john sole mon and attorney phil klein among our guests. reminder follow lou on twitter @lou done and follow him on instagram and parler @loudobbstonight. that's it. thanks for joi maria: good tuesday morning, everyone. i'm maria bartiromo, it is tuesday december 22nd, your top stories right now 6:00 a.m. on thethe east coast. making a deal before christmas. the house and senate overwhelming pass a 900 billion-dollar stimulus package giving americans another check and help for small business. some on capitol hill wondered what's in the bill and why there wasn't enough time to go through, more than 5,000 pages of legislation. we will go through this morning. we will follow all morning long. new congressman tom reed and california john garemendi all

right here. questions for hunter biden and bill barr. the attorney general says there's no reason to appoint special counsel and leaving the decision to next administration, hunter biden's father. former speaker of the house nut gingrich will weigh in. declines to dow industrials right out of the gael -- great this morning. fractional move. s&p 500 higher by 3 and 3 quarters. standing by for the final read of third-quarter gdp. growth expected to be at a whopping 33.1% for the third quarter and the final reading after the dow managed to eke out gains earlier after earlier sellout yesterday. the nasdaq pulled back from record territory down 13, s&p was lower by 14. big tech team up, facebook and google reportedly pledged to

help each other if ever faced with an antitrust investigation. that time is now, we are following the story coming up sky high, ipo, we are looking at blaze upcoming listing. the ceo joins us this hour why he's backing into a sp ack. mornings with maria live right now. ♪ ♪ maria: european markets look like this even as uk deals with

coronavirus varient that's transmissible. cac quarante up 43 and dax higher by 129, 1%. in asia red across the board. take a look at asian indices, red across the board, with shanghai composite with worst hit. down 2%. congress finally passing the much anticipated 900 billion-dollar coronavirus relief package overnight. 500,000 page include $600 of direct payment. kevin mccarthy told us and revises the paycheck protection program and provides funding for vaccine distribution in addition to short-up to fund the government through september. president trump is expected to sign this bill today and checks could roll out as soon as next week. on the vaccine front, dr. anthony fauci says the american public will likely get

covid vaccine by early spring, comments contradicting those made by joe biden's pick by surgeon general who said it wouldn't happen till mid-summer. the uk is dealing with a more transmissible variant of the coronavirus which is mutating at a much slower rate than seasonal flu. all of this as european union drug agency green lights biontech vaccine, distribution in 27 member states as early as next week. joe biden making more choices for economic team. former obama administration official david will join the the national economic council as deputy director, and consumer protection. joel gambel as special assistant to the president for economic policy. back on the campaign trail, president trump's daughter ivanka and senator kamala harris both stumping for their

respective candidates in georgia ahead of next month's crucial senate runoff elections, watch. >> i am confident that senators david perdue and kelly loeffler will keep the senate republican and win a short victory. >> everything is at stake. when it comes to the need to elect re rend raphael warnock, to elect john ossoff. maria: georgia secretary of state also sending 8,000 letters to out of state voters, out of state voters ha requested abseptember' -- absentee ballots. nasdaq is up 42, the s&p 500 is up 4, as lawmakers pass 900 billion-dollar coronavirus relief package.

300 in enhanced unemployment benefits. payne capital management ceo, ryan payne. jon hilsenrath. >> the log on the fire, maria, as you know, we have been bold. we think the real news is the vaccine coming and that's going to unleash a lot of pinned up spending and the economy will be booming and the comparisons are powerful. you have the fed pedal to the medal and every central bank coordinating with them and you have a synchronized global recovery instantly as vaccine

rolls out in the first half of the year. it's going to dwarf everything else that's going on. the physical package keeps people going between now and then which is a good thing and just it will add to the amount of liquidity out there once this thing gets going, so i don't think the fiscal package is what this is all about, frankly, but it's certainly another yield tide log on the yield tide fire. maria: that's a good assessment, steven. i'm glad that you think things get back to normal and ramping up and with interest where they are there's not many alternatives away from status. would you see another regulatory environment where that gets in the way of certain industries and gets you to look at specific groups more so than others? the regulatory environment will change likely, right?

>> right, now great stimulus under president trump we had the regulations going, you know, less choking of the economy going on in what was at the time a very stagnant recovery. so, yeah, the important point, maria, on wall street there's mixed views. there's plenty of people that a biden administration would be good for markets, the increase regulation, increase tax if we get them although it looks like we will not get that with the government being divided as it is unless georgia surprises us, regulations are negative for long-term growth probably, we will take down our growth forecast a little bit but, on the other hand, the power of the recovery next year i think is going to overwhelm those kinds of issues right now. maria: that's good news. what about europe grappling with

the new variant, but then this issue about lockdowns and the new strain in the uk, your thoughts on allocating money to europe? >> well, we've adding, we actually took ourselves back and then just last week and pulled back took us to first time in 3 or 4 years in europe. you know, they're a cicle environment. the cure is probably worse than the disease. the lockdowns, the cart is out of the barn here, i would guess,

the new strain is probably already in the u.s. or europe and i'm not sure if the lockdowns will help that much. at the end of the day, the vaccine and it's rolling out right now. europe will come around and it would be driven. maria: good news. is gdp this morning, stephen, baked into the cake? we get number at 8:30 a.m. i recognize this is a complete bounce-back from sharp contraction from the second quarter. but expectations from 33.1% for the final -- second estimate, the final read on the gdp which is out there morning at 8:30 and this is exactly as we saw in the second estimate, stephen? >> i don't think it'll affect markets much this morning, maria. the market is 3 quarters ahead in gdp. we think it's going to be pretty

good. we are ahead of forecast for that, so -- maria: all right, we like the assessment stephen auth, have a very merry christmas and we will see you on the other side. >> thank you so much. maria: stephen auth, retired general jack keane is here to how american should respond to foreign cyber-attacks, you have china spies and russian hacks, urban air mobility company blade, the helicopter company taking flight to public market, founder is here to talk about why he's backing into a spact and what that means. plus house speaker nancy pelosi's top spots with democrats may be in danger, newt gingrich will join us to assess

the field. in 8:00 a.m. hour i will be speaking with bill, russia's activities, all that coming up. don't miss a moment of it. you're watching mornings with maria live on fox business. (dog barking) ♪ sanctuary music

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maria: welcome back, caving bath communist party, billionaire technology tycoon jack ma offered any platforms as long as the country needs. that's according to wall street journal yesterday. there has been reportedly no decision by chinese regulators to take up ma's offer and potential 34 billion-dollar offering in new york stock exchange scuttled directly by chinese president xi jinping, jonathan ward. jonathan, great to see you this morning. we appreciate you joining me and the reason we started with the

story on the ant group it's because it's such a prime example of what has taken place. jack ma back in october gives speech criticizing xi jinping and then called to an office to speak with regulators and threatened him that he will pull the deal, take the company, they are still pulling the deal and still hasn't been able to get ant group to go public. your reaction of that situation? jonathan: hi, maria, good morning. it shows you the relations with chinese companies and the chinese state. they keep saying hauwei is not controlled by the government, the government has total power over the companies, jack ma was thought of an independent man in china and then revealed to be a

party member and then under pressure apparently offering, you know, pieces of his company to ccp and, of course, the chinese government has been doing everything they can to erase the lines between the private sector and the chinese state. this is part of how they intend to do innovation. it's part of how they intend to build capability and how that's you're investing when you're investing in china. alibaba is the largest single piece of the emerging market and potentially under scrutiny of being delisted and huge problem when people think they are investing in chinese-private companies and they don't understand the relationship between the party and the corporation. maria: very, very important point that you just made. already we know that msci index, morgan stanley index as well ft has dropped certain chinese companies that are tied to military because president trump put that in the executive order. the president signed into law

this past week that foreign firms including china's must have american regulators review their financial audits in order to trade on u.s. exchange. additionally, companies must disclose whether or not they're under government control. jonathan, what does this mean for the chinese companies that are traded in the united states, you just mentioned alibaba, how is this going to play out? jonathan:ic -- i think we will learn a lot of darker things. alibaba was named part of china's national champion's along with ten cent and another revelation this week was that they were advertising how to track minorities in china, the uighurs, the people in concentration camps and the idea that companies are totally

divorced from the horrible things going on in china is very misleading. at the end of the day, do they belong in our exchange, only if they are compliant. i think it's important that whatever rules go along with the sec to delist chinese companies should be adopted with allies, having an agreement in london so the companies simply don't go relist in another international exchange. they will wind up in shanghai and hong kong and therefore have access to global capital which also means that, i think, direct investment has to be, you know, examined by u.s. government. at the end of the day, we have to have a clear understanding of the ties between china's tech giant and china's state along with other strategic industry, you know, place like alibaba has 700 billion-dollar market cap and basically artificial intelligence innovation center. you could understand how that's strategically important to the communist party in china.

maria: jonathan, let's talk about this broadly speaking because you feel that it's going to be the corporation that is the tool that is really, the most important issue in this conflict between the u.s. and china. i mean, look, the chinese communist party has been very clear and they want to overtake the united states as the number 1 super power and doing in whatever ways they want to do it and that includes jailing people who don't agree with them. jimmy lai is sitting on a prison. we don't know if we will ever see jimmy again, he gave us his first interview before he was arrested and now he's behind bars and that's because he spoke against the chinese communist party and yet look at the other side of the story where you have companies like jp morgan, gearing up to own firm in china

and same thing with ubs, has ownership in china. goldman sachs getting ready to own -- ready to own companies. jonathan: i don't think the u.s. companies have been exposed to the problem here. as the chinese sort of champions grow, chinese companies are basic instrument of chinese grand strategy and how they build expand worldwide, it's going to put all of our companies in harm's way in global markets. our board rooms and ceo's has to begin to take china threat seriously and they have to be on the u.s. side and we won the cold war. they've always been a part of american grand strategy and that needs to happen again. they need to get on the right side of the issues and understand the long-term threat to them. the fortune 500 will change

entirely because of the rise of the chinese corporations and we have to be ready. maria: you didn't even mention military fusion, they are all in with the ccp, they have to be. jonathan ward, thank you very much, we been right back with general jack keane on the other side of this. ugh to top. well played. (vo) add some thrill to your wish list. at the season of audi sales event. get exceptional offers now.

