let's bring in dan hoffman, former cia station chief. if there is a presence of an explosive device, that would rule out the option a that was under consideration that this might have been some kind of accident. >> right, and also there is a forensics trail now, so i'm sure that german security officials, police, will be trying to determine where those explosives came from. i would also emphasize, too, typically for a terrorist attack, there is a surveillance phase for the attack takes place, those who are conducting it will actually surveil the target, cctv come other cameras in the christmas market, you would hope based on the past there have fae have been passed attacks, they e perpetrators of this horrific attack. be one the initial report was they had taken someone into custody, the driver of this vehicle, but you bring up a great point, as always, dan, which was if this is -- and it has some hallmarks of isis or isis-related tax that we have seen in the past -- it likely has longer tentacles come other people involved. >> right, th

dan hoffman former cia analyst who knows it well. good to see you of course thank you. >> you too. arthel: south korea president has been impeached. what does that mean for a key u.s. ally in asia? that story is up next. ♪ huh, noom has glp-1 meds now? yes, noom combines medications with healthy habits so you can lose the weight and keep it off. yeah, glp-1s starting at $149. that's noom smart. noom. the smart way to lose weight. now is the time to go back in time. and shine a light on the family journey that led to you. detailed dna results. inspiring family history memberships. now's the time to save at ancestry. ♪ ♪ [music] i could make a custom pin ♪ ♪ watch the dog walker get in ♪ ♪ so ziggy won't complain ♪ ♪ ♪ when my in-law comes a-knockin' ♪ ♪ i can open, maybe lock it ♪ ♪ if my home just had a brain ♪ arthel: constitutional crisis in south korea continues for lawmakers today voted to impeach the president after he briefly declared martial law earlier this month. he survived a first attempt to remove him last week has vowed t

former cia station chief dan hoffman joins me now. the fronts of lebanon and gaza and yemen which is 1000 miles away, not like it is on israel's border. is the middle east conflict worsening? >> absolutely. october 7, 2023, was an inflection point where israel began a multi-front war against iran and its terrorist proxies. israel has taken the fight to hezbollah, hamas and the houthis as well as iran. all of them on their heels from when they decapitated hezbollah leadership. they struck the leader of hamas, remember the pager operation in beirut, the houthis have been launching ballistic missiles, they've had enough of that and now they are going to take it to them as well. they've begun by striking international airport and those seaports, that would disrupt the supply-chain with their munitions and financing and that is the first step. i expect more strikes from israel in the coming days and weeks. ashley: can donald trump bring peace to the middle east? he says he will achieve it. how does it happen? >> there is opportunity that i

dan hoffman, thanks dan. jon: ahead of the fox report and the skies over new jersey.? details on that, next. ♪ jon: headlines for enough around the globe in the black sea cranes navy using a marine and drones to strike russian controlled gas and platforms. critical intel with the kind neighbor movement. in greece, police in battle about 5000 protesters in athens killing a 15-year-old boy. united kingdom and ireland fears winter storm battling -- of battering both countries is money one person is dead hundreds of thousands are without power for today's rivalry m maturation program for your league soccer liverpool and leaverton also prepared postponed because of the storm but in germany unveiling lenny and lottie the two names for the baby pandas. that is a look at some stories from around the globe. coming up, cut a prominent public figure or a democrat be switching parties? stay with us. ♪ i have type 2 diabetes, but i manage it well. ♪ ♪ it's a little pill with a big story to tell. ♪ ♪ i take once-daily jardiance... ♪ ♪ ...at each day's start. ♪ ♪ as time went on, it

dan hoffman, former c.i.a. chief of station is with me now and good morning to you.to get to. first russia on the back burner. want to talk about what happened just overnight with the israelis hitting ports in syria, all right? here is the quote. it is strikes on syria target chemical weapons and missile arsenal seeking to insure weapons don't fall into the wrong hands. take that first when you say that israel right now yet again is looking out for its own national security in a significant way. >> israel has to be extremely concerned about those chemical weapons stockpiles and the fact that syria is awash in weapons. the concern that there could be a power vacuum that we're looking at here where terrorists will enjoy a lot of open field running. in fact, the most prominent of all the opposition is this hts group which was previously allied with al qaeda and isis, they later fought against one another. israel, they know they need to detect threats and be prepared to preempt them before any harm is caused to their own civilian population. >> bill: so russia was using

