a lot of bidders have jumped in thinking this might be a fire sale deal including steve schwarzman and blackstone. but microsoft is probably the furthest along. stuart: i could see how it would be a very good fit for microsoft. i don't know how it would be a good fit for wal-mart, but microsoft's got the money, tiktok's a good fit with them, and i think that's why microsoft is up a whopping $7 -- >> yeah. but september 15th is when we're going to likely get a deal, by september a 15th. they have 90 days to close it.

it'll be interesting to see whether or noting there might be a delay because of the tiktok 4r5u9s against the executive ban. but they say microsoft probably the best suiter in terms of what we call synergies which is what you need to think about -- stuart: and $7 up on microsoft, a company that size, $1.7 trillion company, and it's up 3.5%. my goodness, me. you've got another story here. i don't know how to pronounce it. >> the chinese rival to tesla in the u.s. yeah, that's right. listed today. they're still trying to match buyers and sellers, so we don't have an opening price, but they've raised $1.5 billion, popular offering. they actually sold more shares, priced them higher at $15 apiece, 100 million showers that values the company at around $11 billion. alibaba is a backer and electric car companies are hot this year. tesla and neo, which is another chinese tesla, both up over

400%. still looking for the opening price for xpeng, but they only have 4,000 sales so far in the first six months, they're selling a sedan and a suv and a future tesla has outsold both neo and xpeng combined. how amazing is that? some would say that's the reason why tesla deserves the valuations and the rally that we've seen so far this year. stuart: you've got an electric car, an electric truck, stock goes up. so far. >> some would say a genius found or -- stuart: and yet only 3% of the global -- >> 4% penetration. stuart: -- is electric vehicles. the entire market. and all they're talking about is maybe going to 10% by 2030. >> right. but you can't discount, as i mentioned to you, the most interesting statistic i saw this morning was the short selling pressure still on tesla, number one in the u.s.

over $20 billion worth of stock is betting that tesla will fall from these $2,000 price levels. stuart: all right. show me, please, the simon property group. they are a mall operator, giant. i think they're the biggest in america. they're targeting bankrupt retailers. that's the report i hear, ashley. ashley: yes, you are correct. you have good informants. in recent weeks simon property has snapped up bankrupt retailers brooks brothers and lucky brand, also bid on another, jcpenney. it's also, as we reported, reportedly in talks with amazon to turn space once filled by the big department stores into e-commerce warehousing. well, the company is investing basically millions to prop up some failing retailers. why? well, in hopes of keeping occupancy rates up and the rent payments coming in. the mall operator says, by the way, quote: the great recession, frankly, pales in comparison to what we're dealing with. obviously, the amount of

bankruptcies in our sector is tremendous. so that is an understatement. many more leases come with a co-tenancy clause that basically allows retailers to pay lower rates or simply just get the heck out if vacancies pass a certain threshold. all it takes is a handful of store closures, and that can quickly lead to entire mall corridors going dark. some would argue these ooh moves by simon property is just a desperate attempt to try and put off what is the ine evidenten. [laughter] -- inevitable. stuart: thanks, ash. the hurricane arrived on the gulf coast early this morning as a cat four hurricane. it's threatening flash flooding and tornadoes. in the path of -- janice dean is going to join us shortly with a live forecast. we'll have that after the break. >> our next guest says joe biden's voters are looking for a return to normalcy or normality. choose your word.

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stuart: laura slammed into the gulf coas a cat four storm early, early this morning. it's now a cat one. janice dean is back with us. okay, it's still dangerous, i believe, but where is it headed now? janice: it's headed toward the ohio valley, parts of the tennessee valley, the mississippi valley. we still have the risk for heavy rainfall as well as tornadoes and strong winds, still a hurricane here. alexandria, louisiana, which is in the middle of louisiana, has had hurricane force wind gusts for several hours. so that's going to cause big problems over the next several days as the storm lifts north and eastward. here are some of those wind gusts. lake charles, 134 miles per hour. that's 30 miles inland, so we're feeling the effects of this storm even though it is weakening. a tropical storm can still cause incredible amounts of damage especially if it's just stalled out and continues to bring nonstop hurricane force winds.