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introducing the new sleep number 360 smart bed. now temperature balancing, so you can sleep better together. can it help keep me asleep? absolutely, it intelligently senses your movements and automatically adjusts to keep you both effortlessly comfortable can it help with snoring? i've never heard snoring. exactly. no problem. and... done. so you can really promise better sleep? not promise. prove. it's the final days to save up to $700 on new sleep number 360 smart beds. plus, 0% interest for 48 months on all smart beds. ends thursday. >> there's an investigation. i think it's being held responsibly and professionally currently within the department and to this point i have not seen a reason to appoint a special counsel and i have no plan to do so before i leave. maria: that was attorney general bill barr yesterday saying he

sees no reason to appoint a special counsel to take over the federal investigation into hunter biden's tax affairs. he said the same thing about an investigation into voter fraud allegations as well. barr's final day as attorney general is tomorrow. john, your reaction to that as joe biden is coming in as the next president and there won't be a special counsel according to ag barr to continue the investigation into his tax affairs? jon: well, that's unless his deputy jeffrey rosen decides to pull special counsel. barr is leaving in a day and there's still a possibility that a special counsel would be put in place and as i understand it the justice department is looking at those taxes and so then it becomes a question of whether you trust the kind of frontline justice department officials to fairly investigate hunter biden's taxes and whether you trust a president biden not

to interfere and i think people will have their own opinions on that, but i don't think that it spells the end of investigations or inquiries into hunter biden's affairs, certainly not if the republicans take the senate because you can be sure that senate committees are going to be looking at that too. maria: yeah, that's a good point there at this point is so much out there in terms of the deals that hunter biden did with ukrainian companies, on board of barisma making $50,000 a month and he was on putting a deal together with chinese state-owned cefc. here is peter, investigative reporter who has done a lot on the biden story. take a listen. the e-mail is saying, look, i need a set of keys for joe biden, jill biden, jim biden, my uncle, and the chairman of the c

fc, all of these people are sharing an office together in washington. how close can you get with the chairman of a company tied to the ccp. >> yeah, it's exactly right, maria. and that is a great example symbolic example of how the biden's basically have blurred their political activities and their commercial activities and how close and chummy they are. some of the directors of the company have direct ties to president xi, this is not some random chinese company on the fringes of chinese political life. it's at the center of it and this is the same entity upon which joe biden, you know, the so-called big guy was going to get 10%. maria: it just struck me that yesterday bill barr come out and says there's no reason to do a special counsel. i think you're right, we will see what his successor does

mr. rosen, ryan, what do you think about the story? ryan: clearly here there's a connection and it'll fall by the wayside. if you're the president, he's your son and under a scrutiny, hard prez to see this thing will go further. what's more common than that nowadays? yeah, i have a feeling -- maria: wait, what? what's more common than that? your son being on the board -- >> of ukrainian company, saying it's a very odd thing to have happened in general. you don't see -- it's not a normal thing to hear or see happen, so i think bottom line is, you know, there are some issues here but kind of swept away, it's my opinion. maria: wow, well that would be unfortunate given the fact that the chinese communist party has really managed to be successful in getting on the inside of some of the most important institutions in the country.

jon the string of indictments we saw this year proves that from the chairman of the chemistry department at harvard and houston embassy being shut down. jon: right, broadly speaking, i think this issue of chinese connections in the united states and potentially the connections back to the chinese government are going to be a big issue and i actually disagree with ryan. i think in the media certainly, you know, when you look at conservative outlets, i think the hunter biden issue isn't going to go away for a long time. i think it's going to be with president biden for most of its first terms. so, you know, in terms of these investigations by the justice department, i think we have to ask ourselves what does ag barr know and what does he not know. he's been a pretty ally to the president and why is he

dismissing this now. is it the case that he was an ally to the president or he doesn't think that there was something there and that's a question that we have to get our hands around. maria: he doesn't want to do the president any favors. he know the presidents wants the special counsel and on his way out, doesn't want to do anything additional. look, i take issue with you saying this is not going away because it did go away during the election, right, jon? twitter banned the new york post, would not report the story, most of the media except for fox a couple of reports, they wanted to go away with the media's help, with twitter. jon: here we are still talking about it so it hasn't gotten away. maria: we will not take the spotlight off of any wrongdoing and questionable situations where the president's son is

accepting money from a chinese company. we will keep talking about it and we will look at it next hour with the ongoing china threat front and center. a new report show that is the chinese government spied and surveilled cia officials for years using stolen data. we will discuss that with general jack keane coming back. top trending foods of 2020, the shopping list that might surprise you. we will be right back.

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maria: welcome back, good tuesday morning, everybody, thank you very much for joining us. i'm maria bartiromo, tuesday december 22nd. 6:35 a.m. on the east coast. half hour mark. s&p 500 right now up 4 and 3 quarters. futures are mixed this morning: standing by for third-quarter gdp, after dow managed to eke out a gain after selloff yesterday. fractionally moving yesterday. dow industrials down 37 and european markets this morning trading like this even as the uk deals with a coronavirus variant that's more transmissible. the dax index is up 133 right now. that's better than 1% in germany. in asia overnight, red across the board. fractional moves across the

board on downside. one of america's oldest movies studios looks to sell. lori-- lauren simonetti with the details. lauren: coowner of the bond franchise will get in on streaming. market value of 5 and a half billion dollars including debt. the sec taking aim at the crypto currency pioneer ripple alleging that one of the assets, xrp should have been registered with the commission and failing to do do so violated laws. apple reportedly setting a deadline of 2024 to build its self-driving electric car complete with its own battery technology set to drastically reduce the cost and increase the

range. apple's car plan code named project titan has been an open secret in the automobile and tech world for years. let's take a lack at apple shares this morning because they pack a punch, up almost 3%, maria, back to you. maria: already, lauren, ongoing china threat front and center. the new report says that the chinese government has spied and surveilled cia officials in africa and europa using stolen data, they've been doing it since 2013, this report guess on to say that in some cases the spying was so obvious some eyewitnesses think chinese government wanted u.s. intelligence to find out in order to disrupt cia operations. joining me right now retired four-star general, general jack keane, concerning report on the stolen data used to expose cia operators in africa and in europe? jack: yeah, certainly.

a bit of a surprise, frankly. so our viewers understand as china's national interest began to expand the globe and we've seen that in the last ten years, they are moving operatives into africa or into europe, so goes the intelligence agency. china is an adversary of the united states, we spy on them as they spy on us and as they are conducting the investigations, we want to be there with them to understand what it is their intent and what they are actually doing. the basis of that is largely we recruit chinese nationals to do this work for or people who are local to the population who are involved in the chinese operations in those countries. that is what the cia was doing and those operatives on the ground were being exposed and that's a shocking part of this and the source we believe is they penetrated our nets, they penetrated our communication nets and they also stole a bunch of data.

we know they like to sweep up huge amounts of data as they did of 22 million government records to include all military people as well in 2015 and as we now know that was actually going on as early as 2012. that includes my records, for example, anybody that had any association with the military or with government service, they have those records and they're had them for a number of years. this is very aggressive, maria, cyber operations by our adversaries is a huge form of national power and in a nonconflict, nonwar environment, when we are in the competitive zone, is what we are doing right now, we are competing against these countries, this is a major element that they use, not just to spy but as we are painfully aware of to steal huge amounts of intellectual property and also to influence american opinion and to influence world opinion to their favor.

major, major efforts, hundreds of thousands of people in china are involved in this, not hundreds, not tens of thousands, i'm saying hundreds of thousands of people work for the pla in conducting these very comprehensive operations. maria: really extraordinary stuff here, general. you've been on this program talking about their efforts in terms of their military, you say that it's the fastest-growing military in the world. we've talked about their navy, devin nunes joined me many times to talk about his investigation into their military moves whereas they put military bases across the world trying to control ports and water ways across the world as far as jabuti, they have a military base, a word on that and while the military is the priority for the chinese communist party? i mentioned earlier in my conversation with jonathan ward military fusion, anything that's created or used in the

commercial sector must first be used in the military and must be priority of the ccp which is the military, why? talk about their military and their aspirations, general? jack: well, as we know and said so many times, china wants to dominate regionally and replace the united states as global leader. to achieve that they have to achieve military domination and technological domination and they are moving very hard on all of the fronts simultaneously. think right now have a larger navy than the united states navy quantitatively, not qualitatively and the navy is coming forward with building

considerable more ships, 295 is where we are. the chinese around 355 and the navy wants to get up into the mid-300's in terms of the number of ships. maria: okay. >> it's a good thing. we need more ships but -- this is something that really has to take place in our government between the congress and the department of the defense. we need to see the strategy, not just the number of ships. we need to see the operating concept. how do we about chinese military capability indo-pacific region? how are we going to deal with the item? they have long-range missiles that can take out our ships. that means aircraft carriers that we have are vulnerable. our navy knows this. smaller, maybe better, more wildly distributed. we have to have those discussions, maria. maria: really important point that you are making, compare real quick, we only have a couple of second, compare the

threat of russia. much bigger threat. russia has the economy size of texas and yet we have the hacking, top u.s. agencies, treasury and commerce were hit by security breach from hackers thought to be from the russian government. the journal is reporting that several american businesses were breached as well, cisco, kent state university, general, how should the u.s. respond to this? >> first of all, putin plays a weak hand very well. i mean, you're right. his economy is in the tank. only certain percentage of the military is professionalized, 40% but he uses it add -- jointly, when we unpack this thing, it will take us months to figure out how extensive a

penetration they achieved. hit them hard. we know who did this, we have the best offensive cyber capability. we don't need to tell the american people the details of any of that but after, and i'm assuming we are either preparing to do that or we are in the process of already doing it. i also think the government should disclose to the american people what has happened. the american people have a right to know how extensive this is and give them some assurances that we got it, we understand it, we are going to fix it and we are going to do something about it. maria: all right, all really important points, general. it's always a pleasure to tap into your experience and brilliance, thank you, sir. have a merry christmas. jack: great talking to you, maria. maria: general jack keane joining us there. a new variant of covid-19 putting uk on severe lockdown. one medical expert weighing in next hour. first ceo of blade robert

