>> what we're seeing is people saying, oh, we had to vote for it or the government will shut down. if we vote for this stuff and keep spending money, every american household will shut down. >> it's not a train wreck, it's a herbal piece of legislation, and i'll be voting no. why would republican senators not want to make it be kevin mccarthy negotiating a funding bill instead of negotiating with nancy pelosisome. >> over the last 50 years or more, we've seen that that we get that santa claus rally after santa comes down the chimney. what comes after that is a little bit more shaky.

>> i think santa claus is coming. i think it's going to start today, and then i think it's going to continue into next week. beginning of 2023, i think, is once again going to be concerning and volatile for the market. ♪ lauren: merry christmas eve eve. it's 11 a.m. on east coast. it is friday, december 23rd, 2022. i'm lauren similar net i in for stuart varney -- lauren similar net i. dow's up 28, s&p's up 3. s&p is down this week, nasdaq down this week and down today by 3 #. if you're looking at december, awful month if for discretionary stocks and for technology stocks. big tech today, another split decision but mostly negative. alphabet, google shares up about 1.25% but apple shares down a sold percent. let's take a look at the 10-year

treasury, 3.72%, a rise of 3.9 basis points. now this, a bombshell new book claims president biden dropped f-bombs over his frustration with the border crisis. the author of that book, chris whipple, writes: meanwhile, eu8 legal immigrants kept arriving and biden was furious. aides had rarely seen him so angry. from all over the west wing, you could hear the president cursing, dropping f-bombs. he'd also awe a-- always apologize when women were present. brad blakeman joins me now to discuss. you know what, brad? i'm kind of encouraged that the president is so frustrated by the border, but i'm not encouraged that he hasn't done anything to fix it or at least nothing that i can see. >> look, he can crop all the f-bombs he wants, but here controlled to this date every lever of government, the executive branch and congress. he still has the house and the senate. yet he's powerless, all he can do is show frustration?

why doesn't he show some leadership? why doesn't he do something about it? you know, the chief justice of the supreme court threw him a lifeline and gave a stay to the extinction of title 42. but what do the democrats do? they're not taking that and using that as a time in order to fix immigration and the porous border, he's telling the chief justice, don't worry about it, let it expire. we have literally tens of thousands of illegals staged on our border just waiting for title 42 to expire so they can flood across our border. just last year in 2021 we had 1.7 million contacts with law enforcement of illegals coming across our border, and year we've had 2.7 million. when is president going to stop showing frustration and showing leadership? we need to fix. it is a crisis on our border, and these democrats are doing nothing about it. lauren brad, i just challenged

you with this, he's not showing frustration at least not publicly. in the book, absolutely. >> right. lauren: that's why i was encouraged. the numbers earlier, if you look at just the past 84 days, and i'm rounding here, there was main 600,000 -- maybe 600,000 my grants that crossed illegally. a third of them were expelled because of title 42. it's not the solution, but it's part of the solution. you would think they would at least fight for that because it's somewhat stemming the flow. then there's this, we have this crisis on our hands at the southern border, and the white house chief of staff, ron klain, said the president will make an announcement about 2024 after now, after this holiday break. he's going to spend time with his family, they're going to talk about it. if what do you think he's going to decide, brad, is the first question. and hen the second one is -- and then the second one is if he runs, can he win?

>> look, i think joe biden is going to get a doctor's note, quite frankly. he's incapable of performing as president. we don't have to worry about the russians or -- russians or chinese taking could be our country, we're doing a pretty good job -- of doing that. he's basically surrendered our southern border, he doesn't have policies. you just did a report mt. last hour about fentanyl. where do you think that's coming from? if across our southern border. so it's not only illegal drugs and illegal aliens, it is the fact that we don't have using all the tools in our toolbox to secure our border. everything the trump administration had done to secure the border is being undone. by the way, kamala harris is the border czar. when is the last time she's been at our border? i don't think she's ever been will. and i'm speaking to you from arizona, and i can tell you our borders in douglas, yuma and nogales, they're being overrun.

