it's not just a building out of the data centers. where we want to focus on those companies that take that power that's being generated by things like chatgpt, and open a.i. and all these other systems and learn how to use it in order to drive productivity and improve people's lives, so we're looking -- lauren: aca, you like pega systems and amba, and avpt, we're showing them on the screen. nancy prial, so good to see you. thank you for the advice for the new year, as you can see the dow is still down well over 400 points. >> [closing bell ringing] lauren: off the lows of the session closing down for the second day in a row. that'll do it for the "clayman countdown." here is kudlow. david: hello folks and welcome to a special edition of custody kudlow.president-elect trump and

president biden both weighing in on the legacy of former president jimmy carter who died this week at 100. of course president biden weighing in while on his 573rd vacation day of his first term presidency, all while president trump did so in the midst of the busiest schedule of a president-elect in modern times. we'll get into all of that in just a moment but first, fox news david spunt is live in washington d.c. with the very latest. david? reporter: well hey, david good to be with you. former president and president-elect donald trump and president joe biden will be with each other in washington d.c. at former president carter, the late president jimmy cartedder's funeral here on january 9 announced to be inside the washington cathedral. meanwhile, president biden in his last days in office wanted to surface donald trump in judicial confirmations in four years and he did it by just one

judge. 235 federal judges confirmed in four years under biden compared to 234 confirmed under trump. now, democrats, david, cut a deal with republicans several weeks ago that allowed them to move on more district court judges in return, republicans can fill the slots of four circuit court judges, which is one level higher on the legal ladder from the supreme court, down from the supreme court. republicans were quick to pushback on another legal move though by president biden, david, and his team. one far more controversial. two days before christmas, president biden commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 federal death row inmates. it keeps them in prison for life with no chance of parole but it also takes the death penalty off the table. many of them murderer, like brandon counsel, convicted of killing two women inside a bank in south carolina in 2017. the victims, here is donna major's husband, furious, about the commutation. watch this. >> she was shown no mercy at

all. this man walked into the bank, never said two words to her. shot her three times in total. went and shot her co-worker katie as well whose totally defense less and unaware of anything happening. it's just beyond me that i can't even believe that this is actually happening. reporter: well biden wants to stop the death penalty at the federal level, president trump wants to move forward with the punishment and speaking of trump a reporter asked president biden yesterday on his vacation in st. croix, the u.s. virgin islands following the death of former president jimmy carter. watch this exchange. >> [overlapping speakers] >> decency. decency. decency. reporter: and again, david both biden and trump expected to see each other and carter's

funeral in washington and less than two weeks after that the inauguration where both men see each other again. david: that didn't seem much like a smooth transitional moment. david, thank you very much for that. for more on the legacy of presidents both current and past, as a man whose known and worked with quite a few of them. former reagan administration official host of the hugh hewitt show. great to see you. thanks for being here. i'm going to talk about this snide remark of president biden in just a moment but first on donald trump's memories of jimmy carter. he worked with him as a businessman and he knew him fairly well. here is what he said on truth social. he said the challenges jimmy faced as president came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all americans. for that we all owe him a debt of gratitude and then a little later on he followed that with this. while i strongly disagreed with

carter philosophically and politically, i also realize that he truly loved and respected our country and all it stands for. you want to talk about these. that's a pretty decent memory of jimmy carter from a guy who disagreed with him quite a bit isn't it? >> it is very gracious, david and happy new year in advance. david: happy new year. >> very gracious by president trump. i'm not so sure that joe biden's stab at a comment in the virgin island decency, decency wasn't aimed at donald trump rather than the eulogy of jimmy carter. in fact it was indecent what he did with the 37 murders whose sentences he commuted. the president, president biden, is not capable of discharging the office right now. you have to resign more than a year ago as the "wall street journal" reported earlier and i think what we are seeing is a man fairly desperate to do something that is a signature

accomplishment. jimmy carter did die knowing he hadn't been the worst president of the post-war period. joe biden is that but the decency decency decency comment following the commutations a little bit tough. actually a lot tough to swallow that one, david. david: i'll say. but what trump said about carter coming in a pivotal moment i think is appropriate for what we're going through right now. carter came in in the shadow of watergate. people didn't trust the government. of course they didn't trust the president under nixon but they also had problems with what the fbi was or wasn't doing politically, which is what's happening now as well. we had the church committee to investigate it and the past several years we've had committees in congress under republican leadership looking into what exactly biden did, so there are a lot of similarities, and to carter's credit, he really did, he did, i think, as much as any president could, coming out of watergate to reinvigorate a little trust, leading into the reagan