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absolutely, it intelligently senses your movements and automatically adjusts to keep you both effortlessly comfortable can it help with snoring? i've never heard snoring. exactly. no problem. and... done. so you can really promise better sleep? not promise. prove. it's the final days to save up to $700 on new sleep number 360 smart beds. plus, 0% interest for 48 months on all smart beds. ends thursday. maria: welcome back, sky-high ipo, booking company to become publicly traded company of its kind when it hits the nasdaq some time next year. blank check company backed by capital. joining us is rob weisenthal. congratulations on the news. you must be looking forward to going public? >> a lot of work ahead but we are very excited. maria: tell me how business is,

rob, i know it's been a tough period in terms of the pandemic. how have you handled the changes? >> well, it's been very interesting. we've noticed the suburbs, people who have taken secondary homes and turned them into coprimary homes, commuting every day or once a week and as opposed to potentially just maybe going on weekends. it's a whole new way of dealing with cities and where people live. we now have a situation where people feel comfortable commuting up to 9 miles away for $95 or 195 hours and if you think of the volume it's pretty incredible because the offices are not fully yet and in new york city ground traffic of 90% of prepandemic levels and this is something that we will see across the country but what's

exciting here right now there's a radical transformation happening and with respect with electric cars, charging stations and now we are in point in next battles in the air and new the electric vertical aircraft are incredibly important because they are quiet, they omit zero carbon. they are not cheaper, they are quieter and that doesn't matter. this is a radical transformation that's happening in the next 2 to 5 years and it's going to completely change the way people travel in the air. maria: so i was just talking yesterday with one of your original founders and largest shareholders who is very much obviously looking forward to this. is the thinking now, rob, that

you will have the scale and funding once you do this deal, the spac and you will be better poised to take advantage of what you're expecting to be a boost in travel and boost in business once we get out of this? >> yes. morgan stanley has viewed this market and stated publicly this is a 150 billion-dollar market in 5 years and you have to look at this as a way index play on the electrification of vertical transportation in terms of replacement of helicopters. if you think of ha is needed we need infrastructure which we already have, we have 12 terminals, you need technology but we are not picking who the air is, air bus, liliam, whoever ends up whipping on equipment will end up being in blade platform and 6 years of building a brand, having infrastructure to make that a reality.

for us it's an equipment swab, we own no aircraft, the manufacturers and operators come to us. maria: fantastic, tell me about the cost involved in all of this, rob. are you going to be changing the way you allocate capital putting different priorities in place as you anticipate big boom in business once we get out of this in. >> yes, as you know we have strategy mode around new york city which is the largest in terms of revenues, vertical transportation market in the world. you can't fly into new york without going through or around blade terminal. we need to be in a situation where we have greater access to put start charging stations, health and safety monitoring, security, baggage check and we need to do that in other cities. right now we are in miami, we have access to the only rooftop

hele port in los angeles, you will see new cities, lower prices which will come down and, of course, expansion in asia where india is doing quite well. maria: wonderful. do you see differences in terms of the command? your customers, are they looking to go to different cities? where are you seeing the most questions and interest in as you look to expand own portfolio in terms of cities? >> well, i think the interest again is reducing friction, 2-hour drives into 5-minute flight to airport when travel picks up again to the airport which will inevitable will, that will be a huge business for us and now we have the new business of people commuting, people who left new york city and need to come to the city maybe once a week, maybe once every other week for a couple of nights or one night at the prices of $95 or $195 it's achievable and when you think about all of the

pinned up demand and pinned up cash of people who weren't paying for travel and restaurants, are ready to do it and they are starting to do that right now. we've never had a 1-day a week business right now. as you know, it's been pushed towards weekends, fridays and sundays and that's something that's really changed. so we've been actually modifying our routes along with the pandemic and our customers are telling us what they want and are delivering. maria: and are you seeing a broadening out of your customer-base with these declines in pricing, so if you're making it more attractive to take that trip, do you anticipate you will expand your audience that much more? our audience here are the highest income, we know that, what has happened to your clientele-base as you've dropped prices, rob? >> well, it's interesting. last year we shattered the uber

black price barrier to airport at $195 and what we are seeing is enterprise coming to us and saying, we need quick and efficient ways to get our passengers to the airport, sometimes at home, they have to be safe, we like your health and safety standards, we like the fact that you're allowing for enhances distancing on your aircraft and what we are seeing as prices are lower, the stigma of travel by helicopter which will be eliminated once we go to electric vertical aircraft has been reduced to the point where industry is interested in doing long-term deals with companies like blade to ensure that their employees can get safely, efficiently and in a very rapid manner to and from where they need to go. maria: rob, real quick, do you expect a change in regulation in order to have this electrifyied

portfolio? >> all aircraft need to be approved by the faa. the regulation that's actually helpful is the fact that hele ports need to be quiet. they have to be quiet, they need to be friendly to the communities, number one priority next to safety is being a gad neighbor and that's critical, more places to land and more places to go and that's how we grow our business. maria: robert, great to see you this morning. we will be looking forward to your spac, robert wiesenthal joining us from blade. we will be right back. s ♪ sanctuary music it's the final days of the wish list sales event . . . first month's payment.

to all the businesses make it through 2020... thank you for going the extra mile... and for the extra pump of caramel. thank you for the good food... and the good karma. thank you for all the deliveries... especially this one. you've reminded us that no matter what, we can always find a way to bounce forward. so thank you, to our customers and to businesses everywhere, from all of us at comcast business.

maria: welcome back. good tuesday morning, everybody. thanks so much for joining us, i'm maria bartiromo. it is tuesday, december 22nd. your top stories right now, 7:0. making a deal before degrees mass, the house and senate overwhelmingly pass a $900 billion stimulus package, giving americans another check and help for small business. some on capitol hill are wondering what's in the bill and why there wasn't enough time to go through the more than 5,000 pages of legislation.

we are following it all morning long and taking a look at specifics in the deal. hear what georgia congressman jody heiss has to say this hour, along with john reed and john garamendi. questions for hunter biden and bill barr. the attorney general says there is no reason to appoint a special counsel to investigate hunter biden's shady business deals across the world and is leaving any decision up to the next administration. led by his father. former speaker of the house, newt gingrich will weigh in. markets are mixed. we are standing by for the final read of the third quarter gdp this morning. expectations, 33.1% growth for the gdp in the third quarter for the final read. the dow industrials this morning down 14 points, nasdaq up 47, s&p 500 up about 5 points. going into the gdp number. markets managed to eek out a gain on the dow yesterday. dow industrials finished up 37, nasdaq down 13, and s&p down 14

points at 4:00 on wall street. big tech apparently team up. facebook and google reportedly pledge to help one another if ever faced with an anti-trust investigation. that is what we're looking at right now. we are going to take a look at big tech and anti-trust. and then new york city's housing problem, we will tell you who has been named the big apple's worse of t landlord and why, and then working it out, did women or men exercise more in 2020. the answer is making a buzz this morning. "mornings with maria" is live right now. european markets this morning look like this. the ft 100 is up 16, cac up 47, dax index up 135. this even as the u.k. deals with this coronavirus variant that's more easily transmissible. in asia overnight, red across the board, take a look. the worst performer overnight in asia was the chinese get,

shanghai down almost 2%. now some of the top stories this morning. congress finally passing the much anticipated $900 billion coronavirus relief package overnight, the 5,000 page measure includes $600 direct payments and an extra $300 a week in unemployment. it revives the paycheck protection program, extends they vicks moratorium and provides funding for vaccine distribution. it also helps the restaurant industry and the airlines. we're going to zero in on both of those areas coming up. all of this in addition to the shored-up $1.4 trillion to fund the government through september. president trump is expected to sign the bill. the checks could roll out as soon as next week. on the vaccine front, dr. anthony fauci says the american public will most likely get their covid vaccine by early spring 2021. joe biden's pick for surgeon general said it wouldn't happen until mid-summertime.

the u.k. is dealing with a more easily transmissible variant of the virus, which is mutating at a slower rate than the seasonal flu. this as the european drug agency green lights the use of the pfizer and biontech vaccine. joe biden making more choices for his economic team, former obama administration official david kayman will join as deputy director. a former aid to elizabeth warren will become deputy director for financial reform and consumer protection and joeelle gamble named as special appointment. >> i am confident that senators david perdue and kelly loeffler will keep the senate republican

and win an historic victory. >> everything is at stake when it comes to the need to elect reverend raphael warnock, to elect john ossoff. maria: georgia secretary of state brad raff own sending leto out-of-state voters that requested absentee ballots. time for the word on wall street. joining me right now is the gartman letter editor, dennis garth pman, ryan payne and paul donovan. great to see everybody this morning. dennis, kicking us off with the markets this morning, lawmakers passed that $900 billion coronavirus relief package which includes 60 600-dollar checks fr many americans, $300 a week in enhancend unemployment benefits, on the restaurant industry they say they're helping restaurants because they put that ability to

write off your meals once you again in this bill. thinking that people will go back to restaurants if they they can write off the meal. many in the restaurant industry saying too little, too late. what's your take on all of this? >> well, thankfully it's over, to paraphrase bob dylan, too much of something can make a man feel ill at ease. 5800 pages of information is a bit much to get through. it's not a stimulus package, it's a relief package and the restaurants of the country needed some help, no question about it. it's better to have it than not to have it. it sets a precedent that is bothersome and worrisome to me about the amount of spending that's going on. we needed it. it's done. it's over with. thank goodness. 5800 pages, astonishing it takes that much to get this thing passed. maria: what does it mean for markets, dennis, in terms of the charts that you're looking at so much? we just spoke earlier in the program with steven auff, he said i'm bullish with rates

where they are and with the vaccine on the market this will mean a new leg for nature get. ddo you agree with that. >> i have my doubts whether that's going to happen or not. the fact that we got the stimulus package passed, it has been fully discounted in the market. there needs to be new news to keep the market going higher. i loved stocks in late october and first of november. i haven't liked them in the past two or three weeks. i think we're starting to see the market rise on less volume, fall on larger volume. that's disconcerting, technically bearish. i'm new you trail of stocks. i think they -- neutral of stocks. it's still a bull market in the long term. but i think that we've come way too far, way too fast and i think that the technicals are starting to look deleterious. copper is weak. gold is weak. crude oil is weak. when those three things are weak, probably means weaker stock prices for the short term lie ahead. maria: important point you make

on copper and the commodities. ryan, you hear what's happening with copper, iron ore, etcetera, and yet we're getting the third quarter gdp coming out in over an hour. we're expecting a number of 33.1%. that would be unchanged from the second estimate a month ago. this is a final reading. i know it's a snapback from the second quarter contraction. what's your take on this impacting markets and the economic recovery? >> yeah, i mean, it's an awesome number. it's backwards looking. that's one of the reasons our of firm was bullish in march, april, one of the few firms that was for the record. what's more remarkable, if we look at gdp next year, we're calling for 4.5% which is just an awesome number. and when you start thinking about that, it's because we're going to have an absolute spending explosion next year. when you get to the second part of the year and that pent-up demand, consumers are sitting on $1.5 trillion right now, maria. and they paid down like $150 billion worth of debt. so it's kind of like we're going to party like it's the 1980s