this has to stop. and if the federal government won't take action, i think the states have to just like governor ducey has done in arizona. lauren: there are things that can be done. i'm just going to allow out a few. you can designate the drug cartels as terrorist organizations. there's the three ame owes -- amigos summit january 9th and 10th. trudeau's going to want to talk about climate change. great, but what about humanity? >> right. lauren: what about saying, obrador, secure your border to stop the flood of people and drugs hard coming here. >> yeah. to show you just how screwed up the administration is, they're going to hire 80,000 irs agents to come after us? the legal taxpayers who are here funding all this nonsensesome why don't they find some funds to get more border patrol, get more security. what about sending our military down there to secure our border? we could send military in foreign lands to secure hair

borders, but wen't use those same -- we can't use them to to secure our border? our priorities are totally screwed up, and the problem gets worse every day. lauren: blake, thank you for the time. happy holidays. >> happy holidays. lauren: sam bankman fry id -- fried is headed to his parents' home after posting an historic $250 million bond. fox business correspondent lydia hu joins us. who exactly signed off on all of that money? because he only has $100,000. >> that's right. his parents offered their home as collateral, and that's exactly where we saw sam bankman-fried reportedly arriving this morning after being released just yesterday. here's a 3,000 square foot bay area home estimated to be worth around $4 million, located in an exclusive neighborhood on the edge of sanford university's campus, and it includes a gated

in-ground swimming pool. bernankeman -- if bankman fried violates the terms of his release, his parents would be responsible for paying that $250 million, and home could be seized. now, bankman-frieded a's court appearance followed muse that two former executives of bankman fry bankman-fried's businesses pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges and are cooperating. their cooperation is expected to complicate bankman-fry fried's defense. the lawyer for bernie madoff, he appeared on fox business yesterday. >> it's not likely he will go to trial. it's likely that he will cut a deal. it will help him at sentencing, if he admits responsibility. i'm not sure he's going to want to go to trial the or his lawyers may say you go to trial, you're facing more time if you're convicted. rather than pleading and getting

before a judge and admit your responsibility. >> reporter: i have to el you, lauren, that lawyer, mr. sorkin, he often represents fox news media and fox corporation in various matters. but bankman-fried's parents also appeared with him and while he maintains hay played no role in the business, the current ftx ceo told lawmakers that the father, joseph bankman, he sewed payment from ftx when he was helping with charitable endis. -- endeavors. more to come. lauren: you know another reason why this likely won't go to trial, because if he sings, if he talks -- >> reporter: right, who's he going to be singing about? lauren: everyone in d.c. wants to keep him shut. lydia, good to see you. you look beautiful in your festive red. >> reporter: merry christmas. lauren: lydia, you jinxed it. dow's down just a little bit. nasdaq down two-thirds of 1%,

and the s&p is down a # points. jon hand hoenig joins us now. we've been asking all of our market guests at this hour -- because december has not been a good month -- will the end of december give us that traditional santa claus rally? >> you know, lauren, merry christmas to all of you, all people who help put show on the air. i don't think we're going to see the so-called santa claus rally, but we will see the january effect. lauren: okay. >> look, it is a bear market, 60% of stocks still below their 50-day moving average, what we'll see is all that tax loss selling, that's going on the -- on now. pleasure you might see stocks jump basically around january in the and the first week of 2023 as all that new money comes into the market and picks up i a lot of the money that were tossed off because of tax loss sales. lauren: i'm pretty sure stuart has asked you question, i have not. bitcoin keeps hovering around

$16 -- 17,000. i don't know why, perhaps you do, and i also know you like a short bitcoin etf, if you could el us about that. >> yeah, look, you always want to consult your own financial adviser, but at cap list -- capitalist pig.com, we own biti. there's, of course, those risks, and as you with said, bitcoin's been kind of holding in there. so many of hose stocks associated with bitcoin, si, tesla even associated with bitcoin and all the blockchain-related stocks, they're all sitting at new 52-week lows, so i think bitcoin goes lower from here, and that's why we own biti. lauren: jonathan hoenig, thank you. >> merry christmas. lauren: let's start with carmarx up 4.# %, quarterly resulteds -- results set off alarm bills as

