s, fashion, you know, auto manufacturing, anything to do with design, pantone categorizes the colors that you use. i have this. check it out. they used to make, they don't sell them anymore. they used to sell these little credit card holders for six bucks. i keep all my credit cards in my little pantone. this is 2035, red, 2035. it was like the best gift i ever got and you can't buy them any more. maria: that's cool. mike, what do you think? >> i'm color blind, so -- maria: is that true? >> yes. maria: okay. dagen: that's sad. maria: on that note have a great day, everybody. dagen mcdowell, michael lee, "varney" & company begins right now. stu take it away. stuart: all right, good morning, maria, good morning, everyone. do we have a show for you. its got everything, elon musk, hunter biden, donald trump, sam bankman-fried.

the georgia election, and an armed attack on power sub stations in north carolina, how about that but look after two weeks of gains for stocks you want to know where things are shaping up and how they are shaping up this monday morning. some selling. the dow looking to a drop of maybe 250 points, s&p down about 30, nasdaq is down about 82 points. some red on the screen. oil prices going up. opec will not change its output schedule. it won't raise production. europe starts its russian oil price cap at $60 a barrel and right now oil is back up up to 82 bucks per barrel. interest rates still show that recession indicating inversion. the 10 year coming in at 353. the two-year, the yield much higher, 431 was the last time i checked right now it is 430. there's a huge difference there. here is a conundrum. bitcoin still trading around 17,000 bucks a coin. how come? we'll try to understand why bitcoin is holding up while the crypto industry's

infrastructure continues to implode. and here is the latest from sam bankman-fried. he says he miss accounted $8 billion. no idea what that means? he is on an apology tour. headline, in a new york post " fed lies, fbi warned of hunter biden's hack-and-leak" operation this is all about big tech blocking the story about hunter 's laptop right before the 2020 election. donald trump thinks it's a blatant fraud. some parts of the constitution should be suspended he says. big news at twitter. both apple and amazon will return as advertisers. elon musk heavily critical of apple held a meeting with ceo tim cook and bingo. apple is back as twitter's biggest advertiser. big news from moore county, north carolina. two power substations attacked. 40,000 have no power this morning. who fired the guns and why? we don't know.

china relaxes some aspects of its zero-covid policy. people in beijing may now use the subway without getting a negative covid test. gaming stocks going up on the hope that macau will see more visitors. yeah, a very big show indeed. monday, december 5, 2022. "varney" & company is about to begin. what a man, what a man, what a man, what a mighty good man ♪ stuart: what, what's that song? lauren: what a man. i requested he's back. stuart: what time is it? what day is it? i don't know but it's great to be back and ladies and gentlemen , i do want to take a brief shining moment to say thank you very much to the

entire team. they held down the fort while i was away for a couple of weeks. thanks to ashley, lauren, susan, for all their hard work. lauren: you're welcome. stuart: thank you very much indeed. more thanksgiving later on in the show. elon musk slamming the media, and continuing to lie to the public. roll tape. >> a lot of liberal news reporters came out and really slammed matt taibbi which really was really shocking. what was your response to that? >> well, i think both people should be looking and wondering why they were deceptive, why did they deceive the american public , and instead of trying to redirect blame to matt taibbi, they need to be accepting some responsibility themselves for not being truthful to the american public. stuart: all right, charlie hurt with us this morning. all right, charlie. is this an indictment on big tech and the liberal media? sure looks that way. >> oh, i think without a doubt,

and what's really shocking here is, you know, we've seen over the past five years, the degree to which the media and big tech have thrown out all rules of journalism in order to go after and makeup lies about donald trump but what we saw here and what was revealed over the weekend was just the degree to which they were also willing to do whatever they could to defend the best chance of removing donald trump from office and like i said, they threw all of the rules of journalism out the window and there is this curious lack of curiosity among the mainstream media now over how that happened stuart: former president trump says this story is so bad, the fraud is so bad, it wants terminating, warrants terminat ing, that's his word, terminating parts of the constitution. do you agree with that? >> no, i don't, and he does put his finger on an important point here, which is, you know, what do you do when you have a

government operation in the media and everybody, so willing to trample the constitution because they hate one person, what do you do in the aftermath of an election that was clearly tainted by all of this , but the solution does not, that solution does not work. the only mechanism we have in this country to correct the 2024 election at this point, and the sooner donald trump and everybody else focuses on the 2024 election, winning the 2024 election and throwing these people out of office, and fixing these problems, the sooner we'll get back to adhering to the constitution. stuart: all right charlie thanks very much for being with us on a monday morning. always appreciate it we'll see you again soon. >> great to see you back. stuart: great to step off the plane in america again. president biden is pushing his plan to make south carolina the first state for the primar ies in presidential elections.

