spending. shares 139.29 with walmart on track to shave more than 50 points out the dow industrials at the opening of trading and we expect the decline of 171 on the dow jones and we are at the lowest of the morning with 30 minutes before the opening bell. have a great day. so great to be with you. stay with fox business. "varney & co." begins right now with david asman at the helm. david: maria, isn't it great to have larry kudlow? answer to a dream. good morning. i'm david asman in for stuart varney and here's the big story, the deep freeze tightening grip on texas with nearly 2 million without power, 1.4 million just in the houston area. we will head to the lone star state for live report in the arctic air and snow is taking aim at the northeast. we will tell you how bad it could get.

mane welcomed the snow might postpone president biden's trip to michigan today, but the gamestop frenzy heads to capitol hill and ceos of robinhood, reddit, melvin n-uppercase-letter citadel set to testify what is expected be a hostile community chaired by maxine waters at noon eastern. looking at futures, dow jones is down 186 points , walmart is said to shave 45 points out that dow jones at the open. again, we had a jobs report that was much worse than expected, going in the wrong direction. s&p and nasdaq also down nasdaq down over 1% in premarket activity. while the pandemic raged on, new york governor andrew cuomo to the timeout to write a book about his leadership skills and he also picked up an emmy award for his indoor unit media fans for his daily: briefings. now cuomo facing a new

federal investigation over his handling of the virus. that's not all, he reportedly threatened in new york is some women from his own party-- a new york x assembly men. the run full rush limbaugh, he forever changed american media, the conservative movement in the shape of american politics. we pay tribute to the one and only rush throughout the show. we have a busy three hours ahead. "varney & co." begins right now. ♪♪ david: we may be back to the new york groove, but we just seen the melting of the snow. 50 degrees to you days ago in new york and now it's below freezing, well below and we have a snowstorm that will be

snowing all day and all night. you just get rid of one storm and another one hits you hard and it's happening all over the nation. was get to it. at 12:00 p.m. eastern, three hours from now the house will hold a hearing on the gamestop robinhood saga. susan li, what can we expect. >> it will likely focus on the relationship between citadel and robinhood, citadel one of the largest hedge funds in the world. citadel also had to sit back, melvin capital one of the biggest losers on the shortened gamestop and the committee is expected to ask questions of the ceo of citadel, wrote-- robinhood and melvin capital. robinhood ceo will say no that that is not the case in his opening statement and citadel will push back on accusations robinhood promotes risky options trading while the committee will probably hammer the billionaire

hedge fund ceos about shortselling in one interesting character in this will be that gamestop reddit trader better known as brawling kitty. he is still bullish on gamestop and talking to those on wall street i had to say they did not think they would expect new answers and the questions-- it's a comic it'd issue. david: that's the bottom line, there could be a lot of grandstanding and to separate the truth and facts from the grandstanding could be hard to do. it will be fascinating. thank you. let's bring in mike murphy. mike, the big question susan was talking about, was robinhood actually conspiring with these billionaire short-sellers to shut down the retail traders? do you think we will get answers? >> i think they will dig into that. good morning. i really think we look at this, it's not going to be a story of robinhood conspiring

with citadel or this big large hedge funds setting out to crush the little guy. i really believe it's a situation where a lot of retail investors got spun up in a stock that moved from 20 to 400 with the fear of missing out and people were jumping in. if you made money on the way, great, but if you play the market, not a vespa play the market to trade the market, you know things go up and down and people lose money so i think it is a lot of made for tv maybe , maxine waters will do her grandstanding, but i don't expect much to come out of this. david: remember that day, i believe it was a friday when robinhood shut down the options to buy essentially stopping the short squeeze that had been going on for that one day. now, they claim and there is evidence to back this up that they needed to be recapitalized to cover the bats and they eventually over a few days got about three and

a half billion dollars to recapitalized to clear the straits, but the day it happened on that friday, i mean, a lot of people said that people should go to jail at robinhood. >> i love dave portnoy and i am on the exact opposite. i started a broker deal with david and 99 and about six months later we went through the tech crash in march, april, 2000 and the same thing happened. they were calling saying we will restrict buying an increase margin requirements picked this is what happens. no one wants to go out of business. the fact that robinhood and their clearing firm needed more capital, that is the way the business works and i think i have been in the market for over 25 years and if you ask anyone that's been in the market that long, i think they will say the same thing so i don't think-- i think it's going way overboard to say anything was wrong or anyone should go to

jail. they restricted by for a couple of days: no major impact on the gamestop story. david: one of the problems with the pushback on robinhood and i know they have done a lot to hurt their credibility with retail traders, but looking at what's going to happen today, you have a lot of lefties in congress and the chairman of the committee, maxine waters, even though her husband is in the banking business, although there are questions about what's going on there, she will take a very left wing approach and say it's just capitalism, the big guys attacking the small guys. you will hear a lot of socialist rhetoric that's condemning capitalism today, so everyone will be sort of champagne in their own cause. >> absolutely and that's 100% will happen. anyone who is buying or selling robinhood during these-- i'm sorry, buying or selling gamestop, they were

doing it for a capitalist reason, no one was doing it for the good of mankind. they were doing it to make money. if you are going to take one side and i'm going to take the other side of the trade, one of us will win and one will lose and if you want to trade, that's what happens, so to make it a bigger story about socialism or rob from the rich and give to the poor, i don't think that went on here. some people made a lot of money in gamestop and some people lost, but if you are going to trade volatile stock, with you are right you hit it big and when you are wrong you lose big. david: options trading is a very complex mechanism by which a lot of people make or a should say a few people make a lot of money and frankly, a lot of people to get into it thinking they know what they are doing lose money. is that the lesson here at a less you have all the computers and insight information, maybe you should get into the options trading on a mac it could be.

that's a good point because if you want to trade today your trading against a quant system, a computer system and i would tell any retail investor, anyone at home watching the show right now, i would say invest in the market because if you are going to trade, you are trading against multibillion-dollar machines and trading against the likes of citadel or melvin that have shown a history of her decades of being right of making a lot of money, so for me i don't want to go up against these guys. i went to invest in quality companies and ca company like walmart, with earnings, not for a trade for this afternoon or for tomorrow, but for long term i went to make money and market that's how i have done it. david: thank you. now looking at bitcoin as we have been following the client closely. question whether in fact it is the new hedge against inflation replacing gold although gold is up a bit, but susan, look it's down to betsy to crossed 52000,

so world's largest money manager blackrock said they may spend a bit. if they spend a little bit of their money that the lot of money that could drive up the price of bitcoin further so morgan stanley may have heard over the weekend also considering spending its $50 billion on top of bitcoin purchases while companies like tesla and micro strategy, some of the big corporate names have spent cash holdings buying into bitcoin and then we heard from the hottest fund manager on wall street right now predicting bitcoin could hit $250,000 a coin, that's if companies put in 10% of their cash into the cryptocurrency 30 there aren't any indications that will happen, but that is a scenario. stuart: $250,000, while. thank you and now to the housing market, lauren is here and you have news on housing starts

and building permits? lauren: this was a mixed bag. we saw groundbreaking new homes fall 6% in january to an annual rate of 1.58 million units, that was disappointing, but on the flipside permits rose sharply almost in half percent to 1.88 million units annualized and that's just contractors believe they are going to build more homes in the near future, but right now it's strange because material prices and availability are strained. david: although sales in florida and texas, thank you. checking the futures if we can. it's all down. we had bad news from walmart on the profit site actually their retail sales is way up, but profit was down bringing the dow jones down, but as siddique is down even more percentagewise and concerns about the jobs market with bad figures coming in about an increase in

unemployment. that is leading all of the indexes that with the nasdaq down over 1% right now in the futures market. we have all witnessed the less lovefest over new york governor andrew cuomo and his handling of the pandemic. roll tape if you have forgotten. >> thank you for your leadership during these trying times. >> watching his press conferences informing us, telling us what to do. >> now that you are the love governor you are transcended politics. david: very lovey-dovey; right? now the governor is under investigation by the doj and the fbi. wonder what the left has to say about that now corrects more "varney & co." right after this. ♪♪

good morning! this is where everything started.