when we get to the second half of next year. i talked to a lot of my friends, how they're going to go on trips and do like -- do it up next part of -- latter part of next year and i think the other tail wind here is talking about the '80s, is if you start thinking about the demographics, melen y'alls are getting -- millennials are getting into the peak earning and spending years and it's like the baby boomers in 1980s. my dad was a stockbroker and they lived it up. they had a great time. we could see the roaring '20s here. next year is going to be an awesome year. dennis, i love your bob dylan quote. had to get that in there. >> thank you. maria: that is funny. you're bypassing the '90s. you say we're going to be partying like the '80s. that was the disco time, wasn't it, the '80s. we'll see about that. paul, let's talk about europe for a second. europe's struggle against the new variant of coronavirus, most of the continent banning travel

from the united kingdom over this more easily transmissible virus, eu medical regulators approving the pfizer, biontech vaccine. your reaction as the u.k. races to get a brexit deal done. you're in europe, right? >> i'm in the u.k. so sort of, yes. maria: yes. you're in the u.k. this morning, right. i was just wondering where your shot was coming from. you're coming from the u.k. this morning. what's your take on all of the developments this morning in the u.k. and throughout europe, paul? >> so the thing about the virus, we said right from the start, the virus has very little economic impact. it's fear of the virus. and so the fact that we've got a more readily transmissible variant, that means that more people are likely to know someone who has had the virus, that may raise fear levels somewhat and certainly from policy makers we've seen a degree of fear. so that's going to lead to some economic repercussions, absolutely. however, as far as the u.k. is concerned, it's worthwhile remembering that people are able

to adapt in the face of the virus. so 45% of people in the u.k. can work at home full-time. that's always been the case. or roughly 50% of retail sales in the u.k. are done online. so people are adapting. we are sort of getting on with it. so it doesn't deny that there will be a negative impact from the fact that we've now got new restrictions and policy issues coming in but it does limit how much damage is being done. maria: yeah. and so from a u.k. perspective, are there headlines that you say are more impactful than others in terms of impact on markets, paul? >> well, what we've got to remember with the u.k. specifically is the ftse is a global index with a british accent which of course is the best accent to have. so what you've got is 70% of earnings coming from outside the u.k. so to a certain extent, the

local markets are independent of this. in terms of the headlines, i think the only headlines that would have major implications he globally was if this mutation of the virus was found to be resistant to vaccines. and we don't think that that is the case. the u.k. has been studying this and has been cooperating with the w.h.o. there's no evidence of that. there's every expectation that the vaccines will work against this variant as they do against all other variants. so unless you get some really bad news about the efficacy of vaccines, i don't think this is a huge issue. maria: all right. we will leave it there. dennis, paul, thank you so much. great word on wall street. ryan, you're staying with us all morning long. we'll get back to you after this break. your morning mover is here, peloton is soaring after the company announced an acquisition of exercise equipment manufacturer precore in a $420 million deal, help to increase the production of the bike and treadmills, a rise in

sales during the pandemic causing many customers being stuck waiting for their orders to be filled. the stock is up 9% this morning. wedbush and stifle raised the pricprice target. the stock is up 400% this year coming up, congressman eric swalwell and his status on the intel committee, georgia congressman jody heiss is here to talk about that. house speaker nancy pelosi's top spot with the democrat coughs be in danger. -- could be in danger. newt gingrich will weigh in. i'll speak with bill browder. joining me all morning is ryan payne and jon hilsenrath. we'll get back to the panel when we come back. you're watching "mornings with maria" live on fox business. ♪ come on and take a free ride. ♪ free ride. ♪

maria: welcome back. questions still swirling for congressman eric swalwell, house speaker nancy pelosi and house minority leader question thin mccarthy received a classified fbi briefing on the california's democrat's tie toss a chinese spy. mccarthy calling for the intelligence committee to receive the same briefing. yesterday i spoke with steve scalise who helped write a letter, calling for swalwell to be removed from the committee. >> it's alarming that eric swalwell is still on the intelligence committee, raises more questions about why he got on the committee, especially as a second termer. it's a very sought-after committee. clearly he had ties to a chinese spy. the chinese spy was able to infiltrate his own office. why is the democrat party, especially when you look the bay area, what's going on over there, it's alarming.

why won't they come clean? why won't speaker pelosi answer these basic questions? maria: joining me right now is georgia congressman, jody hice. it's good to see you this morning. thank you for joining us. your reaction to all that we know, whether it be eric swalwell and his relationship with this chinese spy, hunter biden and his deals with chinese companies, cefc wanting $10 million from the cefc chairman. we have e-mails asking him to wire that money, wanting key toss an office. a lot going on with regard to the chinese communist party and our congress. >> yeah, there is, maria. if we can wipe aside all the political talk and partisan politics, the bottom issue, the bottom line is national security. that's what ought to be the concern for everyone on either side of the aisle. and if we're talking national security, then there has to be a

great deal of disturbance and alarm when you look at someone on the intel community, intel committee, who has been involved in a five-year long relationship with a chinese spy. that is a national security issue. and we don't know what kind of information has been shared. we do know that china is not a friend of the united states. they've been trying to expand their footprint, economically and militarily and so forth. they've been stealing our intellectual property for decades and now someone on the intel committee has been having a relationship with a chinese spy. this is absolutely unacceptable from a national security perspective and at minimum he should be removed from the intel committee. maria: yeah. and that's what congressman questiocongressmankevin mccarthn sunday, when i spoke with him on sunday morning futures. he received this classified briefing from the fbi. here's kevin mccarthy.

watch. >> we finally got our of fbi briefing. it was just the speaker, nancy pelosi, and myself. the one answer that i got out of that briefing was there is no way eric swalwell should continue to serve on the intel committee. and the challenge here is the leaders of both parties are the only people who select to go on the intel committee. that is why today, maria, what i'm going to request, that every single member on the house intelligence committee gets the exact same briefing from the fbi that i did. because if this individual is sitting on this committee, eric swalwell, they've got to snow the background of what has gone on. maria: so do you think that nancy pelosi will take him off the intel committee then, congressman? >> i don't know. she should. i mean, nancy pelosi has demonstrated over and over of that national security and things that are in the best interest of our country are not a top priority for her, but rather pushing her own agenda

and she's done everything she can to protect swalwell. it's time she push all the poll of ticks aside and deal with this from a common sense kind of way. he ought to be removed. the intel committee should be briefed and we've got to investigate to the core. maria: yeah. let me move on to georgia, your home state. the senate runoffs two weeks away. it will decide the balance of power in the senate. what have you heard from your constituents? what are you expecting from they they? and do you think that the public is going to trust that this is going to be a secure election? >> we're doing everything we can to make sure this is going to be a secure election. we all know that the november election was a disaster. we don't want that to be repeated. of course, many people are upset. they are deeply concerned as to whether or not their votes are going to matter. they, though, at this point -- everyone has to get out and vote. the stakes are simply too high.

this is an election that's going to determine not just the balance of power in the senate, but the direction of our country. be it towards socialism or be it towards freedom and liberty that we all cherish. so if people are upset, no question about that, but they're going to vote. maria: all right. congressman, it's good to see you this morning. thank you so much. jody hice. we'll be right back. stay with us. ♪ wild thing, ♪ ♪ you make my heart sing ♪ ♪ wild thing i... think i... you know what i think? i think you owe us $48.50... wild thing. if you ride, you get it. geico motorcycle. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more.

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maria: welcome back. new york city's housing problem, a new watch list naming the new york city housing authority as the big apple's worst landlord. the report says that standards have deteriorated and open work orders in new york cha buildings have exploded to nearly half a million as of o as as of octobe. the mayor's administration being accused of refusing to hold bad

landlords responsible for their behavior. jon, this is one of the many problems we're hearing about in new york city. your reaction? jon: housing is a huge problem in new york city and most of the country's other big cities, especially in los angeles. i think the real problem here is land use and zoning problems, where they're just not letting builders build, they're not letting the private sector come in and put up buildings for people to move in and live in. you know, if they did that, you probably wouldn't need as much public housing as you have and if new york, los angeles, and other cities don't deal with it, then they're going to see more and more people leaving. it's old o housing stock that needs to be replaced by the private sector. maria: it's one of the reasons that people are leaving in droves, ryan. you've got homelessness on the street. you've got crime shooting up.

you've got obviously the bail reform law which did away with cash bail in new york. governor cuomo was giving a press conference yesterday. here's what he said as we end the year. watch. >> healthy holiday and i'm going to have a great one, santa's going to be very good to me. i can tell. i worked hard this year. maria: your reaction? ryan: yeah, i mean, let's face it, new york is not in great shape right now. i don't think cuomo should be patting himself on the back with regards to -- he didn't do everything right. he absolutely didn't do everything right with regards to the pandemic. i wonder because the economic situation in new york is not great, what's going to happen with the housing. we just you had an economic boom in new york for years and nothing was done. i wonder with the budget being

consistent strained -- constrained now, because people aren't here. i'm staying strong. a lot of my friends left the city. they're not coming back. it's hard to envision what new york will look like once we get the vaccine and the economy reopens again. maria: it's sort of a circular problem, right, jon? because when people leave, you lose that revenue. de blasio's complaining about a $9 billion hole in the budget. you don't have the money for the budget. you can't create the services and pay for the services that so many need and then it's this vicious cycle. jon: and this is where the city and the private sector have to get creative. you know, back in the 1990s, in the early '90s when they were having a real estate crisis in lower manhattan, they were creative with land use rules. they allowed some of the commercial property owners to move retail space or commercial space to residential space and

they just have to get creative and, you know, another problem is the whole nimbi problem. people don't want new building in their neighborhoods because they don't want new people in the neighborhoods and they don't want to lower the property values. if this is a crisis like they say it's a crisis, they ought to get bold and creative. let's not forget mayor de blasio is out next year. there's a big election coming up in new york city. i think it's going to get a lot of attention. maria: you've got business guys vying for the seat as well. coming up, house speaker nancy pelosi's top spot, the speaker of the house with democrats may be in danger. former speaker of the house, newt gingrich is here. the future of self driving cars coming soon from tesla. it is going to cost you. we'll explain. back in a moment.

