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cheryl: good morning, i'm cheryl casone, i'm in for maria bartiromo. it is friday, january 24, 7:00 a.m. on the east coast. time now for the word on wall street, top investors watching your money. joining me now is former gartman

letter editor and university of akron endowment fund chairman, dennis gartman. also with me is john lonski. first, american express earnings are crossing the tape. we have the numbers. >> for the quarter, revenue up 9% to about $17.2 billion, right in line with expectations. eps up about 16% to 304, for the year similar story, ref knee inn line, up 9% to 66%, eps up 25% to 1401 for the full year. i think more importantly, cheryl, they're issuing guidance for 2025, that's always what investors want to hear about what business looks like going forward. they're project projecting revee growth of 8 to 10% going forward, eps of 1 15 to 15, 50a share. what investors like is increasing the quarterly diffdividend to 82-cents a commn

share. we spoke with the ceo. he gave us a look inside the numbers. he had some interesting quotes when talking about the business. he said consumers are doing well. consumer growth was up 9% but what suppressed billings last year was small business spending. small businesses as we have talked about have been a little bit depressed last year because they're so cautious with interest rates and inflation but he said that is starting to change. why? because the new administration has some credit for that. he said early signs are that the new administration is pro-business and rational regulation and when you have a pro-business and rationalization of regulation, that spurs growth. you saw that after the election and you're continuing to see that. so a little bit of green shoots through the holiday quarter extending through this year. cheryl: the forecast is good. people are using the am ex

cards, good for business and good for the stock. we're going to watch it. thank you so much. john, your reaction to american express, loan loss provisions 1.3 billion. the banks are doing similar numbers. >> this is a very strong report. my goodness, they had revenue up by 9%. this is a business very dependent on consumer spending and i can't help but add that at least in the third quarter, going into the fourth quarter, we were looking at year over year growth for consumer spending of 5 to 5 and-a-half percent so they're beating the aggregate growth rate for consumer spending. absolutely fantastic. you've got to like the jump in earnings, double digit percentage gain and with that this very sizable increase in the dividend. i mean, everything is going fantastically well for american express and as taylor noted, this is telling us the u.s. consumer is still doing quite well and better yet, taylor

added very importantly that american express is picking up a rebound in spending by small businesses and that could be very, very important for 2025. my goodness, i think the worry right now for the current year, 2025, is that the economy might perform too well. we could be looking at overheating later this year and with that unexpectedly rapid price inflation. cheryl: what is the fed going to do about that? dennis gartman, let's take a look at the yield right now because the federal reserve does kick off the first policy meeting of the year next week. it's widely expected they're going to pause any cuts but react to what john just said because think about this. if you get an economy that overheats again and you have inflation, that could be the other shoe to drop and that would be a rate hike. we've had other guests come on the show and mention that same issue. >.dennis. >> i think there b will be no

cut, there will not be an increase in the overnight fed funds rate. the makeup of the fed with four new members from the regional presidents is on a scale of one to 10 with one being the most -- the doveish and 1 10 being hawkish, i put it 5.1, right in the middle. they'll hold rates steady i think for a protracted period of time. i think the propensity for the fed to tighten is basically nil at this point. the propensity for the fed to eaease is basically nil at ths point. the economy is doing better than i thought likely. so steady as she goes right now. the yield curve wants to get more positively sloped. the overnight fed funds rate will stay steady. the back end will move higher and it will be more positively sloamped time. sloped over time. cheryl: yesterday, president

trump made a deplanned on interest -- demand on interest rates and inflation watch. >> over the past four years the government racked up $8 trillion in deficit spending and crippled regulations and hidden taxes like never before. the result is the worst inflation crisis in modern history and sky high interest rates for our citizens and even throughout the world. food prices and the price of almost every other thing known to mankind went through the roof. i'll demand that interest rates drop immediately and likewise they should be dropping all over the world. cheryl: all right. dennis, not to be captain obvious here, but the fed controls interest rates. that is seen and i believe that was the first shot at jerome powell. >> that was his first shot. he will have more shots at mr. powell over the course of the next several months, no question. the president has very little control over the overnight fed funds rate, very little control