the clearest signal of how inflation is impacting auto sales. but the stock is surging today after a disastrous year. 3m, judge in florida said the company engaged in bad faith manipulation after they switched its liability argument in the military ear plug lawsuit. the judge calls it brazen abuse of the littuation process. 3m down 2%.. -- gave the stock a $335 price target a, it's 292 now. the 52-week high for this stock is, however, at 339. that partridge many a pear -- in a pear tree, inflation is hitting the 12 days of christmas pretty harold. we're going to tell you just how hard after the break. a bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to stop the new irs rule on paypal and venmo

transactions over $600. senator bill hagerty joins us next. plus, fox cameras were rolling as a group of migrants jumped into a river to to cross the border into texas. local officials say this is the kind of thing that they see every single day. you don't, but we show it to you here on fox. bill melugin sees it, and he has our border report next. ♪ ♪ thinkorswim® by td ameritrade is more than a trading platform. it's an entire trading experience. with innovation that lets you customize interfaces, charts and orders to your style of trading. personalized education to expand your perspective. and a dedicated trade desk of expert-level support. that will push you to be even better. and just might change how you trade—forever.

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♪ lauren: take a look at shocking statistic. there have been more than

575,000 migrant encounters at border since october 1st. okay? fox news national correspondent bill melugin is in eagle pass, texas. bill, it is just been, what, 80 or 90 days and that many crossings. how many of those migrants have actually been released into the country? >> reporter: several hundred how of hem, lauren. they're released via title 8 processing instead of title 42. just in a few months, several hundred thousand already released. temperatures plummeting here at border, we're in the mid 20 thes right now, and something that happened right where i'm standing as we were trying to interview is texas congressman tony gonzalez, a group of migrants rushed the river behind us. take a look at the video. wow. and that honoring you hear is mexican -- honking you hear is

mexican officials honking at them trying to get them not to go into the river. about a dozen or so migrants who started swimming across, some of them bringing little children. they send -- ended up crossing illegally, just walking around the barbed wire and shipping containers, they walked onto a local golf course and surrendered themselves to border patrol. congressman gonzalez represents this eagle pass area, he says this sort of thing happens every day, and it's just going to get more dangerous with these temperatures we have coming our way. take a listen. >> it's going to get very cold. we're talking temperatures we isn't seen in a decade, and here you have people -- we haven't seen in a decade and you have people wading through the water. we have to keep title 42 in place, and we need of to have a plan after. >> reporter: we'll take you out to the tucson, arizona, sector. this vehicle was smuggling 5

illegal immigrants. who was driving? two with u.s. teenagers ages 14 and 15. border patrol reporting that they're constantly starting to see more u.s. teens getting involved because of the offers of quick, easy cash on social media from these cartels primarily on apps like tiktok. hen we'll take you out to texas, lastly. take a look at this, the police department stopping a big rig trailer, just a simple traffic stop. but they find 20 illegal immigrants being smugglinged inside of that big rig tractor-trailer. border patrol took all those folks into custody and took them away for processing, but we see that a lot. these big rigs often have migrants smuggled inside of hem. and finally, cbp telling fox news more than 575,000 migrant encounters already, just to put that many perspective for viewers, that's equivalent roughly to the population size of the city of baltimore coming across our border in just three

months. back to you. lauren: bill melugin -- oh, and we don't have the november numbers either, right? >> reporter: no, we don't. 23 days into december, no november numbers yet. lauren: bill melugin, thank you. senator bill bill hagerty joins us now. i want to start with the spending bill that just passed in the senate without your support and without protections for title 42. is that why you voted against it? >> lauren, that's one of the reasons i voted against it. i've actually been to the floor of the united states senate three times now trying to fix and extend title 42. reason it was put in place and it's been implemented was because of the pandemic. a district judge ruled hat pandemic is over, i actually agree with that, but we have a much bigger health crisis, and that's fentanyl that's killing americans, the number one killer between the ages of 18 and 45.