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act now! david: a quick check of the futures as they are all down. the nasdaq is down well over 1%. dow jones, it has to do with walmart which is taking a hit, but jobless claims came in at 861,000 and was estimated to be about a hundred thousand less than that so big hit on jobs, going in the wrong direction. that's bringing all the indexes a down. show me walmart. it's trading down over 5% and again, that has a lot to do why the dow jones is down, but all the indexes are down. mac two politics in new york governor andrew cuomo is reportedly under investigation by the doj and the fbi over his handling of nursing home deaths, this estate senator from his own party are calling on the governor's emergency powers to be revoked a couple months before they would have timed

out. let's bring in brian brenberg. brian, the first investigation that we heard off that began in august, cuomo blamed on donald trump as a personal vendetta, but the new investigation he can't use that same excuse, can he? >> no. he doesn't have any excuses here are the only excuse maker for himself or has been the media actually because looking at a potential cover-up, legal implication. political implications, that's clear, he has a lot of enemies in his own party in new york, but to me the bigger cover-up of for america actually is why are we learning on this right now what happened last year when we were told this was america's governor, this was the person who had the model for leading us out of the coronavirus, that was the message again and again from the fact-based, so-called science -based reporters who were looking at this, we were told this is the model and the fact is it wasn't in

fatah can it wasn't and it seems like the press is so much more taken by political theater that-- then actually reporting. david: we know why. >> he's in a heap of trouble. david: yeah, but we know why it happened. it happened because the media and the whole political establishment including some of the republicans were out to get trump and everything was about how bad trump was in everything he did and that was the excuse and anyone willing to take on trump even if they did so under false pretenses as governor cuomo apparently did and he literally did because he was getting a lot of help from donald trump in terms of bringing in the hospital ship, helping him with the javits center, they have a hospital beds and instead of using all the help he was getting from donald trump, he sent these patients to nursing homes and the media was willing to

give him the excuse because he blamed a donald trump. >> he wasn't willing to use the resources that were available to him because part of that is the resources came from the federal government, the trump administration helped to provide the resources and he wouldn't use them, but notice it was up and down the line that he got covered for this. this cannot simply be governor cuomo's cover. this has to be a larger question of the institutions of this country that exists for the primary purpose of challenging those in power and making sure they are telling the truth and those institutions failed america. last year they were blaming the folks i got it right, down in florida for example and they were excusing the folks up here in new york-- by the way, new yorkers on the ground were looking around and saying wait a second, this is the model because i'm living here in dealing with the job losses and watching the loss of life, what's going on? david: we knew. let me just look back at the legacy.

i think it's not too early to do so of andrew cuomo. you look at his father, also governor of new york, mario cuomo, rising star in the democratic party and spoke at one of the conventions and everyone said he would one for both president. his own hubris among a lot of political commentators agree had to do with his losing the chance and i'm talking about mario now. it looks like father like son, doesn't it? >> this entitlement mentality because i take from this line of public servant that i have the right to hold this office and you don't have the right to question me. you don't have the right to question my motives or question my choices and that's all people are doing right now. i wish the governor well. i want him to succeed that i want coronavirus out of here, but people are asking reasonable question with personal meaning because it's the lives of their loved ones. we are looking for leadership right now to get out of this thing. we were told what-- governor cuomo was the leader.

we were told emphatically by the press over and over again the fact that he maybes moves should have been uncovered a long time ago for the good of the american public. we need to know what works and what doesn't and it feels like in a lot of ways we have been swindled. david: we had a leader who knew how to make it work and that leader gave us operation warp speed which gave us not only therapeutics, but the vaccines which a lot of democrats don't even admit were responsibly created by operation warp speed, but of course no one would admit donald trump did anything right and that's at the heart of all of this spirit brian, great to see you. thank you. welcome appearance are are happy about school reopening and it is hitting president biden's approval rating. lauren: it sure is as we are looking at a poll that says 42% of parents approve of how the president is handling the reopening of schools, but when

it comes to how he's handling the virus it's a much higher 58% approval rating. look, when you look at the issue of when and how schools can reopen, there are some a mixed messages, starting with the very unambitious goal remember just have a schools can open at least one day a week and people were like what the heck, that's not enough. to this issue of whether teachers need to be vaccinated for classrooms to reopen doors, soap with the mixed messages from president biden, vice president harrison the press secretary jen psaki and their message has been vague and it's a shifting in terms of timeline and guidelines and parents are fed up hence the approval rating is down. david: we all want to be able to make plans for the future, but it's impossible when you get some a mixed messages. thank you very much. looks like we are going to open to a down market today. all across the board. actually, the dow jones is doing better than other indexes, but it's

down to gnostic down well over 1% down. we will be right back with opening bell in just a moment. stay with us. ♪♪ your daily dashboard from fidelity -- a visual snapshot of your investments, key portfolio events, all in one place. because when it's decision time, you need decision tech. only from fidelity. obsession has many names. this is ours. the new lexus is. all in on the sports sedan. lease the 2021 is 300 for $359 a month for thirty nine months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. for thirty nine months.

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david: a couple of double whammy's hitting the market today bringing future stan and one has to do with walmart, unemployment is a big drag. let's bring in d.r. barton, our market to guy. a lot of money is being pumped into the economy to deal with the unemployment problem. are you worried about inflation? >> well, i do see inflation picking up, but i think from a market perspective, in the near to intermediate term i don't see it being a big problem. we can see ppi up strong, retail sales for january up huge along with retail stocks which are also a big in january. we see commodities act 22 month high, bitcoin, other asset groups flying off the top of the charts, so yes inflation is coming back , but the fed has already said we are

going to let it over she would our range, so i'm not fearing any tightening from the feds due to inflation anytime soon this whole year even. david: a lot of people are worried about inflation and they used to hedge with one item and that is gold with a lot of gold bugs. i was one for a while and still have a bit, but bitcoin and look at bitcoin if you can because you hear all source of things maybe even going up to a million dollars. has this replaced gold? gold has been down, it's up today about a dollars , but it has been down for the past few days while bitcoin has been way up. are crypto's taking the place of gold? >> i think they are not taking the place of gold as an inflation hedge per se, david. when we look at the correlation of inflation data in the cryptocurrency especially bitcoin, we do not see the correlation right now. what they are taking the place of his some of

these other mean stocks, gamestop and those things. we are seeing when we had the big takeoff in the main stock bitcoin kind of flattened out a bit and then we rolled out of that in the last week or so and bitcoin has taken off. david: d.r. barton, the bellies ringing. thank you. market trading has begun we will wait to see. we can see some green, but a lot of red on the screen. the dow jones is absorbing a lot of bad news this morning on profit taking-- not much profit from walmart even though sales were up then you had the unemployment problem and that is much worse than what was expected, about 100,000 more people than expected filing unemployment claims for the first time and that's a drag on the dow jones and the s&p and the nasdaq-- actually the nasdaq taking it worse with the s&p down

about three quarters of a percentage point, but the nasdaq over 1% down. the tech heavy index is really taking it on the chin, but let's first look at the big box stores as walmart is way down this morning. susan, what happened? susan: we saw missing with that guidance, that combo really for the company. walmart losing money in the uk and japan in the final three months of 2020 which her profits and online sales on the slowest case since before covid and now they are warning slate-- a sales will slow down again this year in profits will be less. americans are said to go out and send them-- spend their money and fill their gas tanks as the vaccine rolls out instead of shopping out walmart and one announcement is that they are raging-- weight gas raging average minimum wage. they join target and amazon in the 15-dollar minimum wage.

david: we had other reporters besides walmart with lumen brand, or mel, marriott reported earnings so let's start with lumen brand. susan: disappointed with sales last quarter, they did break even when it comes to profits two and 2020. let's check in with spam maker or mel they did as well as anticipated in the final three months and also forecasting an optimistic upbeat year growth for sales and profit. in the world's biggest hotel marriott international coming out with earnings making money instead of losing money in the final quarter unlike other competitors like helton that reported and also the sad news announced by marriott with the passing of its ceo. david: rest in peace to him to also way up, they must have had some great earnings. susan: if you are up 9% great earnings. analysts love this as its a communications company. the easiest example that

it makes the call for you on uber if you cannot find your driver and ride. they had a 13000 new active accounts in the last three months and now they have over 221,000 and the world. look at the bullish target price hikes from wall street, mostly forecasting the dock will rocket over $500, that's 25% up over current level. david: let's talk about tilray, marijuana. they are merging to become the world's biggest cannabis company susan: and the recent wallstreetbets play as well. sales came in higher but remember tilray as you mentioned to merge in a few weeks in the spring to become the biggest cannabis company in the world and we have seen explosive growth in the stock almost quadruplets over in the first eight weeks 02021.

david: and then we have apple kind of your specialty. apple is down this morning that's because warren buffett who had rated apple successfully over the past year actually sold some of his shares a. susan: i would argue apple probably the main stock drag today because it's so big that it accounts for so much of the s&p 500, probably the most single influential stock in 40 years and cracking below 130 this morning and this is what we call the 50 day moving average. people actually look at this and when it goes below the 50 day moving average it's usually a sell signal and bearish for the stock. apple's biggest investors, warren buffett, vanguard selling from apple stock berkshire still holds the single largest stockholding for warren buffett. vanguard one of the largest money manager still loves the most apple stock on the planet pony 70% stake, but they sold off around

25 million shares recently. david: warren buffett by holding onto apple over the past year made about $50 billion. he did pretty well. just taking some profit here. facebook, i'm told they are no longer allow users to share news and australia? susan: australia's new law would force tech companies to pay publishers for news content shared on the platform by users which providers say they should pay us because it's good journalism and it's not cheap or free so instead of complying facebook is pulling out the nuclear option blocking any news sharing on its platform in australia so they don't have to pay for the content. you have google saying they will pay. australia's prime minister called the move arrogant and disappointing, but you can imagine what they do in one country will go elsewhere and same thing for google. david: arrogant is the word.

bitcoin, if you thought that it is-- $52000 was a lot, some people are talking about $1 million? susan: seven digits. they say bitcoin could hit a million dollars a coin in the future, 500,000 by the end of this decade and as i mentioned you had he would who's probably the biggest and most famous fund manager in the last year since 250,0004 bitcoin if companies spend 10% of their cash holdings and also city who is way ahead of the curve in the fall last year, a $300,000 per coin, j.p. morgan 100,000, but for j.p. morgan we have to seek less volatility they say the crypto rally to continue. 2021 is different from 2017 in their view because it's already less volatile so more sustainable in their view and i think you will just see bitcoin go to higher levels. david: 1 million a coin, i know

it's a virtual coin. thank you. what do you think about universal basic income for children? is a income something you pay for work and kids don't work. at any rate, it could become a reality in your president biden. we will explain. and in a few hours robinhood and other top ceos are set to testify mccain stop frenzy so what do investors want to hear about all of this? i will ask gregg smith when he joins me coming up. ♪♪ [announcer] durán catches leonard with a big left. ♪♪