lauren? does that shake up the political landscape at all? lauren: it sure does and it's good for kamala harris should she run at the top of the ticket she has stronger approval ratings with black voters around 67% so what happened was a key d nc panel approved the proposal to put south carolina first on the primary schedule, that's february 3. you can see nevada, new hampshire tied, they will go second at february 6. georgia, february 13 and then michigan february 27. where is iowa? iowa has historically first in the nation in the nominating contest. they don't even make the top. why? democrats want to reflect the more diverse electorate, got it. why is this important? it sets the tone. where do candidates spend their money and if the dnc does approve this in the new year, could they penalize candidates for campaigning in iowa first for going out of order? how do they police this? what happens? stuart: i wonder what the people of iowa think about this. lauren: they don't like it at all. stuart: first in the nation for years and years. lauren: and now they aren't even

in the top five. stuart: ouch that hurts let's see if they vote democrat. let's see. let's talk about apple, please. down this morning fractionally lower. they are shifting production out of china. lauren? that is a huge lift. lauren: yup, the "wall street journal" reports they told their suppliers to start moving out of china to india and vietnam. so for india they want to have about 45% of iphones come from there, very vietnam they get the air pods, watches, computers. apple is willing to abandon multi-billion dollar investments just to keep production consistent because of all of these issues at the foxconn plant in china. wedbush says they are going to be short 10-15 million iphone units so if you ordered the new iphone 14 pro for christmas you probably, you aren't getting it in time. stuart: i wonder what the timeframe is for this shift. how long will it take to get out lauren: a long time. years. stuart: down the road a bit. interesting story thanks very much, lauren. look whose here today. this monday morning we are joined by jeff sica.

jeff, i want to talk real estate with you this morning, because blackstone, they are restricting people, investors, from taking cash out of their flagship real estate fund. that raises a few alarm bells for me. is it a serious move? >> it's a very serious move, because keep in mind, stuart, blackstone in the world of real estate, they are not the only the 800-pound gorilla, they are the thousand pound gorilla. this is a $70 billion fund that blackstone operates, but one thing to keep in mind, most of the time, when there are concerns about redemptions in big funds it has to do with under performance, and in this case, this fund, the reit index, the public reit index is down 22%. this fund is up 9% since inception. it's up 15%. this is one of the best- performing funds you will find anywhere, so when they came out and said they were going to restrict liquidity, now

this is a non-public reit and it does have the ability to restrict liquidity, it concerned me primarily because what happens with these great performing funds is investors that are in a liquidity crunch use them as an atm. they take money out because it's a winner to cover their losers and that's what seems to be happening. stuart: so it's a liquidity crunch. if you can't get your money out of this giant fund, a lot of people need their money now, they've got a liquidity problem. they have a cash problem. they can't get the cash out of there. what do they say about blackstone? i have a small investment in blackstone. what's it say about them? >> i think blackstone is a great company. the biggest alternative asset manager in the world for a reason. i think steve schwartzman is this very very smart man. i don't think that blackstone, there's any issue with the underlying quality of the real estate they own.

as a matter of fact if you look at the real estate i think it's priced very attractively. this has more to do with the fact that the whole world is in this liquidity crunch. the whole world is over-leverag ed. the investors in asia are need ing liquidity. they invested in bitcoin and a lot of things that are tanking and they need liquidity so blackstone, who has to reprice this portfolio, now that interest rates are up, they know that people are going to see the reprice is not going to be that attractive and they know that people might run for the doors, so they're shutting the gate. very concerning. stuart: very concerning indeed, yeah, got it. jeff good stuff. thanks very much sir. check those futures, please. it's monday morning here is how the market is likely to open. i see some red ink, dow down maybe 250. coming up, elon musk says more smoking guns will be revealed about twitter. roll tape.