administration. no? >> except, david, for his inability and the thing that defines jimmy carter, he was naive about the soviets. david: that's true. et cetera. >> i'm old enough to remember, yeah, but his last year was very good. after the soviets invaded afghanistan, he kind of woke up to the fact that they were bad guys and he saw what was happening to iran and began the defense build-up. inflation, interest rates killed him off. the pivot we need now is the pivot that reagan made away from carterrism and i think that trump will make a way from bidenism which is failure in understanding the complexities of the world and the fact that they are in fact evil people who mean us great harm. i also have to note for the record, david. in his retirement, he did very good things with habitat for humanity, and very bad things vis-a-vis israel calling it a apartide state, wanting to be palestinian land. i mean the guy never stopped

insulting israel in his retirement so it's a balancing always, a lot of good and bad with all of them. david: well before we give up with biden and move on to donald trump, i have to mention what happened last week, which was the issuance of these photographs by america-first legal. they are the ones that brought it to court. they won the court argument. these photographs were released from vice president biden's introduction of his son hunter, not only to president xi but also, to a lot of his future business associates, for all "the talk" that we heard that mostly was supported by the media from joe biden during this presidency that he had nothing to do, that he didn't know what his son was doing with regard to china. he was introducing his son to his former, to his future colleagues, and certainly, to president xi himself. >> in president biden's defense he probably doesn't remember doing that, david.

the robert herr, special counsel investigation which said he is an old man with a poor memory, is a kind way of saying he is not all there. he's impaired, both physically and mentally, and therefore, he's off the hook for a lot of this stuff. i do not want the president-elect to turn the justice department loose on the biden family. i hope we look forward like he did in the first term and didn't go after hillary clinton. i don't think he's going to. i think its been campaign rhetoric but the evidence is piling up for the historians to sift through this is a corrupt presidency as well as a failed one. david: there's one picture in particular. i don't know if we can get it where vice president biden is introducing president xi to his son hunter, and can you put up that photo because xi has this look. no that's not the one. it's of biden and xi, that's not the one. you'll get it. it's just four guys in the picture. anyway, xi is sizing-up -- >> i know the picture. david: hunter biden and clearly, realizing boy oh, boy, have i got the u.s. presidency

this time. >> yeah, it's like saying the word mark on the forehead. david: there's the one. excuse me. there's the picture on the left. go back. go ahead. >> yeah, that's xi-jinping, who donald trump knows well and knows his ruthless and completely vicious, and absolutely looking at the diminished joe biden and hunter biden and saying mark, mark. using all of his tools of the chinese communist party to put them in his debt. i don't into they were controlled by him but i do believe they were compromised in ways we'll only learn over decades and decades. david, it's a real tragedy the media went on a vacation for four years with joe biden. legacy media has a lot to answer for , for the covering up. i know you weren't involved and i know that a lot of people in the network called it out like i did on my radio show, but everything about joe biden has been obvious from day one, but

the legacy media has been protecting him. they are like blocking and tackling. david: absolutely. i don't know how they recover from this. so that leads us to president trump and of course he has a legacy from his first term. he got the tax cuts in. we had a booming economy. he got the abraham accords in which was a tremendous accomplishment of peace in the middle east. he closed the border essentially down to all but those migrants that deserve to be coming in, and did so legally but then came the pandemic and it kind of destroyed a lot. will he be able to redevelop his legacy as president in this second term? >> i'm very optimistic. we have to add to that. the greatest upset win in american politics, the greatest comeback in politics in 2024 surpassing richard nixon and talk about the trump boom, the economic growth that was everywhere until the chinese unleashed covid out of the lab