over the back end of the curve and at this point inflation is a paramount circumstance to be disturbed about. commodity prices are going from the lower left to the upper right. gold prices are making new all-time highs. crude oil prices have been stronger than i had thought likely and likely to remain strong despite the drill, baby, drill, so the fact that the president's going to be pushing on the overnight -- pushing the fed to cut rates i think is an ill advised move on his part. better for him to be silent and let the fed do its job. cheryl: well, let's take a look at crypto prices because they've been moving higher after president trump's executive order which aims to make the u.s. the crypto capital of the world by potentially developing a national stockpile. fox business' edward lawrence spoke with trump's ar and crypto czar david saks on why they ban agencies from developing central bank digital currencies. >> cbd c's a real threat when

talking about a central bank digital currency run out of washington by the fed and would basically gradually replace cash and catalog everybody's transactions and it could lead to new laws and dictates about how people spend their money so i think people are very concerned that that could be an orwellian path to go down. no one wants to go down that path. i believe we should extend the dollar's dominance into digital areas, extend it online and i think that could create trillions of dollars of demand for u.s. treasuries, could be useful to us and basically supporting our debt and bringing down long-term interest rates. cheryl: all right, dennis, what do you make of that? >> i think the odds of a central bank currency is probably very small, if there's any chance at all over the course of the next several years. i have been wrong about bitcoin, however. i will openly admit that fact. i've seen no reason to buy it. i much prefer gold as i said for a long period of time. bitcoin has been around for

thousands of hours, gold has been around for thousands of years. i'll bet with the longer investment opportunity in gold rather than bitcoin but i have been wrong on bitcoin. i've been very right on gold. time shall tell whether they continue to move in the same direction or not. i expect they won't. cheryl: john, they're trying to lelegitimize bitcoin. >> they have. it's done well as a speculative investment of late. if you want to buy bitcoin you are assuming the risk of a significant and substantial drop in the price of bitcoin in the future so don't bet the entire house on bitcoin. as an investor you may want to have a small percentage of your portfolio exposed to bitcoin and other digital currencies. cheryl: dennis, thank you very much. john, you're going to stay with us all morning long -- excuse me. frog in my throat. guy, thank you so much. we're just getting started this hour. coming up, president trump

calling out some of the u.s.'s biggest banks right to their faces, claiming they discriminate against conservatives, all the details coming up. you're watching "mornings with maria." ♪ [sofi mnemonic] can a personal loan unlock your ambitions? oh yeah. consolidate bad debt and save money for your next goal. take a swing at your kitchen reno... meant that literally. or design your actual dream wedding. all your ambitions. all in one app. sofi personal loans. low fixed rates. borrow up to 100 k. no fees required. go to sofi.com to view your rate. sofi. get your money right.

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cheryl: time for the hot topic of the hour. trump sending a powerful message on debanking to jp morgan and bank of america while virtually addressing the world economic forum in davos yesterday. watch. >> i hope you start opening your bank to conservatives because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank and that included a place called bank of america, they don't take conservative business and i don't know if regulators mandated that because of biden

or what but you and jamie and everybody, i hope you're going to open your banks to conservatives because what you're doing is wrong. cheryl: bank of america responding, quote, we serve more than 70 million clients, we well comb conservatives, we're required to follow extensive government rules and regulations that sometimes result in decisions to exit client relationships. we never close accounts for political reasons and don't have a political litmus test. jp morgan said we have never close hed an account for politil reasons. we follow regulations and guidance from regulators. it's the framework washington must address. in october, first lady melania trump sat down with maria about this exact phenomenon. happened to her. watch. >> when i started my own business as you said the bank suddenly informed me they will not be able to do business with me anymore. also, i had very prominent

e-mail distribution service provider just abruptly terminated my agreement so suddenly, as well as the university. i was all agreed that they will accept my donations for the foster students and because of the board of directors they called back n , they find out it was me, they said we cannot go on and it's very sad because who suffered? they were children from foster community. they didn't have a scholarship that somebody will provide for them. they didn't want to do business with me because of political affiliation, my political beliefs, and that was one of