>> twitter was acting like the democratic national committee. it was absurd. >> i think there will be more smoking guns because the next question is what happened after the election? stuart: more smoking guns. miranda devine will tell us what she expects and she's on top of this story forever. house minority leader kevin mccarthy says the national defense bill will not move forward unless the military vaccine mandate ends. congressman mike waltz joins us. he's a military guy, right after this. ♪ ♪

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stuart: all right, futures this monday morning suggests some selling at the opening bell , dow down about 200, nasdaq modest drop there, about .6%. that's the nasdaq. elon musk dropped a real bombshell when he revealed twitter's role in censoring the hunter biden laptop story. hillary vaughn on capitol hill. musk says there are more smoking guns to come. how has washington responded that? reporter: stuart republicans are promising to investigate after elon musk released a tranche of internal company documents detailing what led to not only the hunter biden laptop story being censored but how other accounts and tweets were deleted and banned. >> how is this different than what's happening in china today, when you try to control every single person? now we're finding government used businesses to control what we can find out, what we can say , whether we could even forward or retweet.

where is the up rising of this? reporter: independent reporter matt taibbi who got the document s reported it was routine for high profile celebs and the biden campaign to request twitter to take action against certain accounts saying by 2020 requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine, one executive would write to another more to review from the biden team and the reply comes back " handled" and both parties had access to these tools and in 2020 the white house also put in requests but says the system wasn't balanced because it was based on context and democrats had more ways to complain than the gop. elon musk saying this process of censoring was concerning. >> you don't want to have governments and especially it may not even be an elected official, maybe someone whose, you know, potentially a mid- level executive in a ministry whose deciding this , and people don't even know exists and was never elected

just by being in a democratic country. reporter: in terms of the hunter biden laptop story intern internal company documents show that those at twitter were not sure their hacked material policy excuse was going to hold, taibbi tweeting this they just freelanced it is how one former employee characterized the decision, hacking was an excuse but within a few hours everyone realized that wasn't going to hold. no one had the guts reverse it, but republicans do have the guts in january in the house to investigate this thoroughly and they will, stuart. stuart: got it. hillary thanks very much indeed. now elon musk says twitter's cover-up is the definition of election interference. watch this. >> twitter is doing one team's bidding before an election, shutting down descenting voices that is a very definition of election interference. twitter was acting like an alm

of the democratic national committee. it was absurd. like there is this whole sort of move to create a disinformation ministry, which was insane. it's supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual. stuart: right. florida republican congressman mike waltz joins us now. congressman, election interference. that seems like a pretty strong expression to use here. do you agree with it? >> i don't. well, i certainly agree with it, yes, stu. i don't think that's too strong. i mean, look at the backflips this nation went through with the muller investigation over the russian interference. one it's hacking and two it's influencing people's opinions and i think elon said it perfectly, when you have a major major news and information and communication platform acting at the beck and call of one political party and shutting down other voices just before an

election, i don't see how you couldn't call that election interference. stuart: so what should we now do you're going to investigate it in the house come january or february. what do you do? >> yeah. well i think one, we need to get to the bottom still of the fbi's role in particular and what was the role of law enforcement, department of homeland security, and the political committees, so that, i think we still need information. elon has promised that there is more. i appreciate the transparency and the spotlight that he's putting on it, but this is in a broader issue, as you know, stu. this is section 230, the liability of these entities that we have to get after, and then the fact that they have a monopoly. i mean, just look at apple that threatened to take twitter off its platform. look at what they did to parler, when they can shutdown the server access, and these companies have way too much power over our national and political discourse. stuart: next one, congressman. separate issue here. house minority leader kevin mccarthy says the military

vaccine mandate must end or the national defense bill will not move forward. now, are you prepared to sacrifice the defense bill? >> yeah, look. on the one hand, stu, i certainly applaud kevin mccarthy for raising this to the top of the list of issues that he raised with the president during their meeting. apparently the president was open to it but his defense secretary has dug in and you're right. the stakes are huge. on the one hand, we are on the verge of losing 10-to-20,000 national guardsmen and women on top of the 25,000 that we already fell short in this recruiting crisis. that's a massive blow. the chinese couldn't even, you know, they couldn't have even planned it that well in terms of the self-inflicted wounds that we're having as a result of this vaccine. on the other hand i want folks to understand, if we don't pass a defense bill that's no new ships, no new hypersonic missile s, no pay raise for the