we still have the potential for tornadoes today, tornado watch in effect for parts of louisiana as well as mississippi, that's a tornado-warned storm north of baton rouge. and then into arkansas. even though the storm weakening, we're still going to see quite a bit of impacts across a wide swath of the country. the tornado threat will exist throughout the afternoon, through this evening, and then we're going to watch this thing lift are north and eastward. but let's take a look at it, okay? alexandria is not reporting anymore, we're not getting any of those wind gusts. i think the reporting station probably out. so 58 miles per hour in shreveport, at least tropical storm force winds around the center of this storm that extends for hundreds of miles here. let's take a look at the track as of 11 a.m., it's going to weaken to a tropical storm and remain with tropical characteristics for 48-60 hours, and then eventually coming off the coast here in the mid atlantic and the northeast and bringing perhaps tropical storm

force gusts. that's going to be quite with incredible. it doesn't take a hot to cause power outages across portions of the ohio, tennessee and northeast. we could get 4-6 inches of rain, still tropical force winds into the ohio valley. so, unfortunately, sometimes even though these storms are weakening, they can still cause quite a bit of damage. flood advisories still posted, stuart, for parts of louisiana and texas, up towards arkansas, tennessee, illinois and kentucky. and that's going to be ongoing throughout the afternoon and the evening. it's hard for reporters to actually get into some of these places that i believe have been destroyed by this storm. the strongest storm louisiana has had since the 1800s. so this is, you know, one for the history books. also want to just point out that the peak of the season is september 11th, 10th/11th, so

we're not even there yet, and we have another wave rolling off the coast of africa. we will keep you up-to-date, my friend. stuart: you always do. thank you very much, janice. good stuff. that's the hurricane. let's get to your money because we've got better news there. hitting all-time highs again today. tesla, amazon, microsoft. okay? amazon's pulled back a little bit, but earlier it hit a new high, or and microsoft microsoft is still up $7. big tech rally largely continues. we have numbers on weekly jobless claims earlier this morning, just over a million. that's down from last week. we are living in a time of chaos. violence fears, rioting, looting, people want to return to normality, don't they? joe biden claims he can do that. dan henninger argues he can't. he written writes in the "wall street journal," joe biden can't

restore normalcy. he's with us right now. dan, welcome back to the show. you sure about this? joe biden cannot restore normality? or normalcy, call it what you. make your case. >> yes. no, i don't think he can, stuart, and pretty much what you were just saying. joe biden was making that claim back during the primaries, and back before the pandemic hit the united states. no matter which one of these two gets elected president, we're not going back to normalcy or normality anytime soon. people's workplaces have been completely disrupted, families don't know whether their kids are going back to school, and it's -- the economy was shut down, an historically unprecedented event. and i think most people are just trying to figure out what is going to happen to them in their lives over the next 12-18 months. they don't expect it to be normal at all. stuart: hold on a -- >> nonetheless, it was striking to me that -- yeah. stuart: the democrats seem to be

saying all we need to do is just get rid of trump. he is so bad, get rudd of him and we'll be okay. >> yeah. stuart: i think that's their basic argument. >> it is their basic argument. but look at what the democratic party at this point in time cumulatively represents. i mean, joe biden started out as the moderate candidate in those primaries. the party elders basically blessed him because they were afraid of bernie sanders and elizabeth warren, the other progressives. be that as it may, the biden campaign has adopted much of bernie sanders' agenda and ocasio-cortez's agenda, it's called the biden/sanders reunity task force. so there's that, such as ending fossil fuels in 15 years and then purportedly somehow creating 10 million good paying jobs in alternative energy. then you add since the pandemic

started nancy pelosi's trillions of dollars to of spending which have gotten past the point where i think many suburban voters wonder how long this is going to go on. but most especially there was the killing of george floyd on may 25th and the new element of the democrats arguing that the country is guilty of systemic racism and that structural racism has to be overturned in the united states. this is a tremendous amount of disruption that the democratic party is promising irregardless of what donald trump represents. so i think it's nonsense at this point to argue that joe biden in any way is going to be a return to normalcy. the democrats are not, any of their agenda is not about normality, stuart. stuart: an emphatic dan henninger with us this morning about normality, normalcy, call it what you will. thank you very much, indeed, sir. see you soon, thank you. let's go to the nba.