[laughter] dan hoffman react to biden pledging more weapons shipments to ukraine. the migrant accused of burning a woman on the subway, david webb will be here, and border guy sheriff mark can nils will react to the guatemala being open to accepting trump's central american if deportees. the 10 a.m. hour of "varney & company" is next. .. y'all see this, patrick mahomes is saying goodbye! patrick! patrick! people was tripping. where are you going!? he was actually saying goodbye to his old phone. i'm switching to the amazing new iphone 16 pro at t-mobile! it's the first iphone built for apple intelligence. that's like peanut butter on jelly...on gold. get four iphone 16 pro on us, plus four lines for $25 bucks. and save on every plan versus the other big guys. what a deal. that's a lot if you ask me. ya'll giving away too fast t-mobile, slow down. ♪

fox news contributor dan hoffman joins me now.exchange between jennifer griffin and ryder. >> double the number of troops we've been told for quite some time. has this been going on for months or years or something that happened this summer? we need a time frame. >> i think it would probably be fair to say at a minimum months. i will go back and look. but it's, yeah, it's been going on for a while. >> was the president aware that there were 2,000 troops in syria? >> i won't speak about the white house. >> dana: what do you think happened here? >> i think that the pentagon didn't do a great job of keeping the american people up to date on our growing footprint in syria. small footprint. 2,000. i was in iraq when we had 100,000 troop. we aren't trying to bring democracy to syria or build girls schools like afghanistan. this is dealing with threats to our country from chemical weapons stockpiles and the rising threat of terrorism. so that those -- that military footprint is there to find, fix and finish threats before they cause harm

dan hoffman, thank you so much for coming in today.tmas to you and your family. >> thanks. same to you. >> anita: uh-huh. >> griff: christmas elevations are underway in bethlehem. as thousands of pilgrims come to the city to celebrate where it all began. trey yingst is live from tel aviv, israel, without the celebrations look this year. merry christmas, trÈs. >> merry christmas. >> vice president harris: after christmas day started here in the holy land, air raid sirens were standing across this country setting millions of people to pump shelters. iran back, the rebels in yemen watching another ballistic missile toward israel, the fourth one anyway. israeli officials say that missile was shot down by the fragments have landed in public areas. with the rich in a war on going this year's christmas festivities have been submitted. with traditional freight and sermon's were held in bethlehem including imminent mask at the church in the nativity. the five euro people were in attendance than normal. inside gaza, a small group of christians m

dan hoffman joins us ahead on that. >> sandra: plus d.o.g.e. fat but wait until you hear how much remote work for the government is costing you, the taxpayer. megan hayes and david will react next. ♪ ♪ >> sandra: senator ortt joni ernst failing to take an extra spending as the caucus ler with a new report, fox business hillary vaughn on capitol hill and hasn't for us. >> sandra, republicans are rallying behind elon musk and vivek ramaswamy's goal to cut $2 trillion spending from the federal government, democrats not so convinced. some democrat said this department of government a patient he isn't, won't work, and is illegal. >> the amount of funds appropriated by congress is unconstitutional and illegal. there is no such department of government efficient he. it is made up. this idea that vivek ramaswamy and elon musk have clearly are not founded in any bit of reality. but elon musk and vivek ramaswamy don't need democrats to downsize. they can corral federal workers back to the office. they think it's they have to go to the office, they will l

. >> retired station chief dan hoffman weighed in on this and here is a little of what he had to say, take a look. >> this was the reflection of the biden administration's failed policy. they never gave ukraine what they needed when they needed it, too little, too late. that's why ukraine continues to suffer the these attacks on the critical infrastructure, denying people heat and power. biden administration behaved as if ukraine had infinite amount of time to defend themselves from the russian onslaught. >> colonel, do you agree, too little, too late? >> i do. we've always been half in, half out with this and dribbling some of the weapons in. there's never been, i think, an organized policy around ukraine or organizing a cease-fire, most people at this point in ukraine want this war to end, zen wants the war to continue. i think in terms of organizing a cease-fire, organizing an end to this there's got to be a way for putin to feel pain, got to be for a way for ukraine to gain something and that's never really been established here. >> let's talk about the cease-fire possibility in g

dan hoffman on deck coming up. go-friends, gather! keke! chris! jason! boop! friends.ld onto your dice. woohoo!! -nice frosting, pratt. -thank you! how we doin', keke? tastes like money to me. i can't go back to jail! wait, did you rob my bank? -hehe. -are we winning!? -ha ha ha! -oh boy! yeah! money, power, friendship. let's go! [cheers and applause] [fireworks