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goldman sachs is racing its 2020 when gdp predictions come about lauren, there's a catch? lauren: vaccinations, but wall street in general seems to be resetting their forecast for how

fast the economy will grow and seven the numbers are remarkable suggesting light at the end of the tunnel. is what goldman sachs says, 7% growth for 2021 half americans are backs a cake-- vaccinated by may. morgan stanley tracking seven and a half percent growth in q1. jeffries 6.4% for all of 2021 and follow-through in 2022 with 4.7% growth you have stimulus coming, the vaccine and that contributes to this massive step up in consumption and the flipside is inflation. will inflation be tolerable or worrisome? look at the 10 year and we has seen it rise impacting most loans 1.31% now. it's fallen a bit after the jobs report but it's back up. do we go to one and a

half percent and if so when and can we deal with that? david: stimulus far less important than opening the economy. nothing beats opening the economy, no amount of money. where does government get its money? a growing economy, the the, has to grow for the government get the money for stimulus, so above all else is opening the economy. lauren: and vaccinations in arms david: vaccinations also. dow jones has lost. nasdaq and s&p made a slight recovery but the dow jones industrial down about three quarters of a percent. gregg smith is with us, our market got. spac, let's talk about spac, you say it's sucking up about 90% of the oxygen in the room, but you know has to work late-- hates to use these terms like spac. what is a spac? >> a spac, the easiest way to look is is a publicly traded checking account so think about

management team getting together, raising hundreds of millions of dollars and have it in a checking account and then they are on a mission to buy a company with those dollars. they don't have unfettered access to the money and they have to get shareholder approval, but the headlines today spac is sucking up 90% of the air in the room, so our morning coffee at 7:00 a.m. is it dominated by news of activity of some spac acquiring a private company and in the afternoon on our drive home it's a dominated by four or five new spac filing to go public and probably another four or five that have completed an ipo that day. david: let me stop you quickly. how does a spac because it's not a publicly traded company, how do they get around the fcc close to being a public company and wouldn't it be interested in getting information that you

don't have to reveal you aren't a public company? >> spac are public so today there's more than 300 publicly traded spac chasing acquisition targets. they basically all have $10 in cash sitting in a trust in a checking account or bank account and they are looking for acquisition targets, so i don't want to start sounding alarm bells, but i want a reality check because you have 300 spac looking for targets, five new minted spac every day coming to market. if you look across the us landscape, wallowing others tens of thousands of us venture backed companies, there's probably 450 unicorns, private companies with evaluations in excess of a billion dollar so i question what can happen when all the pretty girls get asked home from the dance first. you have 300 spac and there's only some a great targets out there with more and more coming everyday, so does that mean the quality will begin to erode in terms of acquisition

targets? or will the american dream kick in and more will be creating more great private companies? david: let's hope it's the latter. i went to skip over spac for a second and get to the house hearings on him stop, the robinhood saga and i say it's about finding out about whether or not robinhood conspired with the big guys against the little guys and you say what? >> it's just another example of washington political theater. in my opinion there was no wrongdoing. you had to break down a look at the actors. if you and i borrow $10000 on our credit card and went to the casino and lost, i don't think we would be here but unfortunately you have a lot of attractive targets, politicians want to look good for their constituents of you look at robinhood, us investment banks and at the end of the date they are gatekeepers to the capital markets. and this is not an example of fraud. is not john corzine and mf global stealing customer money and

building a bond portfolio. it's a firm that took action to protect constituents, their trading partner to the market in general to prevent any type of systemic risk to the system. david: the problem for robinhood is that a lot of their constituents are burning mad against them and they have lost a lot of constituents so we will see what happens. good to see you. appreciate it. let's bring susan back in and speaking of robinhood, one of the darlings of robinhood was amc. was happening to them? susan: amc up almost 13 and a half percent in the premarket and again as you mentioned one of the reddit wallstreetbets, gamestop favorites and it looks like they are trading higher. i just checked the short flow in the stock, remember robinhood hearing is because of the over tilted disproportionate short interest in some of these stocks and amc at last count was 67% so again that's a different

proportion and a bit high but there's talk amazon might look to bid do you want to talk about crypto? david: yeah, because we may know now who the big holder of dogecoin is a. susan: one committee testifying his robinhood, could be the biggest single whale holder in dogecoin with over $2 billion worth, more than a quarter of the entire dogecoin market in this according to analysis by block chain trader elliptic. earlier this week robinhood was a big dogecoin whale trader and elon musk responding to a tree agreeing that it does look like robinhood is the biggest dogecoin holder peer no elon musk has helped dogecoin rally and he said he will pay dollars to the biggest dogecoin holders that they want to sell. david: is so much easier just to hold a gold coin, just easier.

susan: so not 2021, david. david: but you can bury it in your backyard. thank you. congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez claims the green new deal would have helped prevent devastating power outages and texas. has she seen the frozen wind turbines? remember those pictures? more on that story, the first many are still without power, millions in fact as texas faces record shattering cold temperatures and janice dean joins us live next with a report. stayed tuned. ♪♪ liberty mutual customizes- wait... am i in one of those liberty mutual commercials where they stand in front of the statue of liberty and talk about how liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need?

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david: take a look at this, texas residents taking shelter in mattress smacks her nature stores, hundreds of thousands remain without power there and there is this, a car sliding down an untreated snowy roadway in austin hills, texas. they are not accustomed to a tapping there . let's bring in janice

dean. when will there be really for them? janice: unfortunately, they are getting another round of snow and ice across texas, david. look at the temperatures now and of course we have the snow cover, but temperatures and wind chill well below freezing and in some cases single digits, double digits across texas. we have snow cover over much of the great state of texas into oklahoma and arkansas and then some is coming up towards the mid-atlantic and northeast, but the problem is it's a prolonged event for our friends across texas and they will be struggling to get out of the freezing temperatures over the next couple of days, certainly not seeing balmy temperatures by any stretch of the imagination and we get snow again today over portions of central and southern texas. we want to mention the threat for severe storms because we have a cold front moving across the southeast of the florida so that's a tornado watch in effect for the next several hours where

we had the threat for hale, damaging wind and isolated tornadoes so very dynamic system. this latest low pressure is moving across the mid-atlantic up towards the northeast bringing in icy mix which will be terrible for the roadways in the power lines and we have snow for many across the i-95 area and in some cases three to 6 inches as we go through the rest of today and i think the bottom line here is that some of these places across the heartland like texas, like across the gulf coast feeling that cold air, that particular that's been in place for almost a week and that's been devastating for them. david: i should mention texas authorities claim there's less than a million people still without power, but i find that hard to believe when in houston alone 1.4 million people in houston were without power as of yesterday. we have to leave it at that. janice, thank you. let's hope we survived this one is still ahead mercedes schlapp, pete

hegseth and sandra smith and as we remember the life and legacy of rush limbaugh, here he is in 2009 from the true meaning of conservatives of them. >> let me tell you who we conservatives are. we love people. we see americans. we see human beings we believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if the certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulation and too much government. [applause]. de for a strategy gut check? what's that? you run it by an expert, you talk about the risk and potential profit and loss. could've used that before i hired my interior decorator. . . get a strategy gut check from our trade desk.

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♪. david: how can you not tap your foot, even at a snowy day like today when you hear that music. i love the music. not so crazy about the weather. this is another snowstorm as i mention. we just got rid of the snow, it was 50 degrees two days ago and now we got more. i'm david asman in for stu. 10:00 on the east coast. get a check on the markets. they have believe it are not recovered a little bit. it is a down day. bad news on unemployment front. bad news on profit front for walmart but again they have recovered a little bit. we'll see what happens. meanwhile the short squeeze saga

comes to capitol hill as executives from robinhood, reddit face a grilling from house lawmakers. the deep freeze continues. more than half a million people at least are still without power in texas. i think it is more than that but that is the official stats. we got the latest read on mortgage rates. lauren, what's the number? lauren, can you hear me? all right. we'll get to lauren read on mortgage rates in just a moment. let me bring in gary kaltbaum. let me stay if i can with rates. i want to deal with the 10-year rates. can you put the 10-year up there. we're up once again which in a lot of peoples minds are confirming fear we are finally going to see a raise in inflation. i say finally, not because anybody wants it. because we heard about it for the past dozen years or so we would have inflation with all the government spending what the fed is doing. it never happened.