players boycotting playoff games because of the police shooting of jacob blake, black man in wisconsin. other athletes in the other sports are following suit. the sports world is applauding what they call their courageous actions. i want to bring in fox news 4/-- 24/7 sports reporter matt napolitano. it seems to me it's not just basketball, but other sports are being threatened, the season in other sports is being threatened here, right? >> well, it seems like for now the nba's going to be hitting pause there, stuart. the milwaukee bucks starting the trend with boycotting last night's game five against the orlando magic just shortly before tipoff, deciding they would not come out to the court, talking with wisconsin's attorney general and lieutenant governor about the jacob blake shooting. of course, milwaukee about 40 miles away from where the shooting to be place last sunday is. that set the wheels into motion. the wnba postponed their games,

a couple of mlb games ended up getting shelfed, a few players sitting out of their own games. the nhl, the show went on which has gotten a little bit of criticism. we're seeing nfl practices be postponed, the indianapolis colts had a voter drive for their team members and staff ors trying to get them ready for the election in november. but for now, looks like the nba will be shelfed for a little bit. players and owners will be meeting, and who knows if this playoff season in orlando is going to continue. stuart: mr. noll low, thanks for joining us because, as you say, who knows if these postponements will continue and spread. at the moment it's an interesting position to be in. thanks very much. now, next case, did you -- and i hope you did -- catch this incredible moment at the rnc? watch this, please. >> be a radical for freedom. be a radical for liberty. and be a radical for our

republic for which i stand. stuart: for which i stand. congressional candidate madison cawthorn, more on the night's biggest and best moments in just a moment. we're keeping a close eye on the hurricane, of course. now it's on its way to arkansas. tell you more about that in a moment. ♪ ♪

♪ come on in, we're open. ♪ all we do is hand you the bag. simple. done. we adapt and we change. you know, you just figure it out. we've just been finding a way to keep on pushing. ♪

stuart: right. moments ago speaker pelosi made what i think is a very bold statement about the presidential debates. do we have the tape? okay, we don't have it. i'll tell you exactly what she said. here's the sentence. speaker pelosi said: i don't think there should be any debates. none. okay. now, this is just happening. i think that is blockbuster -- oh, now we do have the tape.

watch exactly what she had to say. >> i don't think that there should be any debates. i do not think that the president of the united states has comported himself in a way that anybody and has any association with the truth, evidence, data and facts. i wouldn't, i wouldn't legitimize a conversation with him. stuart: whoa! [laughter] that's a blockbuster, and it just happened, she just said it. the lady on the right-hand side of the screen is tomi lahren. you're just hearing this for the first time, i'm just -- that is a blockbuster. that is flat out protection for joe biden, right? >> well, who does she think she is talking about legitimizing a conversation with the president of the united states? first of all, she should check her respect and make sure she's respecting our sitting president. but furthermore, this really was, this really is an insult to the american people.

she's telling the american voter that they don't deserve the opportunity to see a candidate and a sitting president debate on stage in one of the biggest election that's coming up in november in, certainly, my lifetime. and she's saying that the american people don't deserve to hear their platform, agendas and ideas. who does nancy pelosi think she is? stuart: and what happens if, indeed, there are no debates and joe biden refuses to face president trump on the debate stage? i think that is a political disaster for joe biden and the democrats. you with me on this? >> well, i think him debating will be more of a political debating for the democrats, which is exactly why they don't want him to debate. they want to distract everyone from what's going on with their candidate by talking about the riots and the looting and the protests nonstop, talking talkit coronavirus nonstop. they don't want him to explain how he's going to put this country back together because they know he can't put the country back together, they know he can't articulate even a way to put the country back

together, and they don't want him on that stage with donald trump. this is their distraction technique 2.0. stuart: i think they're very worried about a major league gaffe in any debate with the president. that's what i think is going on. aye got to move on -- i've got to move on because we're getting ready to see the president tonight. i know there's all kinds of things going on at the white house. they're building the set, so to speak. what do you want to hear from the president tonight? >> i want to hear the president reminding the american people about just four or five months ago when our economy was thriving before this pandemic hit and everything that he was doing to improve the lives of all americans. but even more than that, i want him to speak again to the silent majority, his true base, and say you're looking around at the lawlessness being aided and abetted by democratic mayors, governors, leaders and political figures and not to mention hollywood celebrities and sports stars. if you're looking at everything and saying i don't recognize my country, then you need to vote for donald trump because he's going to come in in november, in

2021 and clean up this mess that only donald trump can. and i want to hear that from him tonight. stuart: the democrats are praising joe biden and kamala harris as what's the -- can you -- okay, i've not got that, as the strongest gun safety ticket in history. concerned about a second amendment crackdown? >> well, i would be if i were concerned that joe and kam laxer laxer -- kamal could win the election. that doesn't concern me. talking about the gun rights debate and the second amendment, if we learned anything in 2020, it's basically been an advertisement for the second amendment. americans are exercising their second amendment rights now more than ever because they're seeing the lawlessness, they're seeing the democrats really spit on law and order and decency, and they're saying at the end of the day the government's not going to protect us, so we're going to make sure we can protect ourselves. i don't think that's a very smart move for joe and kamala given everything that's happening in our streets right now. stuart: i just wonder if the

