smart from 6-9 a.m. eastern for "mornings with maria" right here on fox business. thanks so much for being with us, have a great rest of the weekend. i'll see you again next time. ♪ ♪ gerry: welcome to "the wall street journal at large". it wasn't exactly a coaz is su chat between two old friends, but the final presidential debate on thursday was a stark contrast to the first rancorous showdown a few weeks ago. perhaps it was the threat of the muted microphone, but we got a more measured, restrained and even respectful exchange. we also got just for a moment what this election and, unfortunately, so much of what our modern media and political

climate has been lacking, a real choice for america's voters in just over a week's time. a good part of the evening was spent on the big news of this week, talking about the business act deaths of mr. biden's son hunter. unlike our colleagues and some other news organizations, we won't ignore the issue, but we'll discuss it later in the show. the biggest differences were around policy, the economy, health, energy and other areas. joe biden got off to a start by warning of a dark winter of covid ahead while president trump insisted that the primary responsibility is to get the economy moving again. >> we're opening up our country. we've learned and studied and understand the disease. we're learning to live with it. we have no choice. >> he says that we're, you know, we're learning to live with it. people are learning to die with it. gerry: in many ways, this frames the election. president trump is eager to get the country back to work, end the lockdowns and manage the risk from covid.

joe biden emphasizes caution and public health and public safety above all. the president's hoping that voters will remember how good the economy was a year ago. and, in fact, voters do seem to have a pretty favorable view of their own finances in the economy. 55% of americans, according to a gallup poll, say they're better off today than they were four years ago. that's a higher number than any of president trump's predecessors seeking re-election. and time and again on thursday mr. trump sought to make the case that mr. biden's plans would harm this economic performance. perhaps the most revealing moment came late in the debate when mr. biden talked about his energy plans and indicated that he wants to get rid of fossil fuels. >> would you close down the -- >> by the way, i'd have a transition from the oil industry, yes. >> oh, that's a statement finish. >> the oil industry pollutes significantly. >> basically, what he's saying is he is going to destroy -- >> mr. president. >> finish the oil industry. will you remember that, texas? >> okay. >> will you remember that,

pennsylvania? oklahoma? >> vice president -- gerry: the democrats instantly knew that they had a problem, especially for voters in places like pennsylvania. and joe biden's aides later tried to walk it back. mr. biden earlier made a remark when he said he had never called for an end to fracking even though, actually, he has called for an end. it all highlighted what could be a real challenge for the democrats. they have very radical plans for the economy that may threaten the jobs and livelihoods of many american workers. what's at stake for the u.s. economy as we confront the last few days of this campaign? joining me now is chairman austan goolsbee. thanks very much for joining us. >> yeah, great to see you again. gerry: so the debate on thursday night's lots of policy discussion there, we can get into a bit of that. it was striking, again, that joe biden laying out his energy plan did indicate quite strongly that he wants to get rid of fossil

fuels, he wants to get rid of fracking. pretty radical plans the democrats are coming up. they also are going to raise taxes on corporations and on wealthier individuals, look, i'm just wondering at a time when the economy is so fragile and so much uncertainty, is this a risk that this bold ambition might just be a little bit too riskiesome. >> no. i mean, you lumped a whole bunch of things into the same sentence, and we can go through any one that you want. i thought the snippets that you took from the debate about energy were, hopefully, not intentionally, but clearly misleading in the very same paragraph that the vice president said what his plans were, he said he was talking about over the next 50 years that by 2050 we would be lowering the cost of the cleaner energies and that we could generate millions of jobs in those clean are energy spaces. it was not a --

gerry: he was directly asked finish. >> -- an immediate uncertainty. the suggestion in your question is the economy seems bad right now because of covid. isn't it a big problem to ban the oil industry, and he's proposed nothing of the sort. gerry: no. i mean, he was asked directly he want to get rid of oil, yeah -- >> by 2050. by 5030. gerry: there is this -- 2050. there are big plans to support green energy initiatives. i don't think there's any question, professor, that the democrats -- [inaudible] and so people listening in pennsylvania and west virginia and elsewhere are hearing a democratic campaign, a democratic presidential nominee who is basically saying we're going to get rid of those industries, and we're going to move on. i'm just wondering at a time when -- maybe this is not the time to be entering into a major radical reform -- >> you're saying radical reform, and you just keep leaving off by