troops to match this inflation crisis. these are incredibly high stakes and i'm hearing some indicators that the administration could come to a middle ground. for example, how many boosters do you have to get to be considered fully vaccinated? how long does this go? the religious exemption process has been a total sham, a rubber stamped "no" without true consideration. there hasn't been a single one approved, for example, in the florida national guard, not one, so we have to resolve this. i applaud kevin mccarthy for making it a huge issue that it is but we've got to have that defense bill, stu, so we need this and come to a resolution. stuart: a resolution compromise is required. congressman thanks very much for being with us as usual, sir, always appreciate it. see you again soon. >> thank you. stuart: futures show red ink, some selling down 200 on the dow the opening bell, is next and we'll take you to wall street.

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stuart: again, some red ink on the left-hand side of your screen it's monday morning the market will open a little lower down 200 for the dow. keith fitz-gerald with us today. all right, keith. spell it out. how do we close out the year on the stock market? >> i think, stuart, that there's just enough energy we could go higher. we got a taste of that when the fed slows down, everybody hope built, aspirations you and i are always talking about. stuart: so a christmas rally, a year-end rally, a santa claus rally? >> yeah, we're right up on my original year-end targets but there's enough energy and angst built in. traders can't afford to miss if powell really does slow things down, so i think they are going to have to get on the gas the next four or five days. stuart: well do you think powell will slow things down with rate increases? >> tough call. i want to believe he's going to do the right thing, but whether he does or not is a complete wildcard. stuart: so you think stocks could go higher by the end of the year. we could have a christmas -- it's like pulling teeth here but

you aren't absolutely certain about this but you have a good indication of a christmas rally. can i leave it at that? >> well, i'll put it one stronger. i've been doing this a long time my guts are good instinct. i think we could have a strong rally coming into the year-end. stuart: why do you still like lockheed martin? you've been pushing that stock for a long time and its done very well. you think it's going higher, still? >> i think its got a little more on the upside and here is why. allies have got to replenish all of the lockheed martin made material that's been sent to ukraine. the high mobility air rocket system is a $400 million contract, just one example, so i think that stock has a little upside. the biden administration isn't helping much, the world is a dangerous place. stuart: jpmorgan is another one on your list. you like them. where is it going? >> i do. remember what happened back in the global financial crisis? that was the only bank that didn't require a government bail out. i think if there's a recession on the horizon, this bank is going to continue to rise to the top because jamie jamie dimon is

still at the helm. stuart: i've not been following jpmorgan. how are they doing? >> not particularly. it's up but it's just kind of chugging along, building a base. i'm more interested in the dividend and stability if i get a recession than i am in instant gain. stuart: susan is back with us sitting to my left. she's laughing at me when i say what's with jpmorgan? the truth is i only follow one stock and that's called microsoft. >> we'll have more in just a bit on that. stuart: keith thanks very much for being here. see you again real soon. when they start clapping and cheering like that you know we're close to starting this market. >> [opening bell ringing] stuart: for the two weeks i was away the market generally went up and the monday morning i come back it looks like we open on the downside. we're off, we're running, we're starting trading it is december 5 and the dow started down 200 points. i'm looking at the dow 30. i see one winner, that's chevron oil company, oil is up a couple

of bucks today that's why, so intel is on the upside but the rest of them not doing much so far. all right, s&p 500 where is that it is down .7%. the nasdaq where is that? it is down .6%. big tech that's what i'm interested in. apple is up but only just alphabet, microsoft, meta, amazon all the way down. now, some of the companies which initially pulled their ads from twitter with coming back. susan what made apple and amazon change their minds? >> i don't think they changed their minds. i don't think they ever made up their minds to stop advertising on twitter according to the sources i spoke to talking about multi-billion dollar venture capital funds so i heard musk i listened into that three hour twitter space q & a saturday night and he thanked apple for continuing to advertise on twitter. last week he had a personal tour across apple campus as you saw --