upon the whole world and 1.2 million americans died, but he did get operational warp speed up and running as you said. the right to try law. trump got a lot done but there's a lot more to be done with the navy, with the wall, with deregulating everything so i'm very optimistic about the next four years and his energy level is off the charts. david: it's unbelievable. >> i've not seen anyone with that kind of life force in him. it's not joe biden hobbling around in the jungles in brazil or being guided about by italy by the prime minister there. it's a completely confident, very experienced and this time wear of the fact that a lot of the permanent bureaucracy want to knife him in the back. it won't happen twice. david: no it won't. by the way we have victor davis hanson at the end of the show to talk about the second trump term. hugh hewitt, great to see you very happy new year to you and yours. appreciate you being here. >> and to you david be well. david: coming up despite the economic woes of the carter

era, president carter did have some serious economic accomplishments on deregulation. hugh was just eluding to that that the doge team themselves could implement and downsizing our obese government in the next four years. lessons for the doge brothers, we'll be talking about that with art laffer and scott hodge coming next. stick with kudlow. progressive makes it easy to see if you can save money with a commercial auto quote online so you can get back to your monster to-do list. super helpful. see if you can save money at progressivecommercial.com. thank you.

david: well president carter's often remembered for leaving office with high inflation, low growth, and high taxes, but he also made strides towards common sense, regarding deregulation that believe it or not the doge team may want to look at. joining us now is scott hodge, president of the tax foundation and art laffer, former reagan economist and co-author of the trump economic miracle. good to see you both, gentlemen. thank you so much. well there were two appointments that carter made. one was paul volcker, as the fed chair and of course, volcker working with reagan. reagan worked on the supply side, volcker worked on the demand side to squeeze inflation out of our economy in the late 70s and early 80s and he basically did it thank god we

had tax cuts to go along with it, so that was kind of breathing room, but he also hired a guy named alfred khan, and art laffer, a lot of people don't remember him. he was a wonderful guy and an economist from cornell if memory serves me, and he came down and headed the civil air o natural immunity ices board which was this horrible agency that we had that essentially was a price control agency to control prices of airline tickets. he wanted, carter wanted to deregulate the airlines and he did it and he actually dismantled the civil board. it took another director to actually close it down, but isn't this something that the doge brothers should look at, art, as an example of how to close down a useless agency? >> they surely should. i mean, it's exactly what happened there with the recently appointed paul volcker. paul volcker was a solid solid

solid democrat on tax policy. he just was really good on monetary policy and that was wonderful and then when he got alfred khan, you remember the big banana? david: yes, i do remember that. >> and if you looked at the results of the deregulation of the airlines, fee, fares dropped dramatically. safety increased sharply and he also did it with trucking deregulation and their biggest allie in the senate if you'll remember was teddy kennedy so it was a wonderful period but the greatest thing that ever happened to jimmy carter sarkar he educated ronald reagan on what not to do. if reagan had been elected in 1976 instead of jimmy carter reagan would not have been the same president he was. it took jimmy carter to create ronald reagan and that really is the true problem. david: scott that brings us up-to-date. maybe in that sense it be a redux with what's happening with

trump's second term. the period of the past four years has been so bad with regard to economic policy. also with regard to foreign policy but we'll get into that in another segment but that perhaps that might be helpful because the public knows what doesn't work now. they heard all of the rhetoric that tax cuts lose money, lose $2 trillion et cetera. in fact we have an old blast from the past the labor secretary was writing on a post that said trump's first round of tax cuts for the rich added $2 trillion to the debt, extending them would add another $5 trillion to the debt. that's hog wash. we gained an extra 48% in revenue since 2017. we gained $1.5 trillion. it didn't cost. it gained money. >> well, you know, like jimmy carter and joe biden came into office promising to tax the rich, to make the tax code more progressive, and i think americans have seen the results

of that kind of philosophy, and they are hungry for economic growth again, and that's why it's really important that congress start right now to begin preparing to extend the trump tax cuts which as you know all is expire at the end of next year and when tax foundation economists modeled extending the tax cuts we find it would boost economic growth by over 1% and create over 900,000 new jobs, so it is a very pro-growth tax policy and congress needs to get going on it right away so that they don't lose momentum that they got coming out of the election. david: well you did what the cbo and other idiots inside the beltway don't do. you used dye nominated ic scoring, they use an old fashion green eye shade scoring that says well no it's going to cost 2 trillion and now we're hearing about $5 trillion despite the fact it didn't happen in the 1920s, it didn't happen with the jfk tax cuts, it didn't happen with the reagan tax cuts and it didn't happen with