is it finally going to rear its ugly head again? >> i can tell you with all the money printing, spending i'm surprised inflation is in teens. beats the heck out of me. i will tell you this, lumber, copper, you name it, multiyear highs. that will get passed through as we move forward. prices to build homes, you name it. so yeah there is some, whether or not or not it will be the harsh inflation that really, really hurt, i'm not so sure. and with yields i think 1.3 on the 10-year, that is still very, very low. if we start to see a lot higher, we'll be talking because it will affect things. there is an old myth. david: i don't believe it is a myth. it is called the phillips curve. if you have strong growth, economic growth you will have inflation. that was disproven way back in the reagan years when we had incredible growth of 7% one

year, we had a pull down in inflation, not a tick up in inflation. having a strong economy is not enough. whether you have a government sector that is increasing more than the private sector. that's when you have inflation, right? >> the greatest thing you can have is a strong economy with government out of the way. when the government spends like crazy, too much money chasing too few hands and distortions of markets. my biggest worry, i've been saying this for a while, we do not know the outcome of the printing of 20, 25 trillion bucks from central banks and this massive deficit spending going on for a while. all they're doing is cutting another credit card with a higher amount on it than the last one. so the ultimate out come is worrisome but i will tell you in the short run right now i'm not seeing anything troublesome and the fact that yields are backing up, i think more has to do with the vaccine, opening up the economy than anything else.

david: right. very quickly you say we're in a melt-up period. that is hard to make that case when the market's down over 100 points. >> yeah. that is dangerous today. the russell 2000 is up 15% this year, financials 10%, oils up 20, 30%. this is something i talked about a few months ago. i think we're still in gear. i would not be surprised to see 17,000 nasdaq before this ends and then trouble. because there is too much froth, speculation and too much central bank interference. david: you say then trouble. how far down the road? >> i think will have a pretty big bear market when this pops. look, i do believe we're in bubble land here. david: when does it pop? when, gary? >> i'm going to guess later part of this year, early part of next year. that is just a guess. we'll let the market side. you cannot tie tops in the market or bear market. we're not there yet.

david: i got you to give us a time stamp anyway. good to see you, my friend. enjoy florida. rush limbaugh very sadly lost his battle with cancer. he pasted away yesterday. let's bring in ben dominic, cofounder of "the federalist". everyone thought donald trump would outlast the never drummers and gop establishment. what do you think? >> i think he had incredible ability to recognize political trends but social and trend in a way that was uncanny. i was talking to someone a d.c. policy political expert yesterday about rush, about what he meant and one of the things he pointed out as much as he would read and consume all the news that was going around during the day, rush would always find some aspect of it, some angle that he couldn't

find. that is something a lot of listeners found about rush as well. codig through and explain to them different trends that were going on in the country that were under the surface, that might not attract the attention of typical conventional wisdom in washington, d.c., but he remained plugged into that for so long, for three decades and more in his role on the radio with people as a friend every day is just incredible. an enormous achievement in terms of his life. david: he was so far, as you point out, he was so far ahead of the curve in some things, particularly political things. a lot of people got emails. he and i use towed share emails. he sent one back 2018, three years ago, march 1st, 2018 about donald trump. here is what he said. i knew trump would be elected in june of 2015 shortly after his rallies began. i saw the bond between trump and those supporting him. i had it myself with my

audience. the thing is no one can break that bond but trump. the media can't because they had nothing to do with creating it. only trump can blow it. way too many people in media have no concept of the audience. their success is not tied to an audience this is especially true of the so-called intellectual conservatives who will never understand the bond voters have with trump. they never sought such a bond and never experienced it, never will. it is quote beneath them. i think, he had some very wise words to say. i think they still are in order right now. >> i absolutely agree. i would say that one of the things that you have to understand about the history of conservatism in america is that you have never had success one without the other. you need both the policy, intellectual side of things and you need that populace energy. so often we see situations where you know, the so-called

establishment or the corporate side, the donor side of the republican party, sometimes tries to put its fist down on populist energy. when that happens you have splits. when you work together you can advance, have electoral success and achieve policy. david: the thing that united trump and rush, both of them respected their audience. trump, well, both of them got, i think even more from their audience than they felt they were giving to their audience. you heard that rush say that very often. he was absolutely sincere that he felt his audience was far smarter than a lot of intellectuals inside the beltway and i think trump felt the same. that is why they attacked him so hard. >> really an incredible tinge you can achieve if you treat the caller from the middle of the country with the same level of respect that you give to

politicians at the highest levels because you understand that those politicians work for that person, not the other way around. david: it's market 101. you have to respect your audience, not only your audience but your consumers. the consumers of your product. if you're a politician, if you think very poorly of those people they're going to eventually catch on to you and what your game is? >> absolutely. david: so what happens now with traditions, traditionalists inside of the republican party? is there any way that they have eat crow and accept donald trump as the leader of the party, quickly? >> i think you're going to see that play out over the coming year in terms of the run-up to all the different primaries that we're going to see going into the midterms. you're going to see i think donald trump play a significant role in those primaries. he is going to back certain candidates, according to his choices. and i think you're going to see inevitably some clashes with the, central organizing force

represented by mitch mcconnell in washington, d.c., and other party leaders. that is going to be tension. it will be worked through. the wisest thing to harmonize the different branches of center right movement in the country in order to have what really could be an excellent midterm election. >> it will be hard to thread all those needles but it probably could be done. ben, very good stuff. thank you very much. best to your family. >> great to be with you. david: let's check the market. susan you have the today's big movers. susan: wall street is extending those lasts. nasdaq is down 1.4%. let's get back to the amc, amazon report. report that amazon might be buying amc to build up their entertainment and streaming business. this amazon amc tieup has been talked about since last year especially as the amc was on the brink of bankruptcy.

they managed to raise $900 million to get them through the winner months. there are a lot of short bets. a lot of money thinking that amc stock prize will fall from here. walmart shaving 50 points off the dow today. they made less money last quarter. online sales growing at the slowest pace since covid. they're forecasting sales slowing even more with americans going back out, buying gas in order to get back to work. walmart paying out a 15-dollar minimum wage. i want to check out twilio, they help you make customer calls on uber and netflix. wall street loves it. price hikes of above $500. tilray, cannabis producer losing less money ahead of the merger with afria to become the world's largest marijuana company. these are the favorite of the reddit, wall street bets brigade.

david: talked about bitcoin. drill down a little more about them. susan: we're talking about jeffrey gundlach, you know him, the bond king and gold bull. he says bitcoin is a better buy than gold in his view. bitcoin is a stimulus play according to gundlach. joining the established brigade old guard, paul tudor jones, stanley drunkenmiller, gundlach, not young kids in skill con valley saying they're buying into bitcoin. that is bullish. morgan creek says bitcoin could hit a million dollars in the future. 500,000 by the end of this decade. cathie wood, the most talked about fund manager, arc investments says $250,000 of bitcoin if companies spend roughly 10% of their cash. david: wow. susan, thank you very much. amazing when gold bugs give up gold for bitcoin. susan: what does that tell you? that tells you a reversion change in the market. david: i might have to go into the backyard to dig all that stuff up. i have don't know if i have a

map. susan thank you. the media was very quick to praise new york governor andrew cuomo as the hero of covid-19. remember? roll tame. >> even lifelong republicans tell me, they look at cuomo, god, there is a leader. >> i'm wowed by what you did, more importantly i'm wowed how you did it. >> my governor, governor cuomo is one of the heroes own the front lines. david: well, now his administration is reportedly under investigation for covering up nursing home deaths. former lieutenant governor of new york betsy mccaughey is here to react. that's next. plus deep freeze fingerpointing, aoc says her green new deal would have prevented the texas blackouts. wasn't all that green energy the cause of these blackouts? we've got the story and the backlash strayed straight ahead. ♪

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not promise... prove. and now, during the ultimate sleep number event, save 50% on the sleep number 360 limited edition smart bed. plus, 0% interest for 24 months on all smart beds. only for a limited time. ♪. david: well new reports say the fbi and the new york u.s. attorney's office will be investigating governor andrew cuomo and his administration's role of covering up nursing home deaths. come in betsy mccaughey. betsy, you were the lieutenant governor of new york. you know how that cesspool in albany, and i don't mean to diminish albany. it is a great city but the government part is a cesspool. you understand how it works. i'm wondering if you think cuomo is finished as governor? >> first hard to know which is worse, the dying or the lying. we're talking about somewhere between 13,000 and 15,000

elderly patients at a minimum whose lives were put at risk and died because of a march 25th order from the governor's office and the health department commanding nursing homes, take in patients discharged from hospitals having been treated for covid and prohibiting the nursing homes from testing them for covid. the nursing homes had to fly blind. this virus raged through all of these nursing homes. that's the dying but the lying began almost immediately. i emailed the health department. i called the health department to find out what the death toll was and here's what happened. the health department saw the number of deaths rising. so they manipulated the numbers and suddenly stopped counting deaths of patients who were transferred to the hospital just before they died. that cut the number in half almost. so for months and months cuomo bragged that elderly people were

safer in new york than other parts of the country when just the opposite was true. david: yeah. bottom line is, he was getting all the assistance from trump for the hospital ship, turning javits center into a hospital. they had empty beds there. he could have been putting these people in ships, in quarantined ships or quarantined centers like javits center instead of putting them into nursing homes. he had the option. >> that could have been a mistake but the lying -- david: let me come back to my first question, betsy, because we're running out of time. is cuomo finished? rather than taking the blame himself, he is putting it on others saying it was the fault of nursing homes and staff that came in? >> it clearly wasn't. this is only the beginning because the cuomo administration is mired in corruption. now that you see democrats in the assembly, senate, starting to break information will come out about the other aspects of corruption. after all cuomo's top aide, is

already doing time in prison having been convicted of corruption. david: so this is only the tip of an iceberg, that's what you're saying? >> yes, that's what i'm saying. david: what happens now? it is significant i think that the democrats are now his so-called democrat colleagues are now going after him. has this been, have there been festering problems between cuomo and other democrats many coming to the fore? >> you put your finger on it, david. cuomo has been a bully for years. he made many enemies but intimidated people within his own party. new york is a one-party state. those democrats in both houses kept quite he, cuomo was relatively safe, even if his aides were convicted of corruption and sent to jail but now -- david: very quickly, we have only 30 seconds. he still has the media, starting with his brother over at cnn even though he will not be able to cover the governor anymore.