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thank you for the good food... and the good karma. thank you for all the deliveries... especially this one. you've reminded us that no matter what, we can always find a way to bounce forward. so thank you, to our customers and to businesses everywhere, from all of us at comcast business.

maria: welcome back. good tuesday morning, everybody. thanks so much for joining us. i'm maria bartiromo. it is tuesday, december 22nd. a look at markets, 7:33 a.m. on the east coast. markets are higher, dow industrials up 12, nasdaq continues to push forward, up another 69 points this morning, half of a percent. and the s&p 500 right now up a

quarter of a percent, 9 points higher. futures are fractionally moving. we're standing by for the final read of the third quarter gdp this morning, expectations, 33.1% growth in the gdp for the third quarter. this after the markets managed to eek out a gain on the dow after an earlier selloff yesterday. dow industrials were up 37 points but the nasdaq was down 13 and s&p lower by 14, pulling back from record highs. european markets look like this as the u.k. is dealing with a coronavirus variant that's more easily transmissible between people. the ft 100 is up 17, the cac is up 51 in paris and dax index higher by 137. in asia overnight, red across the board. worst performer was china. shanghai composite down almost 2%. meanwhile, back in the u.s. congress is set to boost oversight of the federal aviation administration. lauren simonetti with the details right now. lauren, good morning. >> good morning, maria. congress is giving the faa new oversight on aircraft

manufacturer as part of the $900 billion stimulus deal. companies now required to disclose critical safety information, offer new whistleblower protections and set up an expert panel to evaluate boeing's safety culture. this after two 737 max jet crashes that killed 346 people and grounded the mo of del for nearly -- model for nearly two years now. lean cuisine is recalling 92,00n baked chicken meals after several people found pieces of hard white plastic in the product. possibly from a conveyor belt that broke during production. the recall only impacts lean cuisine baked chicken, white meat chicken with stuffing, red skin mashed h mash potatoes wit. in oregon, state police using pepper spray after hundreds attempted to storm the state

capitol to protest covid-19 restrictions, police declaring an unlawful assembly after demonstrators shoved officers and pushed their way into the building. all this coming after democratic governor kate brown extended oregon's state of emergency until march. and more than 70 cadets at west point accused of cheating on a calculus exam in the worst ache academic scandal in decades. 50 cadets admitted to cheating which was remote because of the pandemic. the majority enrolled in a rehab program and face probation. others resigned or could face hearings that could result in expulsion. the future of self-driving cars is coming soon, but at a price. elon musk telling his twitter followers that tesla's full self-driving feature will be available as a subscription service as early as next year. a beta version of the service is

already being tested by a small group of drivers. no details on how much it will cost, but if you want your car to recognize stop signs and change lanes and all that, it's going to cost you. maria. maria: all right. thank you so much, lauren. we are watching georgia once again. we are just two weeks away until georgians head to the polls. kelly loeffler and david perdue are looking to keep their seats. yesterday, ivanka trump and kamala harris campaigned separately in the peach state. take a watch. >> with your help, your voice, and critically, your votes, georgia, georgia, georgia will save america. >> everything that was at stake in november is at stake and it is within our power to change the course of the history of this country.

maria: joining me right now is former house speaker and fox news contributor, newt gingrich. you represented georgia in the house. how do you see things? do you see republicans keeping the senate seat? >> look, i actually think kamala harris by her candor further helped the republican cause. because she echoed what chuck schumer had said. first we take georgia, then we change america. so i think what we're going to find is that there's not a majority in georgia for radically changing america and certainly in both jon ossoff and raphael warnock, they've nominated extraordinarily radical candidates, one may be the most radical candidate nominated by a major party for the senate and i think they're almost certainly going to lose. it all depends on turnout. if every conservative and every moderate who of does not want to see radical change turns out to vote, then the two republicans will be reelected and that will have a huge impact historically

on what happens because if republicans have a majority in the senate and almost a majority in the house, that's going to moderate biden dramatically and frankly if schumer got to be a majority in the senate, that would embolden biden. i think this is the most important runoff in american history. maria: it is, and do you think people understand that? i mean, understand the stakes? because they've been very clear in terms of some of the things they want to do. they want to stack the supreme court. some people are talking about putting in multiple liberal justices, at least three or four, some people said many more, change states, make two new states from puerto rico and washington, d.c. and not to mention the things that joe biden has already told us he wants to do, higher taxes, $4.3 trillion in tax increases. that new green deal,

$100 trillion policy. newt? >> i was going to say, when raphael warnock, one of his sermons, said if you're for cutting taxes, you're for killing babies and he compared the people who voted for the tax cut in 2017 to king herod killing all the baby boys when jesus was born, now, i think the number of georgians who believe that voting for cutting taxes is the equivalent of killing babieses -- by the way, warnock himself is very pro-abortion so it's ironic position he took. i think very few people would equate tax cuts, -- you were talking earlier this morning about new york's problems. i thought de blasio was a huge help to the georgia senate race when he announced in his press conference last week that he was waiting on the budget to see who won in georgia, implying that if the democrats win in georgia, he expects to get money out of georgians to pay for new york's bills. but if the republicans win in

georgia, he's probably going to have to solve it without money from the federal government. i thought that was a signal to georgigeorgians from the mayor w york that their pocketbook is on the line with this election. maria: do you think people understand what's happening in terms of the push and pull within the democrat party? because you're hearing the extremists like an alexandria ocasio-cortez wanting to make these changes and people like chuck schumer going along with it. new york congresswoman aoc spoke out in a pod of cast interview last week, saying that it's time for house speaker nancy pelosi and senate minority leader chuck schumer to step aside and be replaced, newt. so she's being very clear, she says the current democratic leadership has not groomed any young lawmakers take on the roles and democrat house leaders are all over 80 years old. pelosi said if she he'll elect -- if reelected this upcoming

term it will be her last and aoc said she's not ready to be speaker yet. she said yet. >> i think aoc is -- gets a lot more publicity than her strength in the house wants. as -- warrants. as you know, democrats on the steering committee voted 46-13 against her. 46-13, almost four to one against her getting on the energy and commerce committee. i thought that was a really clear signal that there are a lot of democrat whose are fed up with aoc. she's has a big mouth but doesn't have a big following in the congress. she just proved that i think pelosi's problem is different. pelosi is presiding over a decaying majority. kevin mccarthy's campaign, his commitment to america, the recruiting they did, they had a dramatically better election than any of the national experts thought they would. instead of losing 15 seats, which is what pelosi thought, she thought she would pick up 15

seats from republicans, instead she lost something like a dozen seats. that's a swing of 27 seats and expectation. so she's down to a point now where she doesn't have many votes that she can afford to lose and still be speaker. and i don't think aoc has the courage to do it. if she wanted to, her and her group could stop pelosi in her tracks by refusing to vote for her. pelosi has to get 218 to be speaker. that's a narrow number, given how many losses they've had. maria: what's your take on the hunter biden investigation, newt? ag bill barr yesterday gives a press conference, says sees no reason to appoint a special counsel to take over the federal investigation into hunter biden and his tax affairs, he also said the same thing about an investigation into voter fraud allegations, barr will step down. his final day is tomorrow. your reaction? >> well, i've always opposed special counsels. i think that they're a terrible institution. all of them in the special

counsel think have to get somebody to justify what they're doing. i think the regular process, having a u.s. attorney who is responsible for tracking down all of hunter biden's activities is legitimate. whether or not the biden administration would try to cover it up, we'll have to wait and see. i mean, things are gradually dribbling out. it's pretty clear that they did have business ties in china, as well as in ukraine and in russia and in romania and i think at some point this will all come out. and again, if the republicans retain the senate, i suspect you'll get a congressional investigation directly into this and i think that the country needs to know. i mean, chinese penetration of our system is very, very real. the same crisis in the house, where congressma congress swalwn ongoing relationship for years with a chinese communist spy and

yet, despite that, nancy pelosi put him on the intelligence committee. that's another area where frankly i think people have to dig in. he ought to be kicked off the intelligence committee. people should ask what was his hold on pelosi that even after the fbi had briefed them that he had a relationship with a chinese communist spy, she still put him on the committee. that makes no sense. i used to have her role. i've appointed people to the intelligence committee. i can't imagine why you would appoint swalwell with his chinese communist ties. maria: yeah. what did he share with his friend, the chinese spy? we also have e-mails of hunter biden wanting keys to an office, wanting keys made to an office in washington that he wants to share with joe biden, jill biden and the chairman of cefc. listen to this. this is what peter schweizer discussed on sunday morning futures with me this sunday.

watch. the e-mail is saying, look, i need a set of keys for joe biden, jill biden, jim biden, my uncle and the chairman of cefc. so all of these people are sharing an office together in washington. i mean, how close can you get with the chairman of a company tied to the ccp. >> yeah, it's exactly right, maria. that is a great example, symbolic example of how the bidens basically have blurred their political activities and their commercial activities and how close and chummy they are. some of the directors of that company have direct ties to president xi, so this is not some random chinese company on the fringes of chinese political life. it's at the center of it and this is the same entity upon which joe biden, the so-called big guy, was going to get 10%. maria.>> i think center ron john has to continue with his

investigation. he's already found a number of things. i trust that the republican senate will continue to dig into this and, frankly, i think in the house pelosi has a huge amount to answer for in terms of swalwell and i suspect there will be a vote led by congressman mccarthy to kick him off the committee. so all these things are going to keep developing. the chinese are very aggressively competing with us, desperately trying to penetrate our society. biden himself had an operation at the university of pennsylvania which was accepting millions of dollars from china. it's all secret. nobody will tell us where the money came from, how the money was spent. i think all of us should be deeply concerned about the effort by the chinese communist to penetrate the united states. maria: yeah. absolutely. newt, great to get your insights as always. thank you so much. >> thank you. take care. maria: we'll see you soon. newt gingrich. coming up, the impact of the

lockdowns across the country, new york congressman tom read and california congressman jon garamendi are here to discuss that. first, a new variant of coronavirus putting the u.k. on lockdown. a medical expert weighs in on that. and then the battle of the sections, did would -- sexes, did women or men exercise more in 2020. the answer making a buzz this morning. you're watching "mornings with maria," live on fox business. this week on "mornings with maria," tomorrow, facebook and twitter executives opening up their wallets for biden. parler ceo jon mace reacts. then thursday, the word on wall street, our expert analysis on how to create your own christmas rally, it's all right here on "mornings with maria." the usual gifts are just not going to cut it.

we have to find something else. good luck! what does that mean?

we are doomed. [laughter] that's it. i figured it out! we're going to give togetherness. that sounds dumb. we're going to take all those family moments and package them. hmm. [laughing] that works.