that's drug overdose, mostly fentanyl. we almost had it fixed during the course of this omnibus spending package negotiation. chuck schumer shut could be all negotiations though. it would have actually passed because there's actually bipartisan support for addressing title 42. but schumer shut it down. it would have so offended his radical left that that want to see chaos at the border. they came up with a procedural trick, they designed it to fail. it did fail, it collapsed, the omnibus bill passed, again, without my support for that and for many other reasons, and now we have again chaos at our southern border. hay actually bumped up close to $2 billion the funding if for customs and border patrol so they can say they increased funding, but they expressly on age 753 they say that those funds cannot be used to protect the border, to secure the border or any sort of law enforcement. those funds are to be used to

accelerate processing of people into our country and to transport those people to states like tennessee. in fact, their coming -- they're coming to tennessee, they're going to start shipping people here. we'll see if they get upset and the media covers them way they did martha a's vineyard. rawrp lauren you said a lot there, and what you said about senator schumer, it's surprising that heir doing this by design in a way because earlier in the show we played sound bite of him where he said, look, title 42, whatever. the same people try to cross over and over, but he said we need a comprehensive plan. so why aren't they providing or helping provide a comprehensive plan if there's bipartisan agreement with on the fact that we need one? that apparently, president joe biden is so frustrated about border, dropping f-bombs because this thing got so bad under his watch according to new book that's coming out next month. >> well, i don't think joe biden is serious ability the border at

all. he's never even been there. i took a group of tennessee senators, mayors there. there's a humanitarian crisis occurring. people are freezing. there's going to be hypothermia there. i've seen young girls who have been through terrible circumstances. and, again, the fentanyl traffic that comes through. cartels control the entire northern border of mexico. they flood the zone, so to speak, they get the border patrol agents overwhelmed -- lauren: and then they go to another spot. >> exactly, exactly. lauren: why can't we close that, senator? >> we won't provide any funds to support. again, the funding that came in this bill, this omnibus package, the increase that came to the border patrol agents expressly prohibits them from using hose funds, slows to $2 billion, they cannot use hem for border protection or security. it's designed to create, again, this turnstile that's used to process more and more people. it's ap an invitation to come. with title 42 gone, we're going to have an overwhelming tsunami

of people coming across that border. we've had over 160 nationalities apprehended so far, that's a national security crisis of epic proportions. lauren: senator hag senator hagerty, thank you for what you're doing. quick check on the market, it's been topsy turkey today, up and down -- topsy-turvy today. now the dow is up 32 points and, you know, we're trying to close out the month of december on a positive, but it's going to be tough. it's been an ugh ugly month. the nag damage is down just about 9 -- nasdaqing is down just about a 9%. it is going to cost you a lot more to finish 12 days of christmas this yearyou bought all the gifts from the song, the 12 drummers drumming, it would cost you, $46,000, up 10.5% from last year. of that yeah, that's inflation. that sounds act right. if you go to my if store, that that --

>> the deafen very broncos got surprised with a new uniform this christmas. watch. >> it's a ugly sweater very jersey. >> that's not real. >> it's real. >> oh, look how festive. lauren: mixed reviews from the team. so will hay wear hem -- they wear hem or not on sunday? we're on it. there's no place like home for the holidays if you can get there. big winter storm is canceling and delaying thousands of flights from coast to coast. the airports are a mess, and the roads aren't much better. the holiday travel report coming up. ♪ oh, there's no place like home for the holidays. ♪ 'cuz no matter how far you roam -- ♪ ♪ ♪

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♪ ♪ [laughter] lauren: a beautiful beach shot and some jimmy buffet on this christmas eve eve. we do say merry christmas to you. it's a 3-hour show, we've got

more pictures. technical director brendan, these are his sons, jackson and dylan at christmas tree farm. dylan, it is his first christmas. i hope that was their christmas card this year. kate with her by january see john and her concern fiance john and her parents. kate, this is your hour, the 11:00. here is associate producer mike with his fall -- family and new by january see after hay got engaged. and here is sam mace a city and his family at the new york botanical gardens' holiday train show. great picture. let's check the markets. cooler inflation data, consumer spending, however, also slowing along with that inflation data. and you have a market that's not sure what to do, mixed decision. dow up barely, if -- 32 points. s&p up. 2.