will he be able to use that media support, all the celebrities came to his defense? or will they drop out? >> i think many of them are going to be fair weather friends. the fact more and more will come out there. is no recall in new york state unlike california. he doesn't suffer the fate of gavin newsom. it is very hard to impeach in new york. it would require a 2/3 vote of the senate, plus the state's top judges. unlikely to happen. but he is losing power. david: betsy mccaughey, very interesting situation in the state of new york. betsy, thank you, appreciate it. a new report by the cdc says our life expectancy has gone down because of the pandemic. lauren, how much did it drop? lauren: a full year, that is the biggest drop since world war ii. the average american life expectancy is 77.8 years, cut lower by the coronavirus.

lower for some races, blacks have been cut by three years and hayes panics by two. the pandemic continues to kill people. the overall numbers show it, cdc, 7.78 full years. david: may not sound like much to people. a full year in such a short span of time, that is huge a huge drop. lauren, thank you very much. another foreign strain of covid has been found here in the u.s. look who is here to talk about it. ashley, good to see you, my friend. what are the details about this? ashley: good morning to you, david. listen, health authorities in maryland confirmed the p-1 variant, commonly known as the brazil variant in a resident older than 65 who recently died after international travel. the brazil variant is briefed to be more transmissible than the covid strain. research is underway to see how the current vaccines are against it. it was first identified in the u.s. at the end of january.

maryland also had confirmed cases of the uk and south african variant. they continue to pop up around the country. david: thank you god for the therapeutics and vaccines. if not for "operation warp speed" we would be looking at different situation. ashley, thank you. from school reopenings, to vaccines the messaging coming out of the white house is kind of a mess right now. roll tape. >> some teaching in classrooms. so at least one day a week, hopefully it's more. >> no, that is not true. that is it what was reported. that is not true. it was a mistake in the communication. david: how can you make sense of all this? former member of president trump's communications team, mercedes schlapp is here on that. statues of abraham lincoln and george washington are under review in a major city for quote, promoting white supremacy, abraham lincoln. we'll tell you where all of this is happening, right after short

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actually the dow was just down over 300 points. it has improved a little bit. it is down 293. nasdaq is down 232. that is more than 1 1/2% loss on the nasdaq and s&p is down a percent as well. president joe biden trying to take credit for the vaccine. going so far as to say that his administration had to completely start from scratch, even with a vaccine. roll tape. >> it's one thing to have the vaccine which we didn't have when we came into office but a vaccinator. how do you get the vaccine into someone's arm. david: come in mercedes schlapp. this is patently false. looks like we lost mercedes. did we lose her? >> i got to tell you -- david: hold on, mercedes. we can hear you. we can't see you. but continue to talk. the bottom line is, that president biden may have

forgotten but took his vaccine before he actually came into office. so obviously there were vaccines when he came into office? >> yes. well there is no question that the president biden should send a thank you note to president trump and the team that built "operation warp speed." what we saw was the fact that it really was the president's leadership, president trump's leadership in insuring that these pharmaceutical companies like pfizer, were able to quickly get these vaccines authorized through the emergency authorization of the fda. and it was because the president knew that we needed to cut the red tape, cut the bureaucracy out, in order to insure we could get the vaccine developed, that needed therapeutics, and also insure that americans were getting vaccinated. by the time the president trump

left office, there was about one million vaccines that were being, that people were receiving on, you know, a daily basis. so i think that between "operation warp speed" and the president's leadership, president trump's leadership, we were able to move quickly so that it laid the foundation and the groundwork for president biden to be able to continue in building the vaccine distribution infrastructure. david: you know what bothered me most about that misstatement by president biden was the fact that he wasn't corrected by anderson cooper. can you imagine how quickly the so-called fact-checkers would have jumped made an error, if you call it an error like that? >> i got to tell you, the fact-checkers spent so much of their time discrediting, trying to discredit president trump but members of his administration, we know clearly that many of these fact-checkers are out there advocating for president

biden. they're protecting him. they're defending him. in his statements we know that president biden has had several gaffs recently in terms of about vaccines and yet they're blind-sided. they don't want to talk about it. they don't want to address it. in fact they go after the former press secretary from the trump administration instead. so you we know where the media bias lies. our job is to continue we provide the accurate information and point out where president biden is wrong when he talks about the vaccines and the vaccine distribution. david: you know the big picture here was that president trump knew that the private sector does things far more efficiently than government does. the levels of bureaucracy, a lot which was cut by president trump have a tendency to gum up the works of any process like developing a vaccine. that's what president trump was focused on.

i don't think anybody in the biden administration has as much appreciation for the private sector as president trump did? >> i think when you have kamala harris and all of these other biden folks coming out and being very critical of the president trump and the administration on the vaccine, saying that they really didn't, didn't really have an infrastructure in place, i think that is troubling. at the end of the day we need to put politics aside when it comes to covid-19. and this pandemic. that is impacted all of our lives. david: right. >> we know that because of president trump's leadership, he understood clearly what it took to get the vaccines and therapeutics approved quickly and safely and responsibly. his team was working way ahead of time in insuring that they received the necessary funding for these different states and for vaccine development, insuring that we were work

working with governors in distribution plans as well. i really believe it would have been better for president biden, especially talking about a unity message, that he acknowledges what the former administration was able to accomplish and say you know what? we'll take it to the next step. david: at the very least, i wish the mainstream media would acknowledge that, it is impossible to say we didn't have a vaccine when he came into office, when in fact he took a vaccine, he took a shot of the vaccine before he was officially president of the united states. it is extraordinary that he wasn't corrected on that point. but we certainly will continue to do here at fox. thank you, mercedes. all the best to you. no one is surprised spiking in san francisco following cuts in their police department funding. lauren, how much of a spike in crime? lauren: in the district of richmond, 343%. david: whoa. lauren: it is astonishing, david. there were 124 robberies there

compared to last year. what changed the city had police reform. the mayor said they couldn't respond to calls that didn't involve public safety. they replaced police with trained unarmed professionals. committed $120 million in budget cuts. i gave you the burglary stat. but the numbers in richmond, move motor vehicle thefts. david: carjackings are through the roof. you see videos of the carjackings they're frightening. lauren, thank you very much. another city is in trouble. this probably won't help. chicago officials are taking aim at some of the city's statues. ash, what are they doing this time? ashley: that is not all david, this they have so far identified 4monuments, plaques artworks they say may promote white

supremacy, have ties to racist acts slavery or genocide or demeaning characterizations of native americans. now those works include depictions of christopher columbus, george washington, benjamin franklin, abraham lincoln and on and on. residents in chicago can submit feedback about all of this through a newly-launched website. city leaders say almost all of those 41 works of art were funded by the wealthy who were responsible for the idealized representation of american statesmen and military heroes. chicago took down two status of columbus last july. they say this is the only the beginning. david. david: abraham lincoln banned as a racist. branded as a racist. ashley, thank you very much. universal basic income for children. we're going to tell you about a new tax credit proposal from the biden administration in the next hour. but first, more than half a million people in texas still

without power this morning. the real number may be much higher than that. we'll tyke you live to the state and speak with farmers who are reeling from the power grid failure. that's next. ♪ ♪ ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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♪. david: check the markets. it is a nasty situation on wall street. the dow jones industrials down almost a full percentage point. nasdaq down about 1 1/2% right now. it looks like it may have found a ceiling at least for now anyway of about 300 for the dow. it's now down 25. once it hits the 300 points, it has a tendency to come down a little bit. we'll keep following that very closely. meanwhile hundreds of thousands in texas are without

power. grady trimble, is in waxahachie, texas. i was trying to focus on that word, waxahachie, grady. you're talking with farmers that are struggling with this whole mess. reporter: they are. no power. intermitt end power. the water supplies are freezing for the animals. their equipment won't start because they're not used to starting it in this kind of weather. those are some of the challenges they're facing as cold weather wreaks havoc in the state of texas. paul is a rancher out here. you fared okay with your animals but other farmers are struggling right now. >> it is calving season for texas. suppose to be under a blanket of snow. unerred of right here. we're struggling with the calves. dry drying them off. they're getting frostbite. ii have a friend that lost 10% f

their crop. reporter: this is your livelihood and food. the state ag commissioner issued a warning. i'm issuing a red alert to agriculture and food supply. farmers are reporting that interruptions in electricity and natural gas are having a devastating effect on operation. we saw meat shelves getting wiped clean at the start of pandemic. is that something we could see in texas and elsewhere? >> sure it is a real possibility. right now it is a shortage, not supply. the truck can't get in. we can't take cattle to markets. processors are closed. there will be a hiccup in the system moving that product. reporter: a matter how much it impacts the grocery store shelves. what struck me on the highway out here, how few semi-trucks are on the road. because they can't drive as john paul mentioned on the ice. that is another hiccup in the