stuart: did that change minds? >> again i don't think minds were ever made up, so you also had a tweet from musk saying that just a note to thank advertisers for returning to twitter. now amazon spends around $100 million on twitter each and every year. apple is a number one twitter ad spender in the first quarter last year according to the washington post or earlier this year according to the washington post talking about $50 million in three months. now twitter has been trying to lure back advertisers, some pretty strong incentive packages including a 100% match on their spending so you spend a million dollars they give you free advertising for a million dollars, and that's because you've had major companies say i count at least almost close to 100 pausing their ads on twitter and not just their car competitors like general motors or ford but think about large advertising agencies who have been telling their companies and clients, maybe you should rethink putting some of your ads on twitter. stuart: does sound like positive news for elon musk and twitter. >> yes. stuart: the sea of negative news >> well that was a long three

hour twitter space saturday night but he made good points in that they are cleaning up the bot situation and there's less hateful content. stuart: i've got to talk to you about bitcoin. can we put it up on the screen please? it's still 17, 200. >> that's positive. while you were gown it was down sub-16,000. stuart: explain it to me. all of the turmoil in crypto, how come bitcoin is led whoing up like this? >> there aren't many sellers right now. as i mentioned if you check in on the movement of bitcoin, 60- 70% have not moved during the sell-off which has been really surprising and really predictions are everywhere so this morning, charter bank calling $5,000 for bitcoin next year and then you have the bulls who are probably incentivized like tim draper predicting bitcoin would hit $250,000 next year but remember draper has a lot of bitcoin so i wouldn't call this a neutral view all we say on bitcoin prices but then i saw some technical analysis that says that because bitcoin is at

17,000 you could hit 20,000 again with volumes, the volume of trade actually up the past week in bitcoin, now there are doubts about the actual exchanges, especially with the ftx collapse and the debacle there so you had coinbase down 82% this year, silver gate capital which is a crypto lender over in san diego downgraded this morning by morgan stanley calling it a sell, high level of uncertainty they say after ftx. stuart: and somebody says that g emini owes investors the $900 million. >> so it's owned by dcg group, which owns grey scale which is the bitcoin trust but also there's talk about whose going to step into buy it. maybe dcg can actually raise the money. i don't know if you know who ber ry silbert is but he's a pioneer in crypto. stuart: let's move on. china stocks in particular, gaming stocks rallying because there's reopening hopes in china >> i would say china internet stocks have really rallied and

you can take public transport in china without a covid test. in shanghai you can go back into public venues and parks so there is this reopening hope and theme morgan stanley upgraded their view on china for the first time in two years and now predicting 14% upside for china stocks by the end of next year. meantime while you were gone, hong kong stocks had their best november in 19 years. so you're up 35% the past few weeks but okay, so but keep that in context because you're up 35% you're still down 50% from the peaks. casino stocks are rallying along with the internet shares and mgm was called a buy this morning. stuart: if you relax a bit on the covid rules maybe more people will be allowed to go to macau. >> or want to go back to china stuart: tesla down slightly this morning. >> i'd call that dramatic. stuart: 2.7%. >> yeah, so actually, just a few minutes ago tesla came out to deny that report that they are cutting december output in

shanghai because of waning demand so boom berg reporting that tesla plans on lowering production from shanghai by around 20% from full capacity which is the rate the factory has been producing at in october and november which i think is positive. remember we talked about how musk has said that they have demand for every tesla vehicle that rolls off the production line. maybe not true anymore, because they have been trying to get people to buy tesla by cutting prices, offering insurance subsidies, shorter delivery times but not enough to pick-up that 1 million cars they produced now in shanghai. also would say tough competition while you were away, the xpong and has been ripping and they call bottom and falling deliveries. now tesla i would say still has a very strong position in china. they delivered a record 100,000 cars in november and that's more than all of the competitors combined there domestic competitors. stuart: do we have anything on foxconn? >> yeah, because you have to extrapolate and what that means for apple as well, so foxconn, they said sales dropped 11% in

november, so foxconn operates the china factory that puts together the majority of apple devices in the country. so to extrapolate 11% is not that bad in sales when you've had a production shut for multiple weeks during that time, right? so i think that's why apple is probably bouncing off those lower levels that we saw last week with the implied shutdown that we're seeing in china. stuart: fascinating. what a great story. i want to talk activision blizzard and microsoft. last time we heard, the ftc was putting up roadblocks to the deal. >> well the latest look at activision blizzard. so it looks like microsoft is closing in on the $69 billion acquisition. activision is up because the new york post is reporting there is a rift at the federal trade commission at the ftc, which would, potentially pave the way for microsoft's takeover being approved. the reason is that the ftc, it looks like the majority, well i think it's split right now. it's equal on both sides, to block on accept the deal and so if there's one more vote and