. >> let's bring in dan hoffman, former cia station chief in mar- moscow. happy new year.s comes on the heels of a series of chinese hacks on the government with the white house disclosing last week that chinese officials accessed americans hunter viets private text messages and our phone conversations, which is disturbing. do you believe the biden administration left america vulnerable to china? >> we are under siege from chinese hacking. they penetrated our critical infrastructure, the tile communications companies you mentioned. on that one, those companies failed to implement, according to our national security advisor, the deputy security for national security, and a new burger. she said the companies could have implemented basic cybersecurity protocols and prevents of the hack, but they didn't. we need better partnership between the government and private sector. hopefully trump administration will bring that to bear. when it comes to the latest attack on treasury, that is an intelligence failure in. in cyberspace, we should be able to spot these attacks before they

dan hoffman is with us right now the fact that a lot of these drones have been spotted over military facilities and in a couple of cases over donald trump's golf course in new jersey, i would imagine over such facilities, knowledgeable military types would shoot them down or at least raise a huge fuss when one got on the president-elect's golf course. does not raise a military connection here, i don't know if that's good military here or elsewhere but what you think? >> it's hard to speculate, it maybe unclear with the rules of engagement or the military may not have concluded what those rules of engagement are. i can tell you that i've got some first-hand experience with drones from having served in war zones in the middle east and in south asia. they are used for two things, overhead surveillance, reconnaissance. and then for kinetic strikes. so we need to be concerned here. we need to be concerned because there's no attribution so far. we don't know who's behind it or the motive of the people who are behind it. and there for we don't have a real threat assessment. and we don't hav

mike: dan hoffman, thank you for time and analysis today. >> thanks. mike: president trump soft and averaged sat down with meet the press earlier today senior national correspondent rich edison live with more. hi, rich. reporter: hi, good afternoon, mike. president elect trump is laying out an ambitious open to his administration. he was in paris yesterday meeting with the french president emmanuel macron and ukrainian president volodymyr zelensky and trump post that had russian president vladamir putin should agree to a ceasefire and negotiations on ukraine. he called russia weakened and zelensky would like to make a deal to "stop the madness". >> you're talking about hundreds of thousands of bodies laying all over fields. it's the stupidest thing i've ever seen and shouldn't have been allowed to happen. biden should have been able to stop it. reporter: j ukraine could expect less aid from his administration and u.s. should stay in nato if treated fairly and trump said members of january 6 committee should go to jail and he denied pursuing retribution

some additional information about the drones, the potential national security implications here dan hoffmans a former cia chief of station. bell covic velicovich. army expert. bret, let me start with you. what's your synopsis here. what do you think is happening? >> it's difficult to say. now we have representative drew just come out and said he had information from iran which the pentagon has denied which, frankly leads to even more confusion. >> this is the issue have you got multiple government leaders that are coming out saying two different things that this could be testing, or this could be adversarial. but the fact is no one knows and it's all it's doing adding to more hysteria. now everything in the sky is a drone. my concern some crazy in new jersey starts taking pop shots at the air. that's the danger. the u.s. government is not even attempting to try to alleviate the public's concerns. it's just manifesting itself. we nearly got major gaps in our drone defense. that area where this stuff is flying is so congested with different cities. frankly it's the perfect location for an adv

former cia station chief in moscow and fox news contributor dan hoffman joins me now.ppy christmas everyone. >> mike: so what is your rate of the plane crash? does this have the fingerprints of moscow behind it? >> it looks like it does. it's awfully hard to speculate. we need more facts but what we are seeing right now is the fog of war and tragically these are the sorts of shocking developments that happened and in his cent civilians become collateral damage. it is just so unbelievably sad and again we will have to wait for further information and the russians aren't very good at revealing details so i'm not so sure how much we will learn from them. >> who do you think that we will get answers? i assume the data recorder inside the plane may not tell us that weapon was fired at that plane. >> i'm sure that vladimir putin in a kgb operative in the kremlin will obfuscate whatever the truth is to serve his own regime security. so i don't expect a get a whole lot from him. we may receive intelligence from our allies and partners in the region though. >> mike: so we will