supply chain we could see in days and weeks maid. david: grady, thank you very much. staying in texas for a moment, a lot of fingerpointing is going on as to who is to blame. lauren, who is playing the blame game here? lauren: aoc for one. this is a battle for fossil fuel versus renewables. when texas governor greg abbott told sean hannity earlier this week, that the green new deal would be a quote, deadly deal for the country as texas' wind and solar were down, congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez tweeted back, the real deadly deal is his, governor abbott's failed leadership. but, david, we were talking about hiccups in the system. the fact of the matter is, this entire system in texas was not outfitted for colds like this. companies opted against some upgrades because of the expense. they were supposed to winterize. they didn't. the grid in texas is not federally regulated. and you know ercot, the power

grid operator is getting a lot of blame. david: they are indeed. lauren, thank you very much. elon musk is also joining into the chorus of criticism for texas. susan, what did elon say? susan: ercot is texas' power grid manager. it stands for the electricity reliability council of texas. musk treated that ercot is not earning the r for reliability in acronym. musk is austin native, moving to the city where he is building the his cyber truck factory and spacex rockets. texas is using rolling blackouts. 3 million without power in texas, louisiana, mississippi, pardon me. numerous tesla owners are sleeping in their cars in texas in order to keep warm. so he is being impacted at his factory and also his tesla customers are complaining. david: maybe a little buyers remorse for moving to texas. susan, thank you very much. gavin newsom is on the ropes in

california as the recall effort moves forward. john cox is hoping to step in, turn that state around and he is putting his money where his mouth is. he is here with hess pitch. he is going to tell us how much more money of his own he is putting into the race. first "the new york times" paying tribute, sort of legendary broadcaster rush limbaugh, using the words in the headline, misogynistic and racist to describe him. pete hegseth is here on that. coming next. ♪. ancestry...gave us context.

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♪. david: a big down draft in the markets today though they have improved just a little bit but dow jones is down 23points. nasdaq is down about 1 1/3%. it was down over 1 1/2% earlier. all about bad unemployment numbers. that's really put a downward feel in what's happening with our economy in general. meanwhile take a look at an obituary for rush limbaugh in "the new york times." the first line in the obit reads

quote, mr. limbaugh, who was 70, pushed conservative radio to the right with misogynistic and racist language while trafficking in conspiracy theories, end quote. that is the first line in this obituary. come in pete hegseth, "fox & friends weekend" co-host. pete, your reaction to really the nastiest obit i ever read? >> sadly not surprised. of course they have saved their deepest and darkest vitriol for the person who was their most effective opponent who exposed them with efficacy for 30 years, the phrase rush used, drive-by media, jumps in emotion, spreads lies,my cakes ices and leaves before the facts are actually unearthed. in this case they reserve that kind of treatment for a man who had unfiltered audience, the ability to spread the truth about conservatism which "the new york times" hated and as a result they would have never missed this opportunity to be the angry leftist that they

are. he exposed them. david: it is their responsibility, i know responsibility has gone out the window with these folks long ago, but it is their responsibility, historical record keeper and when you look at what -- >> they're not. david: what rush limbaugh did in his lifetime, focus on that for a second because in 1994, one instance of many historical incidents where he affected the history of politics in america. newt gingrich said, was it not for him personally, the republicans would not have taken over the house in 1994 and led to a real cultural revolution in terms of what newt gingrich did with congress when he was speakerrer of the house. then of course it is history with trump, et cetera. that's their responsibility, "the times," to focus on the history of things. >> you described surface of it. the gingrich revolution. contract with america doesn't happen in 1994.

he literally invents conservative talk radio. which exploded rightfully so. without limbaugh there is no trump. he was trump before trump. he explained trump. he paved the way for him. he allowed his audience to be fertile ground for donald trump. they're not the paper of record, david. we have to get rid of this idea they are. they're not. whatever efficacy they had on that perspective is completely gone. they are a left-wing view of history. if you want to get a full picture of anybody, anything or any event, you better read multiple sources other than "the new york times" -- david: two in particular, "the wall street journal" and "the new york post." i think you get a hell of a lot -- >> 100%. david: than you do from "the new york times" these days. meanwhile pete, i want to switch gears, get your reaction to this, fox has confirmed, a limited number of ice detainees received covid vaccine. millions of americans are still waiting to just be eligible. your response to that? >> okay, so illegals detained by

i.c.e. presumably because they have committed a crime. you don't know that always, it's a crime to cross illegally as well, are now getting covid vaccines before tax paying legal citizens of this country who have been waiting in line and wearing a mask for a year and playing by the rules. it is not the same thing. i'm not likening everyone detained by i.c.e. as guantanamo bay. i served there. you treat the prisoner the same way you treat the guard. in this case you don't treat the illegal the same way as the citizen. every citizen should being in line before illegal immigrants, especially before who commit crimes get a covid vaccine. it seems common sense. bureaucracies lose all of that, so you get crazy intenses like this. david: let's pull back in rush limbaugh mode to look what is happening in america right now politically speaking. joe biden as you know, i've been talking about it for a while, he could be the most progressive president we have ever had. i think he is.

he ran as a moderate, if you want a moderate line, i'm not talking aoc here, go with joe, joe will play it right down the middle. he hasn't, but i wonder will he ever draw the line with the radicals that keep pushing him to the left? >> of course not. he is an empty vessel for their agenda. we knew that would be the case. now, because politics was the last quarter, the left didn't control, donald trump stood to thwart them there for four years, they couldn't get, they got radicalized because of him but they couldn't implement it. with universities, media, big tech, social media, every other quarter of our culture controlled by the left, they're in fast forward mode with no ramifications because they won't get called on it, david. they won't. exempt for here and like you said, the "new york post" or "the wall street journal," they have got carte blanche to try to remake america. it is ultimately regressive. he knows that. he won't be held to account for it. with 50 votes in the senate right now, they will go fast -- david: only 20 seconds.

will we have to live through a socialist era? or can we still avoid it? >> i don't know if we keep indoctrinating our kids the way we are right now not to love america if we can avoid it. we can avoid a future, effectively anti-american, doesn't believe in our founding values and rejects capitalism. we're headed that direction. it is scary. david: i think we can avoid it, it will take a lot of work. >> i hope so. david: good to see you my friend. we'll leave it there. another big hour coming up. we have sandra smith. hen dan heningers and original "wolf of wall street," jordan belfort. universal basic income for children? is the government taking over everything, including the allowances for our kids? more after this.

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some say this is my greatest challenge ever. but i've seen centuries of this. with a companion that powers a digital world, traded with a touch. the gold standard, so to speak ;)

with all the money printing and spending i'm surprised inflation tennis and in the teens. >> i'm not fearing tightening from the fed due to inflation. >> this is not an example of fraud. this is affirmative necessary action to protect their constituent and trading partners in general. >> if you're going to play the market, trade the market, you know things go up and down. if you trade extremely volatile

stocks, when you are right you hit it big, when wrong you lose big. >>, you pull the covers up. and it is a snowy east coast. let's get right to it. markets haven't improved much over the past couple minutes. they seem to have let us ceiling up 300, it is about 263, the nasdaq has improved but hard to say, down one and one third%, s&p is down, a full percentage point as well. nasty day on the streets of new york and particularly on the streets of wall and broad, the game stop hearing is set to

begin in less than an hour inside the way. let's bring in hillary von at the capital, set the stage for us. >> most lawmakers on the committee don't own individual stocks themselves but today's hearing will get into the weeds as to who needs to be regulated, to stop what happened with game stop from happening again. it is unclear what lawmakers are leaning toward, the crackdown on brokerages like robin hood, retail investors who use social media to their advantage or hedge funds but they will hear from all sides today, robin hood ceo will explain half of their customers self identify as first-time investors with an average account size of $5,000 so the idea their customers are unsophisticated day traders taking risks with large sums of money is wrong. he also is going to say i want to be clear at the outset any allegations robin hood acted to help hedge funds where other special interests to the

detriment of our customers absolutely market distorting rhetoric, he blames today trade settlements for issues that cause them to parse trading on their platform during the game stop mania and recommended instead trades get settled in real time, you will also hear from redit's ceo who was expected to face scrutiny today over if their platform engaged in market manipulation on wall street bets, their ceo will testify this, we have analyzed wall street bets to determine whether agents are other bad actors latest significant role, they have not. lawmakers will also hear from the game stop investor who made a whopping 7.8 million on game stop, roaring kitty is facing a class-action lawsuit in massachusetts alleging the pretended to be an amateur trader online but is a licensed professional in real life.