it's going towards microsoft and activision that's positive. stuart: it's positive indeed. >> yes. stuart: good stuff, susan thanks very much indeed. coming up, sending a clear warning to democrats ahead of the 2024 election. roll tape. >> the democratic party takes a vote for granted and that's something i think a lot of people are realizing there are black conservatives out there, sorry. you know what i mean? all black people aren't a part of the democratic party. stuart: we'll definitely get into that one for you. only one democrat lawmaker expressed concern over twitter' censorship of hunter biden laptop story. i think that should concern everybody, and we're going to detail it, all of it. the royal family, as in britain, gearing up for the release of harry and meghan's documentary on netflix. the prince of whales, whose that his report, william, i just temporarily forgot. prince william reportedly ready

to pushback any wild claims. nigel farage is here. i'll ask you what wild claims are we talking about? we'll get into it, promise you. ♪

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stuart: all right we're 12 minutes into the session and we're still down but not as much as we were 12 minutes ago. the dow is down 180, nasdaq down 50. russia announced it will not be selling oil that is subject to a western price cap, so my question, lauren, is, shohei ohtani peck going to increase its production to makeup for this? lauren: not a chance. why would one think that? in a quick 20-minute virtual meeting yesterday, opec + locked in the current production schedule that they said a couple months ago. members say they want more time

to assess the impact of the price cap that goes into effect today on the russian oil. the eu ban on russian seaborn oil that also goes into effect today and the china lockdown of which certain restrictions are being lifted today, so a lot is going on, and my favorite part of the story is that guess whose meeting this week? president xi of china is meeting with the saudi arabia crown prince this week, i think thursday, so you have the world 's largest producer, and the world's largest importer meeting. so curious. stuart: i wonder if they will talk about renaldo the football star going to a soccer club for $200 million a year. i brought that up because i thought it was interesting. stephen moore is with us this morning, he's an economist who knows this stuff. why shohei ohtani peck opec back in charge of the price of oil, stephen? >> i think everyone knows the answer to that one, stuart. we didn't even talk about opec when donald trump was present because the united states had

become the number one producer of oil & gas in the world and biden came in and turned those spigots off as part of his war on american energy, and now, we're subservient to saudi arabia, to russia, and other countries including venezuela. it's one of the dumbest policy decisions i've seen a president make in the 35 years i've been doing this , because not only is it bad geopolitically in terms of the safety of the world but also it's doing substantial damage to the american economy. stuart: it is indeed. look stephen, i've been away for a couple of weeks. i come back, and i see prices at the grocery store going up still , inflation is still right there, but elsewhere, inflation seems to be moderating. you're the expert on this. is inflation moderating at all? >> it is, yeah, it is. there's no doubt about it so we're probably, you know, we got up to 9% inflation a few months ago. i think we're headed to 5% to 6% inflation. we're not there yet.

by the way 5% to 6% inflation is hardly anything to cheer about, stuart. the goal is to get to 0% to 2% so we're way, way above the 1.5% inflation when trump left office , but there is progress in reducing that inflation rate from the highs of, you know, 8.5 meanwhile the interest rates are going up though, stuart and look at what's happened with mortgage rates, for example. i am worried about this housing market right now. i'm just worried these high mortgage rates make it more difficult for people to buy and sell their homes, and that's, you know, one of the most important sectors of the u.s. economy and then, stuart, while you were gone, the fannie mae and freddie mac, the federal mortgage insurers are now insuring homes of $1 million or more. that's supposed to be for first time low income home buyers. stuart: so what do you make -- they are trying to push people into homes. >> exactly. stuart: just make it available more. >> stuart does that sound familiar at all? remember what happened in 2005

and 2006 and 2008? it's almost like washington has economic amnesia. they don't remember what happened 12-13 years ago when we had the housing bubble burst and it caused chaos all over the economy. now look i'm not saying that's happened but we got to keep our eye on it and one of the matches that lit that fire was federal government policy that kept pushing people into homes they couldn't afford. stuart: yup i remember it well. all right, stephen, thank you very much, sir. see you again real soon. >> thanks, stuart. stuart: house republicans are indeed planning to investigate a secret deal to have saudi arabia boost oil production. secret deal. what more do we know? lauren: because it smelled of politics this is led by james comer the house republicans when they take the majority in the new year they want to probe what was behind remember the new york times report was in october , and it said that the state department and the national security council pursued a deal with the saudis to increase production to bring