them, one of the canceling projects. cheryl: lee, she's not the only one that is saying this. >> no, she's not. i think when you look at social media right now there's a huge number of conservatives who are saying it's actually happened to me or people i know, charlie kirk has been posting in response, saying actually you're lying, i know plenty of people who lost their accounts due to the fact that they're conservatives. i think what we're going to see, though, is a huge shift right now. i think we saw so many people who were canceled for being republicans before. i don't think we're going to see the same thing right now. i think that there's a much clearer mandate. it's much more popular. and i don't think we're going to have the same issues in 2024 that we did in 2016. cheryl: that interview was done back in october. the election was november. a lot of the business community has changed their tune about the trump family and donald trump. >> there's something interesting about the response of banks to this accusation of political discrimination and

that is the banks claim they follow the rules and regulations. okay. so it very well might be that somebody in the biden administration told the banks not to go ahead and have accounts with certain individuals of a conservative slant. so the banks are just listening to the regulations and that's very condemning, i would think, if that's true, of what was going on in the biden administration. cheryl: you know, what did you make, lee -- staying with these comments that came from president trump at davos yesterday. what did you make of him going after basically our allies? i mean, he was going after european countries in a very harsh way and saying look, you're you'll tax breaks if you come to the united states. otherwise, tariffs are coming. i mean, there's talk about a universal tariff. that would hurt europe. >> it would hurt europe and i think it's making a lot of people very, very nervous about what he's doing but the american people said this is what they

wanted. they wanted him to put america first. these are the policies they wanted to see and there's certainly going to be impact i think we have to have discourse and dialogue about what the appropriate balance is on tariffs but this is exactly what donald trump promised he's going to do and he is delivering on what he promised. promises made, promises kept. that seems exactly what he intends to do. cheryl: joseph steinberg wrote this about the comments yesterday. he said well, his term is off to a good start for europe and he said this is the chance for european leaders to undo bad policies and bad decisions that were from the biden administration. he also goes on to say that the biden administration was lying to europe when they said that we're going to be with you. he wasn't -- he cut off lng exports to western europe. >> europe is screaming for reform. believe it or not, 2024 was the second consecutive year where the gdp of germany shrank,

contracted for two consecutive years. we're growing now something close to 3%. the weakness, the economic weakness of europe right now strengthens trump's bargaining power by the way and maybe by placing these demands on european countries, europe will wake up and make changes that are necessary so that europe can begin to grow again. cheryl: and he called them out for going after tech companies. how many times have you seen these ridiculous lawsuits against u.s. technology companies from europe. so i think that his comments were they were harsh, they were very clear. he didn't mince words but that's donald trump. coming up, the house appropriation committee vice chair is going to be here on when the house expects to release its reconciliation funding deal. he's going to break that down on the other side of the break. you're watching "mornings with maria" live on fox business. ♪

the way i approach work post fatherhood, has really trying to understand the generation that we're building devices for. here in the comcast family, we're building an integrated in-home wifi solution for millions of families like my own. in the average household, there are dozens of connected devices. connectivity is a big part of my boys' lives. it brings people together in meaningful ways. cheryl: president trump addressing the world economic forum in davos yesterday, insisting this week's executive

orders will lower inflation and bring back jobs. he says extending the tax cuts will be the key to improving the economy but he suggested republicans can't do it alone. watch. >> we have to get democrats to approve it but you know, if the democrats didn't approve it i don't know how they can survive with about a 45% tax increase because that's what it would be so i think they're going to do it. we've been working along with them pretty well. i think it's very hard for a political group to say let's charge people 45% more so i think we're in good shape. we're doing a reduction for business and small businesses where you're going to bring it down to 15% which is really something. cheryl: some democrats and republicans are on the same page when it comes to government funding. bipartisan leaders on the house appropriations committee say they could have an agreement on top line numbers as soon as today. maybe next week in order to meet that march 14 shutdown deadline. so where are we?