the monster winter storm canceling thousands of flights and possibly canceling christmas plans too. madison madison alworth live if from newark, new jersey. madison, how are people faring with hair everyonerment right now? -- temperment right now? what are you hearing? >> reporter: what i'm hearing is that they are maybe switching airlines, doing anything he can to get to that final destination because today is the last day before christmas eve. yesterday and today were the two busiest days of the holiday travel through christmas so, obviously, a lot of problems yesterday, impacting problems today. we spoke to one traveler who had to leave yesterday that had just heaped on the holiday problems for him. take a listen. >> big storm in chicago yesterday delayed our flight by about 3 hours, and when we arrived here, we missed our connecting flight to lisbon. so got a hotel and now we're trying to figure it out. next step was to be here to talk to the portugal, and apparently

they're not here for another 12 hours, i think i'm going to go to american and see if i can get any better luck there. >> reporter: looking for better luck but unfortunately today not looking much better. we are already seeing thousands of cancellations. here's the latest look at the cancellations and delays that we've seen in our country's airports since wednesday. odd alone we've seen more than -- today the alone we've seen more than 3,800 consolations. -- cancellations. we're seeing some airline runways completely shut down. seattle a tacoma international airport has closed due to ice, all flights canceled out of seattle and portland until at least noon pacific time also because of ice. i want to show you scene from chicago, this this morning. chicago's one of the busiest airports during christmas and, of course, with all the weather we're seeing, it's dealing with major storm delays and issues. that's why we're seeing major airlines really across the board

issuing travel waivers that allow people traveling in and out of those airports ore book without paying the fare difference, really doing anything possible to help people get to where they need to go. 7.2 million americans expected to fly around the christmas travel season. obviously, many of them being impacted by this storm, so any if open flights or seats that's a hot to commodity going into christmas eve. lauren: madison, we love to, you know, hit airlines whenever we can. they always blame the weather, but in this case they can blame the weather. it is just awful. madison, merry christmas. you look beautiful in green. >> reporter: merry christmas to you, lauren. lauren: one foundation is spreading christmas cheer to troops holiday season with the gift of, my favorite, real christmas trees. although we went to artificial, unfortunately. it's easier. the president of the the christmas spirit foundation, rick dungy, joins us now. rick, good to see you. love the foundation. how many real christmas trees

are you actually delivering? >> good morning, thank you. yeah, so we just finished our 18th consecutive year of running the trees for troops program. this year we were able to provide 16,391 -- lauren: wow. >> -- fresh farm-grown christmas trees to 84 bases across the u.s. that that brings our 18-year total to 293,392 fresh free christmas trees to military members and their families. lauren: you've been doing this, rick, for 18 years? how did you get started almost two decades ago? >> so in 2005 foundation was formed, and we knew that there were tree farmers who lived near a military base and had already been providing trees from hair farms. so idea wasn't new, but we are contacted by our partner, ped exfreight, and said we -- fedex freight. hay they said is there any way

we can help? what if we got farms that weren't mere our base that also wanted to the donate, would you take them to other places? yeah, we could do that. the program was born, that first year we did 4500 trees to 5 different bases. it was successful and got a lot of attention, and now we just finished our 18th year approaching 300,000 total trees. lauren: congratulations. really an amazing story. who pays for the trees? >> so the trees are donated from multiple sources. a big chunk of them donated by the farmers themselves. so family farms that grow christmas trees donate them. a lot of them their customers also donate trees. and in many places they get the whole community involves, so american legion posts and boy scout troops, hay get together and donate a lot of the trees too. we have to coordinate -- we get trees from over 400 farms across 24 states. for example exfreight --

fedex goes to 54 locations -- lauren: you do a good job, rick. you really do. thank you very much. >> thank you so much, merry christmas to you. lauren: back at ya. well, the denver broncos got surprised with a new uniform this christmas. want to see it? >> it's a ugly sweater jersey. >> i'm not wearing them, man. >> that's knoll real -- not real. >> it's real. >> oh, look how festive. [inaudible conversations] >> can i put, like, dasher or dancer on my name plate? >> look at me right now and tell me -- where's the camerases? right there. lauren: it was a christmas prank, and they thought they had to wear them for sunday's game, but they don't. the jerseys were designed to look to like an ugly christmas sweater replacing the bronco logo with a reindeer while the horns on the rams' helmets were decorated with lights.