down gas prices right before the mid-term elections, because it's popular to not pay, you know, to fill up. the deal, obviously, failed. we did not get what we reportedly wanted and now saudi arabia is acting as a powerhouse of its own, cutting production with opec +, meeting as i said earlier and what stephen said. we're pumping no additional oil. stuart: no we're not. lauren: these are issues we didn't have a few years ago. stuart: go to venezuela to buy their dirty oil. lauren: yup and investigations that don't even need to exist in the first place if we would just let our california, west texas, new mexico, pump more. stuart: just pump more, please. here is one for you. california's green policies are going to cost drivers more at the pump. explain it? lauren: so governor gavin newsom convenes that special session today to possibly tax the refineries for their out sized profits. it's price gouging after all. stuart: oh, please. lauren: no details. he's trying to tax his way out of this. you have high gas prices in california, why?

they are isolated from markets with the refineries. they mandate cleaner blend of fuel oil, and also, mandates that will completely eliminate gas-powered autos by 2035. that's why, so you can tax them all you want. it's not going to fix the problem. stuart: if these green policies don't jump up and bite the democrats in the back side i'll be very surprised. lauren: you know what it is in california? they are just so used to it. i hate to say it. i wonder if it has much of an effect. stuart: if you pour it makes a big difference. lauren: then you get a rebate check. you know? stuart: moving on, moving on no matter what, my heads on fire. coming up disgraced crypto cover boy sam bankman-fried claims he has no idea what happened to billions of dollars in customer 's funds. roll that tape. >> i didn't ever try to commit fraud on anyone. i was shocked by what happened this month. >> people lost a lot of money. there's a question of what happened and why. stuart: sounds like an apology tour to me.

joe concha says it's time for s bf to stop taking questions from friendly media and start taking betweens from the fbi and the sec. concha is here later in the show the senate staying in democrat control but what happens in georgia tomorrow will be key to what gets through the chamber in the next couple years. we have the latest from the peach state, coming for you, next. ♪ ♪

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stuart: all right, tomorrow, election day in the georgia senate runoff between raphael warnock and herschel walker. connell mcshane is with us. connell, democrats already have the majority in the senate. why is this still a critical race? connell: well, you get to 51-49 stuart, then you have more democrats then republicans on committees so democrats will tell you that's important of course republicans want to prevent that. the other thing the democrats know that they have a tough senate map to defend two years from now so from their point of view, every seat matters. now, both of these candidates seem to be spending this last full day of campaigning before the in-person election tomorrow,

trying to turn out their base. we saw that just moments ago with herschel walker here in hall county where we are. this is a heavily republican area northern part of the state. president trump won here by more than 40 points in 2020 and walker just wrapped up basically a meet-and-greet at this restaurant. didn't stop to formally take any of our questions. i did quickly ask him how he was feeling and he turned around and said "i feel pretty" good. a little bit later on when we were all shouting out questions i asked him the key to victory tomorrow and he said get out to vote. vote, vote, vote, and everybody knows that's it for walker. he needs his supporters to turn out in-person in a big way. as for senator warnock, he's spending today in atlanta which is friendly territory for him, and he did stop for a quick chat with reporters at his first event. >> this race is about competence and character, and on both of those fronts, my opponent walls we -- woefully short. he has not spent his life

thinking about these issues and every time he opens his mouth it's obvious. connell: president biden has not been in georgia to campaign in person for warnock, former president trump has not been here to campaign in person for walker. instead walker has been getting the support from governor brian kemp who is a candidate received about 200,000 more votes than walker did a month ago in the election here, whereas warnock has been getting campaign support from the likes of former president barack obama but today, it's the two of them campaigning for themselves making their final arguments in the rain, by the way, stuart and there is rain in the forecast for election day tomorrow for what it's worth. back to you. stuart: there's about 1 million people who have voted already, i believe so the rain might not keep them away. thanks connell. let's get to this. still ahead, miranda devine with more on the hunter biden story, former education secretary bill bennett on merit versus diversity, plus, will cain, and nigel farage. the 10:00 hour is next.

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