the trump tax cuts. how many times do you have to relearn the lesson? and but you know who did, art? who knew the lesson very well? the large part thanks to you, but was ronald reagan. i've got a beautiful old clip from his last press conference in 1988 where he was going against a reporter saying the same kind of crap that you hear these days that the tax cuts, your tax cuts, mr. president, cost trillions of dollars. here is what ronald reagan said in 1988. roll tape. >> now, with regard to the tax cuts, yes, the rates were cut, but since 1981, our revenue from those taxes has increased by $375 billion, and our projection and we've been very accurate on our projections, our projection for 1990 and the budget we're working on now calls for another $80 billion increase in our revenues, with the rates as they presently are. if you look back beyond us, to

coolidge, and his tax cuts, if you look to the kennedy tax cut in his administration which was very similar to the one that we later put in, in every case, it did not reduce the government revenues, it raised them. david: art laffer it sounds like you talking. he absolutely got it. do you think donald trump gets it after what he's seen during his first term? >> oh, you know, watching that clip almost made me cry to be honest with you, david. i miss the man so much. donald trump gets it. not only gets it. he probably gets it as well if not better than reagan. donald trump did not make the mistake in his first term of phasing in the tax cuts. he did a lot of other things such as transparency and medical pricing and all that stuff. it was just deregulation, so you know, when you look at donald trump, i honestly believe, and this is really true on economics and economics alone, that he was the single-best first term president in u.s. history. ronald reagan was great and in the second term, reagan the 86

tax act was spectacular but in the first term i think donald trump was the best-ever in u.s. history. david: well, we only got, actually we're already over time, scott, but i've gotta focus on what's going to happen now. there are a lot of people that want to delay the tax extensions. maybe even to the point where it just edges up to that deadline on december 31, 2025. if it goes over, and we get a tax hike, it's going to be a killer for the mid-term elections in 2026 but worse than that, americans want money in their pocket now. they've had money stolen from them by inflation. shouldn't that be job number one of president trump to get those extensions? >> absolutely. what americans need in addition to having money in their own pocket is stability and predictability in the tax code, and having this fiscal cliff out of the end of 2025 makes planning whether you're a businessman or an individual very very difficult. that's why they need to move

quickly to make them permanent so that americans have stability and predictability and eventually economic growth. david: particularly those small businesses. they have to be able to prepare for the future otherwise they can't deal with the president. gentlemen gosh i love you both. good to see you. very much scott and art, have a wonderful new year, gentlemen and thanks for coming in appreciate it. >> thanks. david: coming up the house will hold the speaker vote on friday and president trump has thrown his support behind mike johnson. well will that be enough to ward off republicans refusing to commit to voting for speaker johnson? we'll talk about that with congressman nicole malliotakis when kudlow continues.

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david: so while president trump's endorsement get mike johnson across the finish line in friday's vote for house speaker. joining me is new york

congresswoman nicole malliotakis. great to see you. let me just read to you what he said, what trump said in truth social post. he said speaker mike johnson is a good, hard working religious man. he will do the right thing and we will continue to win. mike has my complete and total endorsement, maga! i'm just wondering if beyond that statement that he made on truth social, he's actually been calling your fellow republicans to get their support including, you know, there are a number of republican congress people that have come out saying they are going to have trouble voting for mike johnson. are those people getting calls from the next president? >> well i can't say if they are getting calls. i did speak with speaker mike johnson on friday and he gave me a call and we had a great conversation. i thought it was productive. i gave him some of my concerns and thoughts on how we can move forward in a more productive matter next year where there's better communication and more ability for rank-and-file members to get legislative wins.