day, 4:30. i actually liked the uniform. do you remember classic scene from christmas vacation? >> what are you looking atsome. >> the silent majesty of a wasn't -- winter's morn and that [bleep] in his bathrobe, emptying his chem kohl oi let into my sewer. >> [bleep] it's full. lauren: quite a memorable scene. police in were called after one neighbor thought she saw some lewd behavior going on next door, service just a cousin eddie-inspired mannequin. homeowners were superof fans -- superfans of the movie, and they promise to include even more movie exacters -- characters next year, so you've been warned a year out. [laughter] now this, sam bankman-fried is released on $250 million

bond, one of the largest oh -- in history. vivek ramaswamy says that this case is full of smoke screen. that's coming up. and a bombshell admission could complicatic doc's hopes for a u.s. security deal. hillary vaughn has the story and our report from washington next. ♪ you can't escape my eye. ♪ private eyes, they're watching you. ♪ they see your every move. ♪ private eyes, they're watching you. ♪ private eyes ♪ pleasure pleasure pleasure

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>> reporter: good morning, lauren. they were trying to get to the bottom of a leak, so they were trying to figure out if any of these journalists had contact with some of their employees. but comes as tiktok is trying to convince u.s. regulators to approve them and that they are not a national security threat to users and also trying to dodge an all-out ban here in the u.s. "forbes" reports some of their reporters were being secretly surveil adly tiktok's parent company, bytedance, who accessed their ip addresses and user data, trying to see if their paths crossed be any of bytedance's employees. a tiktok spokesperson telling fox the misconduct of certain individuals who are no longer employed at bytedance was an egregious misuse of their authority to obtain access to user data. this misbehavior is unacceptable, we will continue to handle our access protocols which have already been significantly improved and hardened since this incident if took place. this news comes as congress has moved to ban tiktok on

government devices while some in congress want a total ban in the u.s. because they do not hi the beijing-based app can be trusted not to access u.s. user data. senator mark warner telling "forbes" that the koj who has been reviewing tiktok's practices for over a year needs to step up or congress will step in, saying this: this new development reinforces serious concerns with the social media platform permitting executives in the people's republic of china to repeatedly access private data of users despite repeated claims that this data was protected. as a result of an internal investigation, four bytedance employees have been fired; two here in the u.s., two many china. lauren? lauren: well, there is that. hillary, thank you very much. merry christmas. vivek ramaswamy joins me now. vivek, you're not surprised by i spying at tiktok. i don't think anybody is. are you surprised that the four

people were fired, two in china, two in the just. >> i'm not because that's just part of the smoke screen, the sacrificial pawns, appearing that they actually cared about this issue when, in fact, they were perpetrating it. this is how the ccp works though, it's important for everyone to understand this. they use companies astro january horses -- as trojan horses to advance their political agendas. tiktok is one, bytedance, the parent company, is a chinese company. but they're even using u.s. companies to do the same hinge. airbnb a couple of years ago it was reported that as a condition for doing business in china, they have to hand over u.s. user data including even private messages sent through their platform. so this is a game the ccp plays. there is no distinction between economic policy and military policy. they are two sides of the same coin, and i'm glad that at least we americans are beginning to wake up to that reality now. lauren: we sure are.

let's talk about ftx, the epic collapse. $250 million bond that sbf had to pay for his release, you say that this is actually an optical illusion, another smoke screen, if you will. what do you mean by that exactly? >> i think it is an optical illusion, and here's whoo what i mean, there was no $250 million paid. the number may have as well been $1 trillion or $10 trillion. it was a bond. the only security interest they paid up was a private -- hay get to come across as the tough guy, one of the largest bonds posted in american history. they could have demanded cash bail, they didn't. and whether -- in the unlikely scenario that he flees, i don't care if service $250 million or $1 trillion, they're not actually getting it. and if it's just another smoke screen in an entire story of smoke screens, another mirage, the theme of ftx saga is that