he still believes wall street is oblivious to what game stop has to offer and its value it will tell the committee he is today as. as he has ever been on the stock but it is not just lawmakers eyeing these companies, senator elizabeth warren, a big critic of wall street has also exchanged several letters with robin hood and asked multiple questions, expecting there will be some scrutiny and potential crackdown on the senate side. >> don't forget, it will be interesting to see her play in this, she has some banking in her background but doesn't particularly like capitalism all that much. look who is with me now to talk about this, sandra smith with trading options, this is largely about options trading and how much the retail investor should be in it or how

much they know about it, options started trading in chicago in the 1970s. i was wondering how much of the options trading business numbers of congress really know about, do you think they are at all versed about options trading, do they know enough to ask questions? >> when you look at the way this is about to be handle and we are 55 minutes from the hearing beginning, there is high interest to see how the committee will handle this, 54 members of the finance committee, maxine waters at the helm of it, you look at aoc on that committee, rashida tlaib, their knowledge of the market is obviously limited. that's not a bad thing but what is a bad thing is if you get that number of lawmakers who never owned an individual stock in their life. let alone a derivative instrument they are stepping in and going to try to regulate or judge the way the market

behaved in this moment that was extraordinary, that could be a problem and could lead to fears of overregulation, changes in markets that even jpmorgan looks at this and said the key question, did anyone or any company do anything wrong in all this, that question is still out there and is a fair question to ask, no solid evidence of that. >> the question is whether robin hood conspired on that one day, a friday, when game stop and others were going through the roof they stopped trading by orders and it was a short squeeze, all the shorts out there were squeezed by people buying all of these options the stock would go up. robin hood did. the question is whether they conspired with billionaire hedge funds to do so. do you think they will get an

answer? >> this is a cast of characters we are about to see. ken griffin, i like to highlight, loves mcdonald's, billionaire, he's a very sophisticated trader, a guy who loves to take on big risk, he can afford to, he has the technology to access, the ability to do so. they are going to be asking him what he had to do with stepping in and bailing out milton was short game stop. he will be there. the head of that hedge fund but eventually got bailed out, what they want to know, lawmakers of gone on record saying this, because of the data sharing that was happening with robin hood, the brokerage firm that all these guys were trading on, did they share information in a capacity that hurt the little guy? you will hear a lot of questions. i will tell you where my focus is, the roaring kitty, guy in his early 30s, he has been

doing this in his basement for two years, now he is getting sued and company he works for in massachusetts because it turns out while he's a champion of the little guy and the novice trader he's not one himself. is a registered security dealer himself that he's a pro. for the two years he was leading the redit discussions to join him, what did he get? was it mere dollars? then he talked all these mainstreet traders into getting in, with a pyramid scheme? people will want to know and if he was leading the charge, that is illegal behavior. dave: nobody has sympathy for the billionaires who make these trades, every day they lose a couple hundred thousand or gain a couple hundred million sometimes. the wall street journal had a piece the other day about a guy who mortgaged his house in order to try to get in on some

of this on game stop and lost it all. those people you feel sympathy for and frankly those people you are going to hear about from the congresspeople. do they have a point? should there be some restrictions for people who don't understand the instruments they are getting? >> do we want to encourage people to put their life savings behind day trades, that's not investing and that is a key component to the discussion the country is having. are you investing or are you a speculative day trader? when you are trading, that should be disposable income. you're not risking your house or your kids college education, that started to happen here, that's why we are seeing a rise in trading volume, not just evidence stimulus checks went toward this was a lot of folks went home during the pandemic, may have -- they are not spending the money are going to clubs or restaurants, they had extra money lying around and it got actively traded.

dave: capitalism is about taking a risk and buyer beware is the old saying. sometimes you have to lose everything in order to understand how the market works. >> is that what lawmakers encourage? dave: no but i they going to gum up the works for the market system by trying to protect everyone? and protect -- >> let me tell you a story people can relate to. i talk to a wealth manager in chicago when the story was breaking, he said he had husband and wife couple, a nurse and a doctor, $3,000 in life savings, they saw videos on redit, they got in and put savings of 300,$000, they saw that and the wealth manager ran the price of that stock when the stock went up. they still wouldn't.

we have to understand the risk. of the retail investor wants to play like the big sophisticated investor read the dotted line, understand the technology they have. dave: you have to pay a price. if you want to get into this, if you try to protect everybody the whole market suffers. >> i am for the little guy. we want people to prosper but there is a lot to know. dave: one thing we agree on his politicians haven't got a clue, for them to be asking questions is ridiculous. >> i can't wait to see roaring kitty, his head band at his shirt. dave: i would rather be governed by roaring kitty than most of the people in congress. great to see you. thank you. we will be watching on america reports from 1 to 3 eastern time with my friend john roberts as well. don't miss it. it is the show to watch for all the news.

let's check the markets, susan, what are the big movers? >> we've seen you with that roaring kitty bandanna before, we are looking forward to that but let's check the markets, apple in particular, the biggest company, it takes a broader market with it. it is the single most influential stock in 20 years on wall street. warren buffett, vanguard, selling off apple shares, reducing apple holdings by 6%, still $120 billion worth, the biggest holdings and vanguard is the single largest apple stockholder out there, they recently did sell off and shed 25 million shares or so. in australia, facebook is pulling up the nuclear option against the new australian role that forces tech company like facebook and google, google says they will pay, the move are losing less money last

quarter tied at in the springtime for one of the biggest marijuana companies on the planet and cannabis, the new favorite of the redit best page, the class communication committee providing the call on uber, 220,000 active accounts around the world at the end of last year and wall street says $500 plus stock so that could be 25% from current levels and worlds biggest hotel operator marriott with its first loss as a global financial crisis in 2009. covid is said to be 9 times worse the 9/11. marriott will announce its new ceo, the passing of it ceo arnie sorenson this week. dave: we are remembering the life of conservative talkshow host rush limbaugh. we will bring you donald trump's tribute to the legendary commentator coming up.

nasa is about to make history on the red planet. we will tell you what to expect, when rover land on mars later today but first california governor gavin newsom is closer than ever to being recalled. john cox thinks he is the right guy to take over. he joins me next. ♪♪

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dave: the covid vaccine rollout is facing hurdles from winter storm delay's to less doses in stock. edward lawrence has the story.

>> reporter: now it has hit the east coast, in new york city, did not get their shipment or didn't deliver their shipment, supposed to deliver today for sunday. if you know anyone trying to get the vaccine it is not an easy appointment to get. we had two vaccines approved, 326, johnson & johnson will likely get emergency authorization use for their shot. this will not be a one does shot but the white house covid's are says the company is testing a booster for the johnson & johnson shot adding johnson & johnson also they have a few million doses to deliver in the days after approval. the company tells foxbusiness they intend to honor the contract with the us government and had 1 million doses by the end of june, 37 million doses delivered by the end of march. and not a big increase to the 5 million doses a week but pfizer and modernity are pointing out. the weather affecting all of it this week.

>> plenty of surprises, we are trying to plan for every event and to be conservative and cautious. >> even with the delay, the white house pushing a timeline, joe biden said any american who wants the vaccine will be able to get one by the end of july. dave: the recall effort in california, republican john cox is investing another $1 million of his own money in his campaign for the governorship. another million in your own campaign for governor it hasn't even been recalled yet. it is a risky venture, isn't it? >> not really and thanks for having me on. the politicians aren't going to solve our problems. we need someone who has delivered results and confidence and i'm tired of sitting here in california watching gavin newsom continued

to bring down the state. i've got nephews who live in orlando and disney world has been open since july, disneyland is still closed. they've been going to school full-time all the way along. california kids are still out of school. politicians just job on, it is awful, we are doing untold damage. they are messing up the vaccine distribution and we've still got energy, water, housing, homelessness. the voters are speaking up with this recall. that is why i put more in. i see the need for real leadership. the politicians are clueless. i had a business, built in over 40 years with competence and integrity and these politicians just talk and talk and talk. they don't offer solutions. that is what voters are

interested in. this is an opportunity to get california turned around. dave: there was a successful recall. some of us rubber it was 2003. gray davis was recalled, arnold schwarzenegger filled his spot but times have changed in 20 years and california is a lot more blue, a lot more democrat than it was, twice as many democrats as republicans. doesn't that boat against your effort? >> know because california is messed up. i hope voters look at the situation, schwarzenegger was a celebrity. haven't we had enough of that? again it is about competence and integrity and solving problems and offering solutions, people should go to my website, johncox.com and see honest to god solutions to solve these problems. i hope the voters have gotten the message. in california they have. that's why they turn down a

bunch of particular initiatives in november, they are getting the message that we can have a better cost of living, we can have energy when we need it, we can have water, we can do something about homelessness but we have to stop listening to career politicians. dave: we are just about out of time but i got to ask you assuming of the recall is successful how are republicans going to pick the candidate? you are not issue in right away, how are you going to pick a candidate among republicans? >> 8 million voters in the state who are not democrat or republican, those independents dictate what goes on. i'm going to put forth ideas and solutions and i think republicans know who i am, but i am a successful businessman who has confidence and integrity. there is a story about newsom and his no-bid contract that should be the subject of an

independent audit and a republican career politician running against me who is corrupt. dave: we have literally run out of time but i have to ask is there going to be a primary? what is the process by which republicans pick? >> it is a true jungle. a list of candidates. when voters look at that they will say i am going to get the guy who solves problems because this guy demonstrated success at doing that. dave: your putting your money where your mouth is. not many people do that these days. best of luck to you, thank you appreciate it. let's get a check of the markets. it is a down day. it is clearly a down day. the nasdaq down a full percentage point. the dow jones industrial down 200 but moments ago 250 so bit of an improvement on markets

but definitely a hard day on the corner of wall and broad. show me walmart, it is one of the major reasons the dow is down so much. show me kroger if you can, the world's largest supermarket chain closing more stores in seattle, down one.5%. tell me why they are closing. >> two more krogers are closing, mandating hazard pay for front-line workers of $4 an hour. the minimum wage in seattle will increase to $16.69 this year. this is a lot of money. food stores like kroger, the largest in the us, already operating on very thin profit margins because they made huge investments in staff in stores during the pandemic. not just seattle. if you stay on the west coast you have 3 other cities in california that have pushed hazard pay for workers and as a

result brokers also closing a few stores in california. every worker, mandating it would be counterproductive. dave: it is a 1-size-fits-all policy. remember when liberals into liberties praised new york's governor cuomo time and again? he handled it. >> thank you for this in these trying times. informing us telling us what to do. >> you have transcended politics. dave: there are some liberals who are changing their tune. dan heninger is next on that. ♪♪