maria: welcome back. the u.s. surpassing 18 million covid cases, this as a new highly contagious mutation of the coronavirus hits the u.k. officials say it could be as much as 70% more transmissible than established strains. dozens of countries have banned passenger flights from the u.k. as they try to keep out the mutation. joining me now is the president of the rockefeller foundation, dr. rajiv shaw. thank you for being here. should the u.s. be worried about this new variant. how do you see things? >> thank you for having me. i do think we should worry. but the reality is that we have a strategy in place and the rockefeller foundation has worked all year to advance expanding testing and diagnostics as the core strategic approach to getting people who are infected out of the chain of transmission. and it turns out the new variant is probably not going to be a

significant challenge to existing diagnostics and testing technologies that are being rolled out you across america. so one of the big stories is our testing capacity should go up to north of 100 million tests a month in just a few weeks and at that level of testing we can do things like reopen many schools that have been closed, particularly for younger kids and do that safely and effectively despite the new variant. maria: yeah. i love this. i know that the rockefeller foundation is releasing its third national covid-19 testing action plan. you released it last week, calling on the government to scale up the virus testing to 300 million tests a month for students, teachers and staff in order to reopen nearly 100,000 public schools by march. this is going to cost an estimated $42.5 billion. dr. shaw, tell us more about what's needed and which tests are priority for you. i mean, there are a few tests, the rapid test, there are tests that you get the conclusion the

next day. tell me about the differences in tests and what you would like to see. >> sure. well, first i'd just point out that keeping americas' schools closed is costing our economy $700 billion through the course of the semester. so 20 to $40 billion in costs to get schools open safely is not -- is actually a very wise return on investment from a public spending perspective. second, the testing technology does exist and exists at scale to achieve that level of testing. i think you would -- to your specific question, you would want to start with making sure where teachers and adults in the school setting can get pcr tests, whether they are rapid or require going to a lab and getting a result within 24 to 48 hours. that's probably the best for teachers. but where that's not possible, pooled pcr testing and antigen testing which is where the huge growth in volumes have been, many are rapid antigen tests, you can get a result in 20 minutes. as i mentioned, they're pretty

effective no matter which variant of covid-19 you're discussing. and they're very effective as infectiousness tests. they tell you whether you're symptomatic or asymptomatic, they tell you whether you're likely to spread the infection to others and that's it at the y most important for screening people out of the school setting and doing surveillance so you can keep schools and other critical institutions functioning until everyone can get the vaccine. maria: you make such a great point, in terms of making sure schools are opening. we also have evidence that the young people are not susceptible to catching this, certainly not as much as older people. so you just said that keeping schools closed is costing the economy, you said $700 billion. walk us through that. how do you get to that number and explain the dangers that we are faced with because our students are learning from home.

>> well, you know, that is the real truth of american education, is for many, many working families the ability to send your children to school safely is what allows you to be working effectively outside of the home. and for essential workers across this country, they don't have the luxury necessarily of zooming in to work. and so as a result, that's why you get the huge economic impact of keeping schools closed. the other impact of course is student learning loss. there's more than 50 million students in public schools in america, we're seeing more than a year of learning loss, we're seeing the learning loss much more severe for minority students and low income students that are unlikely to recover. we're seeing higher incidents of child abuse and death fromchild abuse. schools are a safe haven. it's where children get access to social services. these are avoidable consequences in the united states of america.

thanks in part to the dramatic scale-up of testing that is about to be realized over the next seven to eight weeks. maria: yeah. so many important points from you. great to see you this morning. thank you, sir. we'll keep following that. we'll be right back. still ahead i'll be speaking wit-- t-mobile is upgrading its network at a record pace. we were the first to bring 5g nationwide. and now that sprint is a part of t-mobile we're turning up the speed. upgrading over a thousand towers a month

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maria: welcome back. good tuesday morning, everybody. thanks so much for joining us. i'm maria bartiromo. i'm is tuesday, december 22nd. your top stories right now, 8:0e east coast. making a deal before chris, the house and senate pass a $900 billion stimulus package, giving americans another check and help for small business. some on capitol hill are wondering what's in the bill and why there wasn't enough time to go through the more than 5,000 pages of legislation. we'll zero in on the important parts of the bill all morning of long. questions for hunter biden and now bill barr, the attorney general says there's no reason to appoint a special counsel to investigate hunter biden's shady business deals and he's leaving

any decision up to the next administration which will be led by his father. what comes next, coming up. markets this morning turning positive, take a look at futures, a gain at the start of trading this morning, up 12 points on the dow, up 67 on the nasdaq, 8 and a quarter on the s&p ahead of the final read of the third quarter gdp. we are expecting a number of growth of 33.1% for the final read in the third quarter after a contraction in the second quarter. yesterday, the dow managed to eek out gains, the other averages were under selling pressure. markets did come off of the worst levels of the day by 4:00 on wall street. the nasdaq was down 13, s&p lower by 14 yesterday on wall street. big tech apparently teaming up, facebook and google pledge to help one another if they ever needed to and they ever face an anti-trust investigation. yes, we are following the story. and 2020's top foods, we're taking a look at america's shopping list this year, it's making a buzz this morning. "mornings with maria" is live

right now. european markets this morning are largely higher. take a look, even as the u.k. deals with the coronavirus variant that's more easily transmissible among people, the ft 100 is still up 24 points, the cac is up 54, the dax index up 142 points this morning, that's about 1% in germany. in asia overnight, red across the board overnight, worst performer was china, shanghai was down almost 2%. now some of the top stories we're watching this morning. congress finally passing the much anticipated $900 billion coronavirus relief package overnight. the 5,000 page measure includes $600 direct payments and an extra $300 a week in unemployment. it also revives the paycheck protection program, extends the eviction moratorium, does thing for the restaurant industry and airlines, in addition to shoring up $1.4 trillion to fund the government through september. i spoke with house minority

leader kevin mccar mccarthy on y morning futures. >> this would allow for the small business owner and their employees more than $300 billion in ppp, this could help our ability for tax incentives to help the small business restaurants. there's so much in this bill that could help us and the unique part about this is, we're able to resend the money in the cares package before that we appropriated that were not spent. so we're being fiscally smart and also very smart about helping the american public in this economy. maria: you don't have in there liability protection and you don't have in there aid for the states, correct? >> yeah. we need liability protection. unfortunately, the democrats will not allow that to happen. the trial lawyers are very strong with the democrats. and so the state money should stay out along with the liability protection and we need to come back and solve that. maria: president trump is

expected to sign this bill and the checks could roll out as soon as next week. on the vaccine front, dr. anthony fauci says the american public will most likely get covid vaccines by early spring, contradicts comments made by joe biden's pick for surgeon general, he said it wouldn't happen until the middle of the summer. the u.k. is dealing with a more easily transmissible variant of the virus which is world health organization officials say is mutating at a slower rate than the seasonal flu, as the european drug agency green lights the pfizer and biontech vaccine. it could roll out as early as next week. on the campaign trail, in the u.s., ivanka trump and senator kamala harris stumping for respective candidates in georgia ahead of next month's elections. watch. >> i am confident that senators david perdue and kelly loeffler will keep the senate republican

and win an historic victory. >> everything is at stake, when it comes to the need to elect reverend raphael warnock, to elect john ossoff. maria: georgia secretary of state also sending 8,000 letters, 8,000 letters to out-of-state voters that requested absentee ballots, out-of-state. relief for the american people, lawmakers approve the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill last night along with a $1.4 trillion spending bill that will keep the government funded through next september. here to talk about it r50eug9 rw is tom read and jon garamendi. it is always a pleasure. thank you so much for being here. let's talk first about the covid relief bill. what was in it that's most important? what do you wish you got to that

you couldn't get to? congressman garamendi, kick us off. >> well, let's start with the big shout-out to tom and the problem solvers, very, very well done. they got us on the right track after seven, eight months of going nowhere. the most important thing in this bill is the -- is to get covid under control. and so the money for testing, the money for relief, the money for vaccinations, all of those things are critically important. if we can't get that under control, we can't deal with the other issues. education is the second big piece of this in my mind. small businesses and the checks going out in unemployment insurance. four big things, all of them there and a big shout-out to tom and the problem solvers. >> thank you. maria: congressman reed, what about that? how were you able to corral your colleagues to agree to certain things even if some of their most important things weren't in there, like the aid to the states which i know the

democrats were pushing pretty hard on this. >> well, i thank john for that shout-out. i appreciate his hard work, getting that done. it was making sure that everyone knew that we couldn't have politics driving the ship anymore. it was about putting the american people first. once we told our leadership and others that we needed to get this done and we weren't leaving for the christmas break until we delivered for the american people, that the tide turned and they knew we were serious and they took it from there and finished it off and kudos to our of leadership for finishing this deal and getting it done. the biggest thing from my perspective on top of all the assistance to individuals and folks that are suffering are the things that will be delivered for small business in america. when you have $325 billion in paycheck protection program relief, businesses like a restaurant, like our small business owners, they're going to be in a position to get a second round of paycheck protection program relief that will get them through to the finish line with the distribution of the vaccine occurring and the money here to

get that done, that's the ultimate solution for the covid-19 crisis. get it in the history books by getting that vaccine distributed and behind us. maria: very good news, gentlemen. i thank you as well on behalf of our audience. i know people wanted this done, certainly before christmas. i want to ask about three items here. number one o on the restaurants. we can go out to lunch and take people out to dinner and can write it off. great. the restaurant owners are saying that's not what i want, i just want to have my restaurant open. it's not big enough to get the write-off to encourage people to go to restaurants. number one. number two and three is the liability insurance and the aid to the states. john garamendi, i know you and your colleagues, you wanted to get money to the states and i know tom reed you and your colleagues wanted to have businesses protected so they don't open businesses, somebody comes in and gets sick and then gets sued. walk us through those items,

john garamendi, kick us off. >> first of all, i think there is a solution to the liability and that is use the occupation safety health act regulations on how to deal with coronavirus. put very good, severe regulations in place. and if a company or restaurant or anybody else is obeying and following the regulations, they ought to have liability protection. if they're not, then they ought to be able to be sued. with regard to state and local, we really need to get down to the fine print here. we need to be really careful, how we define which entities need help. some cities, some counties are doing okay. others are in severe, severe problems. so we ought to be able to define who needs the help. maria: that sounds fair. tom? >> yeah. when you look at the compromise that's going to have to be reached, we in the problem solver's caucus working with our bipartisan senate group, the gang of eight, we were able to deliver legislative text on

liability reform and state and local aid getting into the weeds here. and that moved the ball forward. we weren't able to get it done this time but like for example, when you look at liability reform, people have to understand, this isn't about just big corporate america. this is about our universities. this is about our college campuses. this is about our hospital ofs. this is about our small businesses. and you got some growing concerns coming down the pipeline and remember, under liability reform, 80% of the cases will be taken care of by workers' compensation. workers' compensation is going to take care of the meat packers and the folks that are working because they're going to be covered by workers' comp and so once you start recognizing that, we were able to move the ball hugely forward because then people started focusing on the real issue, what is that liability exposure. and with liability carriers, potentially disclaiming coverage, that's defense coverage as well as your indemnification on judgments. if they lose defense coverage that will force republicans and democrats to recognize the