president will have anything to say about speaker pelosi saying i don't think there should be any debates. i bet he brings that one up. you'll be watching, i'll be watching. thank you very much, indeed. >> thanks so much. stuart: back to money. why not? doing well so far. abercrombie & fitch reporting strong sales, digital sales up 56%. and look at the stock, it's up 15%, big gain. dollar tree, however, taking a hit. despite revenue growing more than 23% and profits surging 45%, the stock down 5%. not sure the reason, but it is down 5%. the cdc withdrawing their recommendation for travelers to quarantine for 14 days. new york's governor cuomo not happy. he says the decision politically motivated. here's what he says: we know that they have been bullied by the president. either they are schizophrenic or the cdc is admitting error in their first position or it's just political dictation. i would urge people to follow

the state's guidance. virus cases decreasing, ashley. in cuomo playing some politics here? ashley: he certainly is or certainly appears that way. governor cuomo unleashing a scathing commentary on the cdc following those new announcements. the cdc now says you do not necessarily need a test if you've been in close contact with a person with a covid-19 infection as long as you don't show e the symptoms. also says you don't necessarily need a test if you've been in a high transmission area. but governor cuomo apparently, well, doesn't like that. as you said, calling the cdc schizophrenic and says he'll continue to enforce the quarantine regulations on 31 states and territories. he apparently knows better than the medical community at the cdc. the health agency said only that more caution should be taken with those people who are more vulnerable to the virus. but certainly, the governor of

new york apparently saying, no, i don't believe a word you're saying, and i'm going to continue to put my regulations in place. stuart: okay, i got it. thanks, ash. all right. stop with what you're doing -- not you, ashley, but everybody else -- and take a look at these homes. i'm sorry, mistake. what you're looking at now is texas having been hit by laura. we're going to take you this after this. ♪ ♪

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stuart: thanks, susan. back to the hurricane. i want to bring in craig brown, your honor, thanks very much for jumping onboard this morning. we do appreciate it. as i see it, galveston dodged a bullet. am i right? >> we dodged a big bullet. this hurricane was powerful, it was coming towards us. we called for a mandatory evacuation here on the island, and it turned and went into louisiana which we want to give our assistance in any way to those folks there. but, yes, we to dodged a big bullet. if it would have come to our island, it would have been devastating. stuart: is have you got people coming back yet? i know you forced evacuations. that's a lot of people. are they on their way back? >> they're on their way back immediately. we notified everyone via the media and things in this area that if we didn't have any damage from this hurricane or very little damage, we're going to bring everybody back at sunrise today, and that's what

we did. so, yes, we've got people streaming back on, and we're open for business. stuart: well, i'm not going to call this good news, but it's certainly more positive than the news we've been getting from other parts of texas and louisiana. so, your honor, craig brown, mayor of gavel son, thanks very much for joining us with what i am going to call some pretty good news. dodging bullets is good news, sir. great to have you with us. [laughter] >> thank you. stuart: yes, sir. thank you very much, indeed. all right, everyone, more "varney" after this. fs for any amount you choose instead of buying by the share. all with no commissions. stocks by the slice from fidelity. get your slice today. ...

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i don't think that there should be any debate. i do not think that the president of the united states has come ported himself in a way that anybody has any association with truth, evidence , data, and facts. i wouldn't, i wouldn't legitimize a conversation with him. stuart: i wouldn't legitimize a conversation with him, him being the president of the united states. i don't think there should be any debates. that was speaker pelosi. i think that is political dynamite. just imagine for one moment, that joe biden does not take part in any debate. what are people going to say? you're scared of the president, and the democrats are scared to death that if you do debate with the president you'll make an

awful gaf of some sort and that's the end of your campaign. that's what they're scared of so to wrap it up as i wouldn't hold a conversation with the president of the united states that is an extraordinary statement. no effect on the market we're still up 260 and my time is up, neil, it's yours. neil: yeah like a non-event for these guys thank you stuart very very much. that's wild, i wonder if they feel the same the one if joe biden was trailing in the polls and whether we'd have the need for debates. welcome, everybody very glad to have you i'm neil cavuto. this is coast to coast we're still looking at a fallout from hurricane laura, right now a category 2 storm but man oh, man did she do a lot of damage. they are just piling it up right now getting reports of a chemical plant fire that has ensued in a nearby town, i'm just getting the name of the town, in west lake, louisiana, a chemical plant fire , the governor is