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>> he was a brilliant guy, totally brilliant guy and he could do things people couldn't do, he could talk for 3 hours, no phone calls, no anything, everybody found it

spellbinding, it was an honor to know. dave: remembering rush limbaugh. come in, dan heninger, great to have you, so much to say about russia. he was an extra ordinary entrepreneur, he saved a.m. radio from the dustbin of history and he became a historical figure in terms of his ability to move politics in a certain direction. how will history remember rush limbaugh? >> they will remember him as a formative force in conservative politics and ideas. he was a great entertainer. he came in after ronald reagan put a end to the fairness doctrine. there was not that much opinion on television or radio back then, rush limbaugh liked policy, wasn't just about

culture wars, talk about taxes, the needs and benefits of taxes. he can talk about deregulation. not as a want but a that anybody can understand it. he made it clear what stakes are in conservative policies. i will remember rush limbaugh not as a great entertaining force but as a font of ideas, he loved to talk about that sort of thing. and the games that conservativism. and the contract for america. and then came in with new to as a speaker.

new said from taking congress from the contract itself, wouldn't have happened without rush. >> he was able to explain why these things mattered. the greatest challenges for politicians. why are you asking me to sign up for your ideas and rush was able to convince people these things were important. dave: you have a great op-ed out in title covid catches andrew cuomo, one of the greatest lines, progressives, out of the political path, looks like they have thrown their ropes around the cuomo monument. make your case. >> his problems at the moment stem from attorney general letitia james, report recently suggesting cuomo's administration undercounted

nursing home deaths. there is a school of thought that this means there will be accountability in new york. this is a 1-party state, very little accountability. i don't think that is what letitia james is up to. she is a member of the democratic left and they see an opportunity progressives -- progressives to push andrew cuomo out of the day. and a moderate by democratic new york standards. alexandria ocasio cortez expected to challenge chuck schumer with cuomo being up for reelection in two years the progressives are laying the groundwork for taking him down and make no mistake he deserves the criticism he's getting for these actions. dave: you are saying his taking down will mean you and i are paying more in taxes, more

socialist policies and social policies. >> that is the irony, we would be paying more they try to make us pay more if people don't hire u-hauls to take them out of the state but that's the argument andrew cuomo makes in pushing back against progressive challenge. it isn't that big. dave: he has a lot of problems. good to see you. in a few hours nascar will be making history on mars. tell us what you were doing. ashley: it is the most wrote -- advance robotic astrobiology lab ever flown to another world. up to 7 months, 293 million miles, nasa's mars rover perseverance on target for a touchdown on the red planet, it

goes to plan, engineers hope to receive the first surface images close to 4:00 pm eastern time. high definition for k, remarkable, set aside promising rock samples for a sample return mission but also launched the first interplanetary helicopter all the time, interesting targets. this is the stuff of star trek dreams. the 6 wheel perseverance is the largest rover to be sent to the red planet. hopefully that landing, the riskiest part of this goes without a hitch and some of the pictures coming back will be remarkable. dave: helicopter on mars. krispy kreme is getting in on this. tell me about their new donut. ashley: the advertising firm for krispy kreme won't a good opportunity excuse me, fly by.

the committee commemorating the historic landing of the perseverance, looks like the red planet -- was filled with chocolate cream dipped in caramel icing with a red swell and for good measure cookie crumbs on top. the rover is carrying the names of 11 million people who took part in nasa's said your name to mars program. if you get one of those you send one for free. dave: get back to earth, look at bit coin. it is up again, small amount by that coin standards. a top fund manager says it could hit 250,000 if one important thing happens. we will tell you what that is coming up and right now hundreds of thousands of people still without power in texas including farmers. we are back to texas for a live report from a ranch where they

are struggling to keep the animals safe and warm. don't go anywhere. a lot more varney after this. ♪♪ i will be there as fast as i can ♪♪ paying on ♪♪

got another update from school. how's that...is that better? ♪ well we have a safety net. we'll be ok right? ♪

dave: energy producers in taxes blaming each other for the failure of the power grid. grady trimble is talking to farmers in texas. we need some good news. is anybody stepping into help? >> they are on their own out here. not so much good news reporter to the van a lot of people getting the heavier than temperatures are expected to rise in the coming days so that should help. still a big challenge out here for the ranchers and the farmers. we talked last hour, that you

are having trouble getting tractors to start. that the problem because it is below freezing here. >> in this part of texas we are not designed for these temperatures. we don't have block heaters. it is an option but we don't get this cold this long. it has never been an issue. >> reporter: you can see how much snow is still on the ground. you don't -- you have wheatfield not far from here. this could all be destroyed. >> time will tell what that will look like. it is more susceptible, bigger, the young wheat is small in dormancy. we are not going to know for another week or 10 days when this melts and see what the damage might be.

dave: >> reporter: we don't know when the power will come back online. let me show you what is so interesting. john paul has power and his place but i see buildings less than half a mile that don't half hour and haven't had power for five days. dave: that makes me suspicious in turning the power back on. that might be wishful thinking. >> the electricity, reliability, and is not earning the are for reliability in that acronym. ercot. and austin native developing space x rockets. these rolling blackouts in this winter storm. the cyber truck factory at

austin itself. in texas, louisiana and mississippi. they are sleeping in their own cars in order to keep warm. dave: there is no insulation. >> to even charge the tesla battery, worth 10,000%. dave: shows the limitation of electric vehicles and electric power all over the place. dave: what does the real life wolf of wall street think about this short stock fallout? i will be asking him next. blanche

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dave: the game stop hearing is set to begin any meeting, jordan bill for --blfour you say robin hood's future toast. make your case. >> i don't think the regulators

will shut it down. the problem will be all the lawsuits in original class-action. everyone -- what they took pricing the stock and so forth. that's the issue more than anything. dave: do you think they did conspire with the big guys with the billionaire shorts to stop a short squeeze that was going on. that is the question about whether there is something beyond civil cases. >> i think originally i understood that there was risk on the balance sheet but the move they made to shut trading down, increasing the margins are making it tougher to leverage your money there, it

comes down to emails between robin hood and those large funds, the slightest inference to that would be a disastrous. dave: one thing we will see, a lot of politicians don't know what a put is, asking questions about the options market that will be written for them because of their staff members but how far could politicians go in the wrong direction based on their ignorance? >> the questions -- we had the hearings the internet, heads of big tech, some of the questions are bizarre that politicians ask me and show lack of understanding. i hope people who ask questions are better prepared, i don't think in this hearing, it will be about what they get when

they subpoena records and emails. no one will say anything here that will be anything but -- what they are going to say, the question is what was on paper. paper trails. dave: what they are going to do is grandstand, speaking up for the little guy, claim they are speaking up for the little guy who was screwed but how much protection is needed if any for the retail investor that comes into a sophisticated market with multimillion dollar computers and big staffs of folks who know how to trade options, what chance does a small retail operator have against that? >> your hitting on something more important, the deck is stacked against small investor, there need to be changes,

having these lightning fast - these trades at the order flow when using that, that to itself is through a bigger issue, definitely stacks against the little guys. >> when you look at politicians in the mix, i think of ronald reagan, this carries 9 words and needlessly was i'm from the government adhere to help. whenever you see something like that, i will help the little guy. eventually very often the little guy gets screwed. cleaning out the marketplace, to why we pay the price. >> it has to do with human nature and unsophisticated, they tend to get in at the end of these bubbles and what you

are seeing right now, you don't know what a bubble will burst but we are getting into that territory right now and your small investor, make sure you are not putting your chips on the table and take them off the table and remember you are playing in a casino that is rigged against you and be careful. dave: did you rely when you were doing your business, did you end up in jail for, did you rely on that ignorance of the smalltime investor to do your business and do you sense that there is some of that going on right now? >> it wasn't ignorance. it was more about greed. the investor population, we all want to believe in santa claus that you can make money for nothing. greed has a lot more to do with it. it is natural thing to want to make money and believe you are going to get in and get out

without working and make yourself a big chunk and that is the biggest issue on the marketplace, fear of missing out and that drives these bubbles especially at the end. dave: some people can afford when the bubble pops, other people can't and that is the tragedy we see. good to see you, thank you for explaining this was a quick check of the big board. that bubble, there is a slow his coming out of wall street is the balloon loses area has taken on in the last couple months. it is down 251 points. the policy of earth cam, not doing so well. it is going to get a lot worse over the next few hours.

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the billionaires? that is what they're going to be asking. that is the key question. you can see what is happening with those stocks now. most of them are down. neil cavuto is going to take it away with more on what's going to be happening with these hearings. he will lead us right up to it. neil, it is always yours. neil: you know it would actually make a great movie, wouldn't it, david? this warren guy, working at reddit a trader who might have undersold his real expertise. david: i will make a bet it will be a movie. it will be a movie. neil: no doubt, no doubt. at least a lot of people will attempt books on it. interactive brokers guys said we were close to collapse of our financial system. you have drama. goofy names. david: david and goliath. neil: you have got a bunch of politicians going to be judging them. like me judging whether you should eat a salad or not, david, which you don't have to