let's bring in florida congressman, mario diaz-balart, he's the house appropriations committee vice chair. all right, congressman, do we have a number? >> i think we're going to have a number in very short order. we have to get those appropriation bills, fiscal year '25 bills. some of us believe we should have gotten those out of the way already and not put those in front of the president when he first gets there but regardless we're going to have top line number we'll be able to start those negotiations and take it off the table. cheryl: all right. so this is, again, a bipartisan effort. are you getting a sense in the general business of congress right now that some of the democrats are willing to come to the table? because we've got a reconciliation bill that we've got to talk about here and mike johnson has a very slim majority. he's got some challenges with those blue state republicans over salt. your response? >> well, we have a lot of

challenges and a very slim majority. the appropriation bills can't be done through reconciliation so they require 60 votes in the senate, 60% of the senators that vote for it which is why appropriation bills have to be bipartisan. we have to get the debt limit solved, take that off of the president. it's unfair to put this on the president in essence tie his hands for past expenditures. traditionally that's always been a bipartisan vote. you lose some republicans, you lose some democrats so there are things that have to get done. we have to do the budget resolution before we can do reconciliation. that, however, is always a party line vote and that's what you're referring to that is going to be very, very difficult. i fear, cheryl, that the problem is not going to be what's in the bill. what i fear is that some are going to push for it more and more and more, never be satisfied because it doesn't cut enough, doesn't do this enough and the reality is that that is

how we get the president's agenda done, through reconciliation some we're all going to have -- republicans, we're going to have to hold our nose, not get everything but pass the president's agenda to save this country. cheryl: all right. we're going to be watching your work and we'll be waiting to see if we get news today from your committee. president trump is traveling to asheville, north carolina today. he's going to visit areas that are still recovering from hurricane helene since it was hit last september. he slammed fema's response to that storm. he says they're getting in the way. after north carolina trump is going to head to la, he's going to tour wildfire damage. he's suggesting aid for los angeles should be tied to congress' reconciliation bill which we are talking about which could also include a debt ceiling increase but also immigration reform, energy permitting and tax cuts. then you've got house minority leader hakim jeffries, he calls that a nonstarter. this ties to the conversation we're having about reconciliation and fema is a big

piece of this. >> it is. and the president doesn't stand for nonsense, for procedural hurdles that might get in the way. he wants to get it done. i think he's right about that. again, i think the issue of doing something for california, for the disaster victims, that tends to be -- has to be a bipartisan vote. so i'm not sure. i'm pretty doubtful that we can put that on the reconciliation bill which is going to be a party line vote but there are ways to get it done. the president, president trump wants to get this stuff done and he's absolutely right. some of the stuff we should have gotten done before. there was a small group of republicans that kept insisting by the way, cheryl, no, let's wait. let's postpone it because whatever reason. the appropriators were telling them we don't think it's a good idea but we are where we are. we can get it done. it's going to require republicans hanging together, sticking together and not being

over greedy demanding everything perfect. president trump deserves his agenda. the american people, cheryl, deserve president trump's agenda and that mandate that they gave him which i think is a clear mandate to get these things off the table, passed, sent to the president for his signature. that will save the economy. it will save the national security. it will secure the border and in essence it will save the united states of america. cheryl: the speaker will be on speaker johnson, obviously, through all of this and i know that some heads have been spinning a little bit with president trump making the comment that maybe fema should go back to the states and that's a whole other controversy. let's move on, though. you mentioned the border. let's talk about this. because immigration and customs enforcement made nearly 540 arrests yesterday as these border changes take effect. in the first three days of this administration, encounters at the southern border were 35% lower than they were in the final three days of the biden

administration. he reportedly wants to send upwards, and this is an ask from an official on the defense department, maybe that he's going to ask for upwards of 10,000 troops to the southern border while directing the pentagon to begin the border wall construction. his eo bans birth right citizenship. that was blocked by a federal judge in seattle. we know all of that whavment do you make of the defense official telling the wall street journal they have been hearing and they're expecting the ask for 10,000 troops to go to the southern border? >> nothing that the president is doing is a surprise. this is, again, what he promised the american people that he would do. i mentioned he's a no nonsense, get things done kind of person and so nobody should be surprised and you're already starting to see dramatic differences on the border, on foreign policy, on attitudes around the world and including the woke corporations in the united states of america. that's why i have said time and time again that i think