crisis that is coming down the pipeline real quick that's going to have to be solved. people are going to have an attorney to defend them that 24 think is going to be paid for by their liability carrier. maria: i love it. all really important points that you both make. gentlemen, you both know that people are going insane over the lockdowns. john garamendi in california, tom reed in new york, i want you to hear what devin nunes told me on sunday morning futures. take a listen. >> the whole state of california is completely shut down now. and then like right here in d.c., so i don't know what biden and harris' plan is to unbury these cities that the democrats are destroying. we're going to have a situation where the people who make things in this country and most of the counties around this country who grow things, have energy, and keep the country going, those areas are doing pretty well. you'll have cities that are completely dead and they're going to expect a bailout and i don't think the republican senate will do that. maria: so what are you going to

do about it? i know that on the 23rd, tomorrow, all restaurants are going to be shut down in washington, d.c. as well. what are you going to do about this, john garamendi. >> what we're going to do about it is implement what's in the $900 billion piece of legislation and that is to get on with the testing, get on with the covid distribution. let's recognize that people are dying and the infection rates in california, across the nation, are soaring through the roof. one way to get it under control is to obey the masking, obey the social distancing, and a brief shutdown will stifle and starve the virus. beyond that, it's laid out there in the legislation. let's get out underway and follow the advice of the public health officials. it is tough. it is extremely difficult. nobody wants to be locked in their home and nobody wants their business to be shut down. maria: that's right. >> we have no choice right now. it can be for a very short

period of time, if all of us follow the rules and did the things that prevent or at least slow down the virus. maria: well, congressman reed, a lot of people are saying i am following the rules and i'm still losing my business. we had bob nardelli on the program, he said i just had a meeting with small business, they don't want ppp. they want gdp. they want their businesses to open and they want economic activity. congressman reed. >> well, when you look at -- if you follow data and when you look at lockdowns, follow the data. we saw the restaurants, the transmission rate is nominal with regard to in-person dining. that being said, the ultimate solution to this is get the vaccine distributed, get herd immunity. not in the projected september date that is widely accepted now. move that date forward. get closer to the spring, as much as possible. working together to get to that herd immunity, that's going to be the ultimate solution to this envelope the meantime, you talk about local and state government. what we move the needle on is

recognize -- we can't have bailout of states and local governments. that's not what we're talking about in the proposal. what we're talking about is recognizing this is a natural disaster caused by a virus. so the lost revenue which is not based on projections but actual revenue, from pre-covid to post-covid, there's accountability and that brings people together. look at the legislative text we were able to put together on local states. that brings republicans and democrats together to solve this issue. >> maria, if i might, let me give you an example. let me give you an example of what can be done. maria: final word from you. yep. >> university of california davis developed a very quick antigen test. it's now available in the community. they're able to keep track of who is infected, who is not infected. that will allow for the opening of the businesses. so there are solutions of out there. 24 need money to -- they need money to do that. that's in the legislation. maria: i love it. i love it. guys, when do you expect to get back to the state aid and liability? is that a march affair,

march 2021? >> in my mind, seene sooner ratr than later. tax deductibility is in the bill too for all those businesses that are concerned about it. we got that done for you. maria: all right, gentlemen, we've got to jump. great to see you both. merry christmas guys, thank you. we'll be right back. when it comes to autism, finding the right words can be tough. finding understanding doesn't have to be. together, we can create a kinder, more inclusive world for the millions of people on the autism spectrum. go to autismspeaks.org hey, our worker's comp insurance is expiring. should i just renew it? yeah, sure. hey there, small business owner. pie insurance here with some sweet

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maria: welcome back. so google and facebook want to protect one another from an anti-trust aca shun. that's according to a draft of a lawsuit filed by ten states against google last week. which accuses the search giant of enlisting facebook to rig advertising auctions in order to curtail competitive moves in the ad space. google commands 90% market share in advertising. the journal -- in search, rather. the journal quotes the draft, writing this. the companies will cooperate and assist each other in responding to any anti-trust action and promptly and fully inform the

other party of any governmental communication related to the agreement. jon, what do you make of this? do you expect either tech giant to be broken up amid these charges? where is this going? jon: i think state attorney generals in the federal government are going after this. this story by my colleagues is almost comic. the investigators are looking at whether the two companies are working together, colluding, working together to control a market and the two companies' response is we're going to work together to argue against the case that we're working together. it's just -- it's really bizarre. it seems like they're kind of just shooting themselves in the foot here. maria: and i'm so glad the journal broke this story, jon, because it basically shows you that in fact they are working together, that was the whole genesis of the suit. jon: that's exactly my point. that they're kind of proving the point by saying they're going to

work together to defend themselves. this is one suit. but there's others. this is ten mostly republican ags. there's another suit out there, bipartisan, more than 30 ags. the federal government is looking at them. i think this is a bipartisan issue that's going to nag at the big tech companies in the next few years. maria: so the issue for you, ryan, becomes do you want to invest in these companies if they're going to be forced to break up or if they're going to be forced to pay out who knows how much in fees and fines. ryan: it's a great point, maria. and they're two of the largest companies in the s&p 500. their valuations are already through the roof. you have amazon, we talked about this last week, the eu is going after them for their marketplace practices. so i think you're going to have this ironic thing next year where the economy booms and the s&p 500 could possibly lag because the big tech companies now and i agree, it's

bipartisan. they'll have fines, new rules in place. that could be a game changer and you could miss out on the whole economic recovery by just concentrating your money there. i think it's a good reason to diversify right now and not just own the s&p 500. >> jon: ryan, did that argue for going into mid caps and small caps? ryan: 100%. small caps probably benefit the most from the reopening of the economy and they had the best november in the history of small caps, that shows you that's where the money is going. maria: what did the russell do in 2020? i know the nasdaq is up better than, what, 40% in 2020, ryan. ryan: the russell 2000 is up over 20%, it's exceeded the s&p this year. and it has much more runway because the nasdaq now trades at like 35, 40 times earnings whereas small cap stocks trade more like 17, 18 times earnings. much better opportunity. lower cost and much more runway. jon: do i have time to jump in

with one last -- okay. maybe not. maria: go ahead, jon, you really don't. what's your -- we'll get to you after the break. coming up, exposing moscow, hermitage capital management ceo, head of the justice campaign, bill browder is here on russia's bad global behavior. stay with us did you know you can go to libertymutual.com to customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need? really? i didn't-- aah! ok. i'm on vibrate. aaah! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ to all the businesses make it through 2020... thank you for going the extra mile... and for the extra pump of caramel. thank you for the good food... and the good karma. thank you for all the deliveries... especially this one.

you've reminded us that no matter what, we can always find a way to bounce forward. so thank you, to our customers and to businesses everywhere, from all of us at comcast business.

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browder is here. bill, it's great to see you. thank you so much for being here. i hope you've been well. i think our audience knows your story. but i'll recap briefly. you were at one point the single largest individual investor in russia. you owned a whole host of russian companies. you were going back and forth to moscow and other places in russia, checking in with these companies, interviewing these companies, ensuring that they were worth your investment dollars. then you became annoying to the kremlin. you wanted to make sure that you saw an end to corruption, you wanted like every other investor wants, you wanted dividends, you wanted to know that your money was safe. you didn't want to see corruption and that's when they turned against you. you were on your way to moscow one day, you were at the border, they said you can't come in. go away. you're on my list that you can't get here. and then things turned really bad. what happened then, bill? >> after that, the russian

police raided my office in moscow. they raided the office of a law firm that i used, american law firm. they seized all our documents. and after that, they used the documents to steal our investment holding companies, fraufraudulently reregistering m and then they applied for an illegal $230 million tax refund, they stole 23 of $0 million of taxes we paid, officials of if russian government participated in the fraud. i had a young lawyer who helped me uncover it. he investigated it. he exposed it. he testified against these officials and then in retaliation for his testimony, he was arrested by the same people he testified against, thrown in pre-trial detention where he was tortured for 358 days and he was killed on november 16th, 2009, 11 years ago at the age of 37, leaving a

wife and two children. since then, i've been on a mission to get justice for him and put aside my work as an investor and we've gotten something called the magnyski act which imposes visa sanctions and asset seizes on the people that killed him. maria: you've been a pioneer and patriot torques be able to get this -- patriot, to be able to get this through and force justice. i'm so sorry that you dealt with what you had to deal with, bill. i like the way the wall street journal begins its editorial on russia's solar wind pac, you know a security breach is bad when nobody in government wants to talk about it. a number of government agencies were breached as well as companies. your reaction to this russia solar wind hack, big. >>bill.>> i'm certain that it s

russia. there have been a whole string of cyber attacks, hacks, and various types of things coming out of russia for years now. and just to put this in perspective, russia is not a massive economy that can fight with us on equal footing economically. they don't have a massive military. their military budget is 90% less than the u.s. military budget. the only way they can really fight with us is saw a asymmetrr fare. that is best done secretly and covertly like computer hacks. they can say it wasn't us but we flow it was them. this is one place where the damage is really hard to measure but it's going to be huge. we don't know what information they've got and how they're going to use that information but what we do know is they're going to use it malignantly. they're going to try to do something bad, that's for sure. maria: yeah. well, this is all really important conversation and i agree with you on the threat of

russia. i say it all the time, that the economy of russia is the size of texas. versus the chinese communist party which is the second largest economy and is a much bigger threat because of its goal to overtake the united states. having said that, russia is also an issue. what do you think about how a biden administration is going to handle russia? what should be done now? >> well, there's two things that need to be done. one is there needs to be tripling sanctions -- crip martin luther king -- crippling sanctions against vladimir putin and his regime. there also needs to be -- if they're going to launch a cyber war which is what they've done, then we need to retaliate. we need to hit them hard, hit them so hard that they understand that if they do this kind of stuff, it's going to hurt them and hurt them badly. and from a biden administration standpoint, the one thing that's

really important is that he is now indicated his willingness to work closely with the eu and that's in a stronger block against russia is going to be very powerful. maria: all right, bill. we'll be watching. very important, your voice, to get in on this subject. thank you so much. we'll see you soon. bill browder. we've got third quarter gdp final read out. let's get to lauren simonetti, she's got the numbers. and talk about this with the panel. we've got the gdp read at 33.1% was the expectation, let's talk jon hilsenrath, your reaction to what we're seeing this morning on markets reacting to the gdp number. jon: that's about in line with expectation and it was a good bounceback in the third quarter from a terrible contraction in the second. when you add up all the numbers at the end of the year, according to a survey that the journal does with economists, we're going to be down about 2 and-a-half to 3% overall for the whole year of 2020.