2050, which he said in the debate. i think if you look at the polls or if you look at the data, it's quite clear that renewable energies, at a time when we're having massive fires, massive floods, huge hurricanes, climate is on a lot of people's minds, and what's happening with carbon pollution throughout the world is motivating all countries to try to look for renewable energy sources. gerry: so just to be clear, we shouldn't expect in a biden administration any significant measures to quickly move towards significantly restraining fossil fuel energy output, is that right? >> well, you can go on the web site and see what the plan is. the restrictions are he thinks that we should stop massive subsidies of the oil industry. and that has majority support of the american people. i find it a little odd to argue the economy's in tough shape, so the one thing that we should not cut are the subsidies to the oil

industry when we could be using that money for a whole bunch of more productive things that are more important for the growth of the country. i just find that -- gerry: just very quickly, vice president biden does plan a major fiscal stimulus if he's elected, and market seems to like that. they seem to be expecting, you know, a significant boost for the economy. there are an element of that program or an element of paying for that program is significant tax increases, raising corporate tax rates, on wealthy individuals. again, is that something that you would expect to change, is that something that might need to be reviced or should -- revised or should they just press ahead with those plansesome. >> well, you mentioned that in the content of stimulus. i don't think the stimulus and rescue money that is about covid, the vice president has said that should go on the national debt. that's what national debt is for. that should, we should not be raising taxes in the short term

in order to address what is a temporary phenomenon. for his build back better plan, which are about the longer term investments, he does want to raise tax it is on high income people and thinks that corporate taxes should go back to something like international and u.s. historic norms of 28% rather than the extremely low rates of 21% that were under the trump tax cut. i don't think that they've expressed what the timing would be, but my observation is in this covid recession there are widespread sectors of high income people and big corporations that have had no recession at all. their profits are higher than they were before, their wealth went up more than it was before. so the -- i do not think that the argument is cent that it would def -- is correct that it would devastate the economy. gerry: i wish we had more time

to discuss, but thank you very much, indeed, for joining us. hunter biden's e-mails have been in the news, but you wouldn't know it from the mainstream media. my next guest says news outlets, some of them anyway, shouldn't be getting our tax dollars. that's coming up. ♪ ♪ ♪♪ ♪ [ engines revving ] ♪ it's amazing to see them in the wild like th-- shhh. [ engine revs ] for those who were born to ride, there's progressive. [ engine revs ] noand if you're troubledan a liby falls and bleeds,ners. worry follows you everywhere. over 100,000 people have left blood thinners behind

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i need indeed indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a shortlist of quality candidates from a resume data base so you can start hiring right away. claim your seventy-five-dollar credit when you post your first job at indeed.com/promo ♪ >> i have heard joe biden say that he's never discussed business with hunter. that is false. i have firsthand knowledge about this because i directly dealt with the biden family including joe biden. gerry: that was hunter biden's former buzz partner, tony bobulinski, with explosive allegations on thursday. the question is hunter biden was seeking deals with a lucrative cut for the former vice president himself. now, there's no evidence of yet that joe biden was set himself to directly profit from the deal which, in any case, fell

through, but the story is of great significance. even if it was only hunter shaking down foreign governments, how much did mr. biden sr. know? how might it affect his judgment on policy? if you're in the unfortunate position of being confined this week to mainstream media and big tech, you wouldn't have heard anything about it. "the new york post" broke the story, there's been a concerted effort by the media to downplay or denounce the story. here's npr's explanation. quote: we don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste time on pure distractions. now, the stated reason given for refusing to follow the story was the very familiar one, it was, apparently, all made up by the russians. the media once again clearly taking their talking points on this from democrats. >> there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this -- he's accusing me of -- is a russian plant.

>> you mean the laptop is now another russia, russia, russia hoax? >> that is exactly what -- >> this is where he's going -- gerry: no one anywhere has provided any evidence to support this claim. mr. bob lib sky -- bobulinski, as far as we could tell, was not being controlled like a puppet by the kremlin. this is the same media that told us president trump colluded with russia to win the 2016 election. now the media have decided this simply is one story they're not interested in. with me to discuss is immediate research center tech vice president dan gainor. thanks for joining us. >> oh, certainly. we have to talk about it somewhere. [laughter] gerry: what does this mean for the media and way in which peope should treat the meet ya and respect the media, that they can just choose to ignore what, by

any standard, is an extremely important story. >> what it means is, basically, they're feeding us a constant narrative of news, not's necessarily what's news, but what they want to share with us. they don't want to damage the chances of their presidential candidate. we did a tallly, so far abc, cbs and nbc, occupant of 73.5 hours of broadcast time, 16 minutes, 42 we could ises with -- seconds. with abc, they haven't done one second. that's not news, that's, you know, censorship. gerry: what do you think can be done about this? i mean, we do have other outlets, "the wall street journal" editorial page has been writing about this, conservative commentary, obviously, fox news and fox business have been covering it. is that okay? can we just accept one set of media's going to ignore the story they don't like, and the oh media are going to do it? >> well, if the tech world were

weren't, maybe we could. but it's been more than a week, and the new york post is still silenced by big tech. and you've got, you know, national public radio, you know, the p in public, is not -- and the p for propaganda. we can't have all of the major levers of media in our country and big tech censoring stories they don't like. that basically leads to dictatorship. gerry: and you've been raising the alarm about national public radio, haven't you? tell us what kind of response you've had. >> oh, i've actually managed to make the term defund npr a trend on twitter twice this year. i've been very happy about that. my colleague, tim graham and i, this is one of our big pet issues. because american taxpayers are forced to pay for this, and american conservatives on shows like talk radio are forced to compete with their own tax dollars against liberal outlets. gerry: to me, one of the most