he took my ideas and he will implement them and i thought it was a really great productive conversation. i hope he's doing that. i assume he's doing that with all of the other members, and i did also speak with president trump last week, who understands the dynamics that this is a very difficult job being speaker of the house, particularly when you have a majority of one, and it's going to be difficult for any speaker to get everyone on the same page all the time, but with a republican in the white house, with the republicans controlling the senate and the house we will be in a much better position to work collectively toward that shared goal of implementing the trump agenda unlike we were this last year because we had to negotiate with the democrats to get anything done. david: well, but it is so vital. i mean, it's so vital that every single republican stick together. again, republicans have a tendency that's like hording cats. they are more independent. it's the independents that defines a conservative where

it's the collective that defines democrats, and they come together no matter what. don't people, let me just call them out. representative sparts has come out on fox news this morning with a very dower look at mike johnson and is launching a complaint about but is it enough to shoot all republicans in the foot by voting against him? >> i think you're absolutely right. this is the time to be united because you have so much work to do to undo the mess that was created quite frankly by the biden administration. if we're going to ramp up domestic energy production, if we're going to secure or border and get our economy back on track and the migration crisis that we're seeing in cities like ours in new york, and extend those important tax cuts that you were just talking about, the economic impact and the impact it has on american families to ensure that there's certainty and that we can continue to allow for the millions of jobs that were created under the first

administration to continue lifting wages for middle class families as well and lowering that unemployment we need to stick together so i hope my colleagues do see the bigger picture, address the concerns that you have with the speaker, but don't try to leverage the speaker on friday when it comes time to vote because we have to recognize that we're not going to get everything we want but he is somebody whose willing to listen, somebody willing to work with everybody, across the political spectrum in the republican party and of course, we have to recognize in government it's a give and take. you're not going to get everything you want all the time, even if we're working just within the republican conference and i hope that's the takeaway that if i could leave anything with my colleagues it's that look we'll try and negotiate and get the best possible outcome to advance the trump agenda but we have to recognize we're not going to get everything we want each and every time and every bill or legislation. david: although, listen, there was from my perspective it was a

terrible bill. that 1,500-page bill was just horrible filled with all kinds of junk. >> it was. david: he listened, he understood. went back and got the job done. you've got to cut down version that got us through until march, so there is these negotiations work, plus there's some democrats, maybe not a lot but some democrats at least one named john fetterman in the senate who are willing to negotiate, right? >> well look. the reality is is that you need seven votes in the senate from democrats to get any legislation through. other than what we're able to do during reconciliation because that would require the 50 vote threshold so i think that again my colleagues need to understand that governing is a give and take and that we'll have to work with each other and yes, members from across the aisle to get things done. we should try to negotiate for the best possible terms that match the america-first agenda that president trump laid out

but there's got to be some understanding that we're not going to get every single thing we want and again, i really feel like that's the problem when hearing my colleagues in conference and get up and talk it's like all-or-nothing and that is just not the way it is in business, in government, in your household. it's never all-or-nothing in any relationship. it's a give and take. david: right. congresswoman great to see you, tough times ahead. not much rest for the weary i'm afraid even on this holiday week. thank you so much for being here. appreciate it. >> thanks so much appreciate it happy new year. david: happy new year to you. switching gears now of all his accomplishments as president, none makes president trump more proud, we're told, than the fact that the world was relatively peaceful during his first term. then came president biden. we had a botched deadly withdrawal from afghanistan. we had a new invasion of ukraine by russia, and of course, horrible terrorist attacks on israel, paid for and directed by the puppet masters in iran.

can trump get the world back on the peace train? joining me now is meney barawa. did i get it right? >> very close. david: he's so kind and diplomatic and batya ungar-sargon. great to see you both. thank you very much for being here. i couldn't get more difficult names if i asked for it but biden really has left trump with a horrible situation, whether you're talking about europe because of ukraine and russia, whether you're talking about the mid-east, wherever. does he have the team that he needs to do the really tough diplomatic work that it's going to take to make this world a more peaceful place? >> absolutely. i think that if you look at president trump's picks so far, the team he's putting in place, one of the first hires he had for national security was mike waltz, a florida congressman who has experience in the armed services, very much favors a strong defense, but also is not someone whose going to go too

aggressively towards starting foreign in gaugements in the way trump doesn't want to do so i think he's perfectly aligned with the values that helped the trump administration. david: but he's a military guy unlike all the inside the beltway guys have no experience in the military. >> exactly. he takes the responsibility of whether we send troops into combat, having done it himself and what president trump is saying about wanting to resolve some of these foreign conflicts come to the table, backed by american strength and actually get resolutions, as opposed to just hoping things don't get too out of control and wanting to keep conflicts out of the headlines which was the biden approach. david: it reminds me of law enforcement at home. you have to be proactive. if you're just reactive you'll be picking up dead bodies. that's not where we want to be. i have to switch to the mid east though where there are unfortunately too many dead bodies, and a lot of what israel has done since october 7 is on its own without help from the white house, in fact the white house, the biden