the money wasn't there. that applies even for the $250 million bond which, by the way, "the new york times" should be ashamed. they tweeted yesterday that it was bail of $250 million which created this misimpression. it was not bail, it is a bond. that's a big difference for anyone financially sophisticated. lauren: apparently one relative and one, quote, outside person helped put up bond. care to guess who they are. >> i mean, i'm not one to speculate. i'm going to we we react to the facts as we know them. there was no $that 250 million actually put, it was just a nice headline. everyone gets something out of a saga like this one. as i said before, it's climbing a charles dickens novel -- the it's like a charles dickens novel. lauren: do you think he goes to trial here? or cuts a deal? >> i think it's likely he goes to trial. lauren: you do. >> against the backdrop, it could be a hundred plus years in

prison, the negotiating parameters aren't going to be favorable to him. i think he'll roll the dice, take his chances, and anything can happen many a trial. that might be the way he's looking at it, but i'm not in his shoes, so i can't say for sure. lauren: vivek, thank you very much for your input. >> good to see ya. lauren: let's take a look at the dow 30 stocks to get a sense of the markets who are responding to better than expected inflation data, worse than expected orders for durable goods and stronger than expected consumer sentiment. it's kind of all over the map is we've as is the display of the dow 30 right now. leading the pack you have oil giant chevron followed by travelers and american express. and at the bottom, 3m, apple and salesforce. a special christmas message, finally, from stuart varney. right after this. ♪ have yourself a merry little

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they're set for unprecedented growth. getchell gold. well, we fell in love through gaming. but now the internet lags and it throws the whole thing off. when did you first discover this lag? i signed us up for t-mobile home internet. ugh! but, we found other interests. i guess we have. [both] finch! let's go! oh yeah! it's not the same. what could you do to solve the problem? we could get xfinity? that's actually super adult of you to suggest. i can't wait to squad up. i love it when you talk nerdy to me. guy, guys, guys, we're still in session. and i don't know what the heck you're talking about.

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lauren: all right. you're looking at it -- [laughter] that's the varney control room. hi, guys. stand up, wave hi. chair dance, let's go. whoo hoo! merry christmas. [laughter] we're going to have more -- keep dancing, girls -- photos to show off. jason and his family, that's our director. this is his family in newport, rhode island. his sons, nathan and drew, and his beautiful wife beck if key. matt is our production manager, he's hanging on his sleigh with his good friend santa claus. hi, matt. ashley webster, there he is. that's ty eurozone ma on the left and his twin with, his clone, his mother june, his mum june, on the right. oh, and here's my kids. this is my christmas card this year. if you send me a christmas card, i will send you a christmas card because i actually don't keep a list, i just respond to all the people who sent me christmas cards because i'm lazy.

that is delia, 22 months, m.j. on the right, 4 and a half. and now it is time the for a "varney & company" tradition. stuart's annual reading of twist the night before christmas. roll the tape. ♪ stuart: two of my beautiful granddaughters will be with us this christmas, abigail and paige are watching right now. this is for you. twas the night before christmas when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a house. the stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes the that st. nicholas soon would be there. the children were nestled all snug in their beds while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads. and ma in her kerchief and i in my cap had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap. when out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, i sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

when what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a miniature sleigh and 8 tiny reindeer. and then in a twinkling i heard on the roof the prancing and a fewing of each little hoof. as i drew in my head and was turning around, down the chimney st. st. nicholas came with a bound. his clothes were all tarnished ashes and soot. his eyes, how hay twinkled, his dimples, how merry. his cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry. he had a broad face and a round berry -- belly -- [laughter] that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly. he spoke not a word, but went straight to his work and filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk. and laying his finger aside of his nose and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose. he sprang to his sleigh, gave his -- to his team gave a whistle. but i heard him explain as he drove out of sight, happy christmas to all, and to all a good night. [laughter] it still brings tears to my eyes

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lauren: that's it for us, merry christmas to everybody and to you, neil cavuto. neil: and to you, lauren. what a beautiful family. lauren: thank you. neil: let's hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable time and then get back to the recession. [laughter] all right. here we are, the noon hour a