president trump is going to save america but he has to get his agenda through congress and as you mentioned, cheryl, our numbers are very, very slim which is why we're going to have to stick together, not expect perfection, not criticize other republicans that we don't agree with because they do something we don't necessarily like or think is perfect and get this done. which is why, by the way, we are meeting actually in the district i'm privileged to represent, the republican conference is meeting in doral, florida, southeast florida, to go through these issues to figure out how we move forward because our margins are so slim that there's very little margin for error. cheryl: well, that's interesting. and that certainly -- that conference is going to be hopefully you all can get on the same page, you know. all right, certainly it's great to speak with you, congressman, mario diaz-balart, always great see you. have a great weekend. thank you. >> likewise, thank you. cheryl: all right. we'll be right back.

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maria: welcome back, we are coming to you from davos, switzerland at the world economic forum. we're in the wall street journal house right now, our partners at the wall street journal have their temporary headquarters here in davos right here. i'm happy to introduce ann walsh, guggenheim partners chief investment officer. ann, it's great to have you. >> great to be here, maria,thank you. maria: thank you so much. let me get your outlook on 2025 when it comes to markets and the macro story. >> we started off the year, this is probably the third year in a row where the word for year might be volatility. i think what we're going to see is market movement based on maybe the a game of ping pong between politics and policy. it's already driving fixed income markets and the rates market. we're in a bit of a trading

range. i think we're going to stay here. on the 10 year we're between 375 on the low end, 475 on the high end and i think that cadence and that pattern is going to continue for the rest of this year. i think for equities, i think the story is probably a pretty good one. right now, the expectations are for fairly good year of earnings and so as long as that continues, then i think we probably have some tailwinds on equities as well. so volatility, but within that some good opportunities for investment. maria: on the fixed income side of things, is that because of that spike in rates that we saw and what was behind the 10 year moving up so much at the end of last year? >> so, the fed historically has really wanted to be data dependent. but what we saw in december was when jay powell spoke he really was more concerned i think about the future and what we've seen is as a result the 1 10 year tok off because we priced out of the market most of the rate cuts

that had been expected. we're on the other side of that. we believe ultimately we're going to probably see two or three rate cuts. historically the fed is also more model driven. the taylor rules suggests there's room to get more rate cuts to get to neutral on the short end. all of that together is a little bit different than the fed concerns about what incoming trump administration policies are going to be. i think they were very concerned they were going to be inflationary so they decided wait a minute, we're going to slow down on the rate reduction actions. i will maybe make a note about the fact that they're still reducing the balance sheet and albeit at a slower rate than they were originally. that's still a way to drive rates i think in my view down because they're slowing the economy bit by bit. maria: so what does that mean then for an average portfolio in 2025? do you want to have half fixed income and half equities or what doesthe plans look like.

>> i think fixed income in a trading range environment like this, it's an actionable trade. as rates rise and go to the top of the range you can extend duration. as rates fall and you can shorten duration but it's moving within that range. additionally, i think there's a tremendous opportunity still within credit. we have good, strong fundamentals, the same fundamentals that are driving stocks are also driving credit and then finally equities. there's still a story in equities. although the market is priced to perfection, so i would be thoughtful with regard to that and risk premium is basically nonexistent. maria: so when you take a look at some of the policies coming out of the new trump administration, whether it's deregulation, extending the tax cuts or even tapping into the energy capacity in america, what would be the most important areas in equities that you want to be exposed to? >> well, think the areas of equities that maybe big picture for us, large cap companies will continue to in our view continue

to do well. small caps are interesting and there's a concern because of the russell 2000. approximately 40% are non-earners. i would be very thoughtful with regard to concerns around the earnings potential there but for large caps i think it's still a good story. i think that the key areas for trump administration policies, immigration, energy, trade, and tariffs of course accompanying that. those are going to be areas we're going to be wanting to watch as individual bond and stock pickers to make sure that the companies are well-positioned regardless of what the policies are and/or even have tailwinds, particularly with regard to deregulation. maria: but are there areas that will get impacted by something like deregulation? i mean, the banks have been complaining about rules around basel 3 and holding too much capital. wouldn't that be one group that would probably be exposed mostly to the deregulation or are there other areas, energy with the --