administration was telling them to do the opposite of what they knew had to be done. you now have a guy in the white house, come january 20, whose going to be aligned with israel. how much of a difference is that going to make in the middle east? >> do you know who i think explained this the best? tulsi gabbard who is president trump's nominee for director of national intelligence. tulsi gabbard said, when it comes to fighting terrorism, i am a hawk. when it comes to counter productive wars of regime change, i am a dove. that is donald trump's america-first policy in a nutshell. he's not an isolationist. he does think america has a role on the world stage but he does not believe it is our job to go out there pushing our interests and our values on other countries it is our job to protect our people and our allies and what you saw in the biden administration was the exact opposite. he was hawkish when it came to

all of these foreign entanglements that have nothing to do with america, and he was totally doveish when it came to fighting our enemies that israel is fighting for us in the middle east. david: and he was wrong. i mean the point is he was wrong. this brilliant operations that we see israel carry out like what happened with the hezbollah, a thousand hezbollah fighters were destroyed by this extraordinary method of using pagers to take them down, but you mentioned mike walz before and he's replacing a guy named jake sullivan whose the guy, i believe it was two weeks before october 7 said the middle east has never been more peaceful, never been more calm than it is right now. i mean, these people were so wrong. it's just the difference between being wrong and right, isn't it? >> exactly. jake sullivan, when he came in, in the biden administration, was one of the architects of restoring the u.s. engagement with the regime in iran, which

as we know now more than ever is behind hamas' attack on israel which provoked this conflict, is behind quite a lot of the instability and violence throughout the middle east and they really believed for quite a long time that all we need to do is talk and we can engage them and remove the sanctions and they will be willing to be a little bit more peaceful and less aggressive. the exact opposite happened when they had cash back in their coffers, when they had an america that wasn't willing and able to oppose them they became much more aggressive so it's going to be president trump's primary goal to try to reengage an aggressive stance toward iran, and make it clear that they aren't going to be able to sponsor violence and terrorism. david: they may also have had a mole in the state department as well but we'll get into that as we get more evidence of that. batya, i have to bring it back home for a second because black lives matter had a demonstration in new york city this weekend. doesn't matter what it was

for but the bottom line was they had less than 20 people come. this is an organization that had about $50 billion pledged to it, and its cohorts, we should say, by corporations not all of the money made it there and when it did, lord knows what happened to it. has that whole movement lost steam now? >> oh, yeah. it's totally over. i think what donald trump really revealed was that the divide in america is not racial god forbid and not even political, it's between the elites and a very united multi-racial working class made up of black working class people, and white working class people and hispanic working class people and asian working class people and jewish working class people. interests are all united. davdavid: we all want safety ad security. i haven't seen the guardian angels since 1980 and they are coming back because of the barberism we see in our subways in new york. you and i take the subways and see it firsthand. >> that's exactly right. i grew up in the new york area

and can remember seeing guardian angels around during the end of what was known as the bad old days when there was a lot more crime. david: before guliani. >> unfortunately that's all come back especially after 2020 and we all saw firsthand the horrible episodes of violence and it makes sense to have people who are actually paroling walking down the subways, especially because there are fewer nypd officers today than four years ago when the violence got so horrible so i definitely applaud these volunteers for being willing to actually enforce some safety in this city. david: all riders feel more safe when you see a guardian angel out there. they don't call them guardian angels for nothing. wonderful to see you both. >> happy new year. david: coming up, we have a very special guest. joe biden reportedly regrets dropping out of the race and believes he could have beaten trump. victor davis hanson joining us when kudlow continues.