disturbing things of this whole episode is the way in which so many journalists have been prepared to, essentially, trash other journalists and accuse them of being assets of the kremlin, of the russian state. in the past, journalists -- there was always competitive rivalry, or but i don't think people were prepared to actually impugn people's patriotism and credentials. we've reached a really terrible point. >> well, we've reached the point where -- and we see it particularly in "the new york times" -- where the young, woke employees have no tolerance for neutrality, no belief in it, and you're not supposed to be an activist, they want to throw you under the bus. which is why we saw multiple people leaving "the new york times" editorial section this year. gerry: well, we're in the home stretch of the election now, tens of millions of people have already voted. what could yet change the trajectory of this race? that's next. ♪ ♪

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♪ ♪ gerry: there's lots happening. where does it all lead the presidential election race with just over a week to go? we've had the final debate, late-breaking story about the biden family's business ambitions and already 50 million people have voted. we need to preview this last lap, fox news contributor and independent women's voice senior fellow lisa boothe. lisa, thanks for joining me. >> thanks so much for having me, appreciate it. gerry: more quieter, gentler affair than what we had before. what effect will it have on voters, if any? >> if you saw in the 2016 election, so undecided voters broke heavily for donald trump in the final week heading into the election, so we'll see if that happens again this time in

2020. but what i saw last night was two diametric ily opposed governing styles. joe biden's been in office for almost 50 years, and he's been insulated from the policy prescriptions he's written. he's always gotten a government paycheck, he gets government health care, he's always protected, and i think that was very evident when he was talking about closing down the economy again for covid, talking about the minimum wage which would destroy businesses, talking about climate change which would destroy the oil and gas industry which he said he wants to move away from, whereas you have someone like president trump who has run a business, so he understands that his decisions have real world impacts and potentially, you know, closing down that business, potentially reaching its demise if he makes the wrong one or even running a country, his policy decisions, husband actions have real world -- his actions have have real world impact. and so i think that was one of the biggest things that stood out to me, or was really, you know, action and decisiveness versus someone who really thinks

in theory and comes up with bad policy prescriptions because he doesn't understand the impact of them. gerry: what about hunter biden? a lot of the media suppressed or ignored the story, but people know about it, it was in the debates. do you think it's going to change many minds? >> i do think it matters because it goes into why people hate politicians. you have someone who has enriched himself off of the taxpayers for 50 years, who allows his family to leverage that last name to make money. i think this is the reason why people chose an outsider in 2016, and again what we saw on the debate stage last night, president trump very much positioned himself as the outsider in the race, and joe biden is someone who's been there for 47 years, had every opportunity to do everything that he discussed he went ad -- he wanted to do last night and failed to do it. i think this hunter biden story gets into that mentality as well of this is what's wrong with politicians. gerry: and just finally, very

briefly, four years ago president trump was somewhere behind in the polls, did close the gap in those final ten days, two weeks. do you think that's going on again this time? >> that's what it feels like. that's a -- i feel like we're getting shades of 2016. and i think one thing that everyone might be missing, again, is increase in turnout in rural areas outside of the suburbs, outside of urban population centers. and we're seeing even in states like pennsylvania, wisconsin and michigan a massive increase in, you know, working class voters in terms of new registration particularly among white working class voters despite the fact that they're not growing as much in population size. so, you know, we're certainly going to see, but i do -- it feels like the media's, again, missing things and that pollsters might be missing things again. gerry: wouldn't be the first time, lisa, and we're in for a busy and frantic final week. thanks very much for joining us. coming up, thanksgiving dinner could be getting a coronavirus makeover.

new guidelines and regulations are hitting households in california. we'll tell you what they are next.

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california health department, they regulate how the state's residents may gather. here are some of the orders. no more than three households together at once. gatherings must be held outdoors, forget watching football with a beer in your hand. but there's good news for the beer drinkers, you will be allowed to go inside the use the bathroom, but only if it is, quote, frequently sanitized. while eating, maintain a 6 foot physical distance, so no passing the cranberry sauce. you have to throw it. face masks may be removed during mouthfuls of turkey, but the whole thing must be over within two hours. what on earth anybody would have to sing about faced with this kind of situation is hard to imagine. it's easy to laugh, but the nation's largest state is steadily being suffocated by regimes that seek to control every aspect of their citizens' lives.

be sure to follow me on twitter, facebook and instagram, and be sure to tune in next tuesday, october 27, for our fox business town hall one week ahead of election day. and i'll be back next week right herell street journal" at large. thank you very much for joining us. ♪ ♪ ♪ jack: welcome to barron's roundtable where we prepare you for the week ahead. i'm jack otter. coming up, tech industry funder scott galloway explains what the cracktown means for the future of google and big tech. and later coca-cola is dropping 200 of the company's beloved beverages. why barron's says it will remerge stronger. but we begin, as always, with what we think are the three most important things investors should be thinking about right now. the market finished down this week as stimulus stalled