tapping into our capacity? >> absolute lo absolutely with o some of these sectors, financials indeed. deregulation is one of those discussion points he at davos quite a bit within the financial services industry. additionally, energy. drill, baby, drill, i think we are going to see oil production expand and natural gas. natural gas is going to be a big beneficiary as we look at trying to create other sources of power for the electricity grid as well. maria: president trump is trying to get oil prices down to try to rein in inflation. do you want to avoid energy companies or are there other areas of energy that could be drilling which could be opportunistic. >> natural gas is a natural beneficiary here, lng, we're going to reopen those opportunities and maybe a little bit less -- aligned with but not exactly the energy story, pipelines, transmission mechanisms. i think those will be good places to be as well. maria: you're on a panel e private for longer this week and we saw the global supply of

public equities shrink. tell me about that panel and why private for longer could be what companies want to consider. >> well, certainly without having to deal with being a public entity and the s.e.c. and all the regulations that go with that, regardless of deregulation tailwinds, i think one of the other elements for being private for longer is to protect trade secrets. maria: let's take a look around the world. the u.s. versus europe. because there's a lot of concern that europe has structural issues and it will be a laggard to the united states for some time to come. how do you see snit. it?>> i tend to agree with that thought process. the european commission is talking about trying to create more flexible business environment for the european union, what we're seeing, however, is a bit of volatility or destabilization in what i would previously consider to be

very stable governments. maria: in terms of allocating capital across the world, do you want to stick to the united states or is there another alternative outside of the u.s. right now? >> the u.s. is attracting a huge amount of capital because of the engines of growth. the themes that are playing out globally, you know, in u.s. particularly reshoring, b brougt of the manufacturing, america first policies, energy policies, electrification improvements, these are all going to attract capital to the u.s. so i still see the u.s. as the best opportunity. maria: it's great talk with you. >> thank you, maria. maria: thank you so much. cheryl: thank you maria and our thanks to ann walsh from dray versus. davos. elon musk and sam altman remain at odds over stargate funding and now president trump is weighing in. we've got the details coming up next, "mornings with maria" live on fox business. ♪

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the way i approach work post fatherhood, has really trying to understand the generation that we're building devices for. here in the comcast family, we're building an integrated in-home wifi solution for millions of families like my own. in the average household, there are dozens of connected devices. connectivity is a big part of my boys' lives. it brings people together in meaningful ways. cheryl: president trump's cabinet taking shape this week with another official confirmation as more hurdles are cleared for one embattled nominee. gerri willis has those details. >> defense secretary nominee

pete hegseth clearing a critical senate vote and could be confirmed as soon as today. this happening despite republican senator susan collins and lisa murkowski breaking ranks and voting no. the senate expected to work through the weekend to get the vote done. john ratcliffe officially becoming cia director after his senate confirmation vote of 74-25. vice president jd vance swearing him in yesterday. confirmation hearings scheduled next week for rfk junior as secretary of health and human services, kash patel as fbi director and tulsi gabbard as director of national intelligence. boeing projecting a staggering 4 billion loss in the fourth quarter, this largely due to strikes, mounting losses on defense projects and production issues. it's a long list. the company's been forced to cut thousands of jobs that rely on massive equity sales to stay afloat.

ceo says the company is taking important steps to stabilize and rebuild including ramping up 737 max production. the shares this morning are down by a little over 1% in the premarket trading. meanwhile, president trump's team reportedly furious with elon musk after the tesla chief slammed the funding for the $500 billion stargate project. politico saying musk is accused of abusing his close access to the president. trump speaking on this to reporters yesterday. listen. >> the a.i. eo hours after you made the big stargate announcement, elon musk tweeted they don't actually have the money. is that true? >> i don't know if they do. they're putting up the money. the government's not putting up anything. they're putting up money. they're very rich people. so i hope they do and i mean elon doesn't like one of those people. so -- >> a.i. is going to replace many