lock in let's go. rated e for everyone. [rock and roll music playing]

xfinity. made for gaming. rewards members, get early access to an ea sports fc25 kit. visit xfinity.com/rewards. david: well president biden reportedly regrets his decision to dropout of the presidential race. fox news lucas tomlinson is live from st. croix hads with more,

really, lucas, he regrets? reporter: well, david, that's the reporting from the washington post. recalling the summer of 202275% of democrats wanted biden to dropout of the race and wanted another democratic nominee. today biden's approval rating is hovering around 39% despite that, the washington post says that aids to president biden say he did not want to dropout of the race. here is reaction to that from the national review earlier. >> biden and his aids may very well believe that they could have defeated donald trump. that's not what the data suggests. the data suggests that joe biden never led over the course of the year into the campaign. reporter: and david, biden reportedly has another regret as well. biden also said he should have picked someone other than merrick garland as attorney general complaining about the justice department slowness under garland and prosecuting trump and its aggressiveness in prosecuting biden's son hunter.

what would have not likely helped biden's re-election chances are these photos showing biden shaking hands and posing with chinese businessmen alongside hunter and his business associates during a december 2013 official visit to beijing when biden was vice president. biden has long denied any involvement in his sons overseas business dealings and the white house reacting to these new photos. "this trip which occurred over a decade ago is old news. house republicans already wasted years and millions of taxpayer dollars proving that the president was not in business with his son. it's pass time to call it a day." speaking of hunter was spotted over the weekend in st. croix, hunter and president biden walking out of mass together on saturday evening. it's notable that hunter's lawyer also refutes these charges and talk about the photo says these new photos are old news, david. david: old news, they are brand new. thank you, lucas. appreciate that. enjoy your stay there.

well, joining me now is victor davis hanson, senior fellow at the hoover institution. either he is so been lying for so much of his life, president biden, that he doesn't realize he can't catch up with his last lie, but he said as recently as last march of this year, he said i did not interact with hunter's chinese partners. you see it there in the picture, and by the way, his dilution might be the best way to describe this administration, the biden administration. they were dilutional about the corruption and about him thinking that he could have won, having been way behind where kamala harris was in the polls, dilution about the economy, dilution about the border being secure, when it was wide open. this was the dilutional presidency, no? >> absolutely. he had one role to play and that was he was going nowhere in 202f

the democratic party rescued him in the south carolina primary. he lost the first three caucuses and primaries and the deal was as we know that he was to serve as a useful veneer, as it were, for a hard left agenda that he could moderator have a veneer over and then finally he was not able to do that and now he tries to console himself by saying well, trump ran three times and only joe biden from scranton beat him. the other two liberal women failed. i should have been re-elected and no messenger would have helped that message as you point out on the border, the economy, kabul, the middle east, crime, everything he touched had the touch. everything he touched turned and he knows that. even bill clinton's rhetorical abilities or barack obama's hope in changing stuff, that couldn't have helped this message this year. nobody wanted it and he's

responsible. he's always done that by the way throughout his career. every time he's had to apologize or admit his mistakes whether it was plagerism or cheating in law school or racist comments he's always attacked other people rather than look inward. david: it's an alternate reality. he's presenting what we know is not true. he's done it time and again. let's talk quickly about what seems to be a real breath of fresh air and that's the new trump administration coming in with all kinds of action going on. negotiating already deals with foreign leaders. the gallup poll shows him far ahead of where he was in januar. he's picked up more momentum since the election. this is going to be, i mean, my opinion, but this is going to be a very different presidency. go ahead. >> yeah, it is. i think they understand that the left is licking its wounds. it's shocked and advocated

the 90 day transition . they said we failed we can't do it. biden is a mess. just go take over and trump understands he's got about 90 days to flood the zone and that's what he's going to do. he's going down every cultural economic social political issue. his team is going to try to enact really startling change and this time around he's not going to have a john bolton or jim mattis, or people within the cabinet that oppose him. david: they are all new, all fresh, all full of energy, and of course the doge brothers are the best example of it. last word. >> absolutely. he's substituted class for race. he's got people from all over the ideological racial class spectrum and it's kind of amazing thing to watch. david: it sure is. well you've got a terrific article about it in fox news. look it up fox news, victor davis hanson has a piece today. always a pleasure to see you my friend. it's never long enough. thanks very much.

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david: so thank you, all, so much for watching this special edition of kudlow. we hope you liked it and you can catch me by the way co-hosting the bottom line in just an hour here on fox business. you don't want to miss that but you don't want to miss jason chaffetz. he's in for elizabeth macdonald tonight with a great show planned for you. jason? >> hey, thanks, david i appreciate it . we'll see you again in