american jobs? >> no. it's going to create tremendous numbers of jobs. it's going to also create a lot of benefits medically for cancer research and other things. it's going to have a huge positive impact and we want to be ahead of china. we're way ahead of china. >> musk on twitter saying stargate did not have the needed funds, sparking an online back and forth with open a.i. ceo sam altman. mayomaria spoke with sarah fryer about this. maria: what can you tell us about the money? >> first, i'm close to the deal. i've been working on it. i'm tired. the deal is doing it for me. and i feel really good about where we're at. i think on elon, he's a competitor but i want us to compete for the right things. let's compete for great outcomes for consumers and businesses. let's compete for getting investment and jobs into the united states and also for our

allies. and let's sp compete on making e we're driving the right outcomes from a security perspective too. elon knows that. we're at the tip of the iceberg. we're scratching the surface of what's coming. this is the a.i. era. getting caught in distrackses amongst ourselves feels like it will slow down the bigger outcome we're looking for. >> and kumbaya, that's what she's saying. i have to tell you, one of the things musk said online was in a tweet was that altman was smoking crack to come up with that $500 billion estimate. cheryl: i'm still laughing an donald trump in the oval office, president trump saying he doesn't like one of them. [laughter] cheryl: look, to be clear, softbank did speak with fox business and they said they've got the money so everybody just calm down, they've got the money and maria did the interview in davos where she said let's focus

on getting the projects going, build data centers, folks. >> they want to have new investors come into the project, they could probably find the equity capital somewhere else. cheryl: that's what they told -- >> i'll take a step further and state that, listen, if you have a large enough equity base and if the prospective returns are great enough, you could go ahead and borrow money off of that equity base to help fund a.i. infrastructure so i don't think what musk is saying really matters all that much. cheryl: i mean, it's certainly entertaining to see them argue in front of all of us but at the same time you know what though, lee, if you think about it, you know, let's have data centers built in this country, think about the jobs, they're saying it will give state tax breaks, the first one is in texas. this is part of the make america great again plan and that is to bring this production to the united states. we need the energy grid to support is which is another story but -- >> and it's really popular.

that's one of the things people want to see, jobs coming back, they want to see innovation happening here, they want this to be happening so i also -- i just find it fascinating how what used to happen in closed doors, some of the pressure that was happening, is now happening in front of all of us. those kind of digs, you're like oh, so that's how it goes. by the way, this all works. you get a front row seat on it. >> the donald trump administration, always an education. cheryl: how many -- are we going to get rid of the briefing room and just make the oval office the new white house press room? i'm just curious. throwing that out there. [laughter] >> asking for a friend. cheryl: gerri, thank you. we'll see you next hour. well, we've got this news to bring to you, right now. a new wildfire breaking out in san diego near the u.s., mexico border as trump is preparing to visit california today. 200 firefighters battling the blaze, it's already burned through 600 acres, it's currently zero percent contained. fox weather meteorologist britta

merwin joins us with an update. >> that the border two fire. we've been watching it on fox weather during the overnight in california. unfortunately, the situation is turning dire. evacuation orders have been called. there's not a ton of people that live right next to the border two fire but it is burning towards more populated areas and a lot of californians have now been put on standby and some of them are being asked to leave. it is just one of nine fires that we're tracking in southern california. today, kind of the last tough day weather-wise. offshore winds that will be gusty especially for the first half of the day and critically low relative humidity. the big change is the forecast. tomorrow, winds shift back onshore. more relative humidity. but also rain. we have legitimate weather system finally moving through southern california. it's been more than almost 10 months since los angeles has seen more than half an inch of rain. we could see 1 to 2 inches of rain between now and monday. although this is exactly what we need, it does come in with threats. all of the soil is unstable.

they've used a lot of water to put out these fires. the fires are still burden of proofing so more water is going on and now we have rain. so although we need the rain, we could see mud slides and landslides into early next week. cheryl: britta merwin, unbelievable what's happening in california. thank you so much. we're going to take a quick break. we'll be right back. you are watching "mornings with maria" live on fox business. ♪

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