but we should get a bounceback in 2021. the first quarter's going to start off slow because of coronavirus but we're expecting a pick-up as the year progresses into the 4% range. maria: yeah. it's actually better than we thought, 33.4% is the actual number versus the estimate of 33.1%. here's more on that with lauren simonetti. go ahead, lauren. >> so maria, this did come out a little bit late but the number is a little better than expected. this is how fast the u.s. economy bounced back over the summer. as you noted, 33.4%. that is a record. but unfortunately, maria, it was boosted by the nice weather and the lockdowns being lifted. it's considered old news now. we've seen the recent jobs report and other data that has deteriorated. nonetheless, this is to jon's point of, the full year we are expecting a contraction of 2.4%. but we just got a relief deal. so these numbers are back dated and they keep changing by the

state of the virus, the state of the relief bilks the state of the economy overall. but no reaction for the market. dow futures still down about 12 points, both before and after the release of this better than expected gdp read. maria. maria: all right. we should point out that for the fourth quarter we are expecting growth and the atlanta federal reserve has growth in the fourth quarter at 11.1%. just to underline the numbers, we've got a gdp for the third quarter of 33.4%. we're going to slip in a short break and look ahead to the fourth quarter and 2021 when we come right back. ♪ sanctuary music (kids laughing) (dog barking)

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maria: welcome back. good tuesday morning, everybody. i'm maria bartiromo. it is tuesday, december 22nd. we just got the final read on the third quarter gdp, the growth in the third quarter, 33.4%. that was slightly better than expected. futures are really where they are because this was very much in line with the estimate, dow industrials down 7, nasdaq composite up 63, s&p higher by 7 and-a-half. joining me right now with reaction and how he's allocating capital is the chairman and ceo of gamco investor, mario gabelli. on the phone with us right here. i hope you're doing well. what's your reaction to the gdp and where we are here as far as the backdrop for investing? >> that's a good question. a good way to start, maria. i looked at the world from a point of view of w with a swish, in other words, at some point you would have a slowdown because of lack of economic

stimulus and some -- the winter effect of the virus. so we're there. then as you go into q1 and q2, you're going to have some fairly good growth, in part because of first round of the stimulus but secondly, you've got easy comparisons in the second quarter. and the market discounts that. so from the point of view that you're asking, we -- the imf put out $102 trillion gdp. united states is 24% of that. china is 18.5%. europe is 20. so europe's lockdown is going to have an impact, japan is 5, 6, they'll benefit from china and exports. the u.s. consumer's in great shape in terms of certain sectors. and this bill will help those that need to have healthcare and cash flow for the time being until we can open up jobs. so the economy should be quite well. the corporate profits will be a little impacted by the weakness in the u.s. dollar because of the currency impact.

they will be impacted by the gross margin narrowing because of ppp costs and taxes, you know, probably on a cash basis they will go up. book, i don't know. clearly -- but then the multiple is the question for stocks and there's a lot of sectors that will do extremely well. maria: all right. let's talk about those and how you're allocating capital right now, mario. you are a stock picker and you've been a darn good one over the years. i know you were looking at infrastructure companies and also bedding companies. how are you allocating capital? where are you going to get the return in 2021? >> that's interesting. you have changes in who heads up the regulatory bodies. janet yellen will do okay at treasury. there's a case that the fcc brought to the supreme court dealing with the notion of reviewing the rules that consistenconstrainthe broadcast.

if the supreme court says we've got to change the rules and they can compete, you want to own sinclair broadcasting, $28, a play on sports. you want to own gray television in part because of their georgia tv stations but also doing a good job with capital allocation and you want to own nex star. i think you make 50% in all three of those stocks over the next two or three years. independent of that, go back to your infrastructure play. we need inland waterway, we need bridges. 40% of our bridges are rated d plus. you know, you've got to -- but you also need broad band in rural america and everyone is in favor of that you want to buy that by owning companies that are involved in rural america, the telephone world in the broadband area and for example, john malone through a company called liberty broad band, they just merged and they give you a discount on buying charter. grace construction products, $23

stock, 70 million shares, spun off years ago. starboard elected seven of the nine directors. you want to look at take-outs. sports, they're back. and betting, betting, the whole ecosystem, what barry diller was openly buying a speo speos of m- piece of mgm, you have that. caesars has william hill. you want to own the ecosystem of betting, and they help advertising and they have eye balls that will stay tuned long to the games and you want to own the sports teams. madison square garden with the knicks, they are certainly going to improve over the next several years on their record. the stock is a good christmas present for someone, a teenage daughter, a son, and you want to own liberty braves, the atlanta

braves which is selling around $24, owned by malone. plus, it's fun to own. maria: yeah, i want to go back to a couple things you said there and one of them is mgm. we know that mgm is now up for sale. it's in play. how does the valuation look to you? do you want to buy -- >> that's the too hard 20 die. mgm, content and content is important. if you have content like viacom has and trying to recalibrate a distribution and you're at $25 billion company, that's important. the movie company, i don't know it because it's not public and i don't have the details on it. obviously they have a film lie library. so does amc, which is -- you know, the walking dead. barry diller did a fantastic job. love making is very important, not only in match.com but in corporate cold. lockheed just bought a company.

they've done a fabulous job of bringing on a ceo. the stock is 52 and-a-half up from 40. they're taking out at 56. steele partners, the control of it, the stock is $8. $9. that's going to go up sharply. there's a lot of elements in the ecosystem. and spacs, private equity, ipos, some of them will turn out to be distake disasters butn balance m&a is okay. maria: okay. so we just spoke with the founder of blade. he's backing into a spac, going to go public as well. i know that's all the rage. what about social media, mario? these companies are facing a slew of lawsuits in the us and abroad, number of lawmakers including president trump calling for the controversial section 230 of the communications act to be removed. your thoughts on the state of social media companies and

whether or not you want to avoid them with all of this regulatory change. >> that's a great question. and obviously going to have a magnifying glass by owners of those stocks. we're not big owners. but on the other side, we look back at 1910 when you had the various federal trade commission, the rules come in with regard to regulation, 1983, 4, 5, i was following the telephone companies. ma bell split up. we made a ton of money on those. today you have a refocus on what is the role of section 230, what is the power of free speech, should there be control. more importantly than that, do they have a juggernaut on the distribution. how does jeff bezos do this? how does -- the vertical integration, it is zuckerberg. what is he doing? these are questions that will come up. from our end, the companies have great cash flow, great structures, but the europeans

are going to be the ones that probably will lead the initial charge. and we don't have a point of view. i don't have a point of view on the stock. maria: by the way, mario, i know there's limited amount of players but your firm has been expert if aerospace over the years and you mentioned that lockheed martin deal the other day. are we going to see more consolidation in that space? >> yeah, marie ya maria, that'st question. you're seeing it in the biotech world, the utility area in the united states, renewables, wind, solar. you have to have cyber security, battery storage. we put out a report recently on the notion of love our planet and people dealing with that subject but we have to have nat gas as an intermediate step to accommodate our social needs. what happens if we have a war? not we, but if iran has a problem, you know, we've got to have a backup reserve just like we needed to have the scientists

of the world united for the next round of covid of some sort. so that's a big plus. and then there's a lot to go on in the auto industry in terms of evs, what apple announced the other day in terms of -- last night, so that ecosystem is center of the orchestra of what we're doing and how we look at it and we look at valuations. auto nation, if they decide to spin off, the equivalent of carvana, bricks and mortar, similar to what they did -- walmart, when they bought jet, it became more of a mull at this moment it's selling at a -- multiple. it's what they could do with auto nation. maria: it's great to get your insights. we'll see you soon. >> have a great holiday. good christmas. i was wearing a tie today but i took it off finally for you, maria. take care. [laughter]

maria: thank you. disney executive chairman bob iger and his close ties to china, what that means for the future of the film industry as he mulls a potential position in joe biden's cabinet. and the battle of the sexes, did women or men exercise more in 2020. the answer making a buzz this morning. you're watching "mornings with maria" live on fox business. ♪ now is the time for a new bath from bath fitter.

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maria: welcome back. filling out a biden cabinet, disney executive chairman and former ceo bob iger reportedly under consideration to become joe biden's nominee as u.s. ambassador to china. iger has had close business ties with china, the company even

opening theme parks in hong kong and a resort in shanghai. joining me right now is media capital technologies president, chris fenton is here. it's great to have you this morning. thanks very much for joining us. we want to talk about all things movies and films with you. let me ask your thoughts on bob iger and whether or not you think he would be tough on china as an ambassador. >> well, look, there's nobody more qualified than probably bob iger to handle that job. the big question is whether he can remove conflicts that he has and whether he has seen the light in regards to the threat that china poses to americans. quite frankly, one of the big things that he has to remember is that in that position, he is not representing the interest of shareholders. he's representing the interest of americans, the policies that we're pushing, the values, the principles we hold dearly. if i'm senators cruz or blackburn or schumer, i'm asking tough questions that tackle a

bunch of the issues that he needs to be very direct about, from human rights issues, to propaganda issues, to commerce issues, to even freedom of the press issues. i mean, in fact, if you look back the last october, when the nba controversy came out, there was an internal e-mail that went through espn, which is owned by disney, telling journalists on espn network not to talk about sensitive issues involving china. is that a policy he wants to press upon all american journalists if he's in that ambassadorship. these are tough questions he need to get answers to. maria: that is exactly right. really well said, chris. i could not agree more. china becoming one of the fastest growing film markets in the world and they've been bullying hollywood for years. will hollywood movies change to confirm to china in order to benefit from the massive box office revenue? i mean, we had jonathan ward on earlier in the program. he basically said corporate america has not gotten the memo,

okay. they are gearing up to go open up businesses in china. the banks are going of to own their own companies. that's what the chinese communist party gave to the banks in response for the nice lobbying effort they did to the government. so tell us about the situations where hollywood did roll over to the chinese communist government. was it their situation for top gun, with tom cruise. there are a couple situations where movie producers decided to make changes because the ccp didn't like what was in the film. >> look, it's a great question. it's something that senators should ask quite frankly bob iger. he's been front and center of that. i have iron man 3 behind me, that was one of his big movies. marvel is one of the most valued entertainment ips on earth in that market. when you look at the fact that iger allowed the chinese government to have 57% ownership of the shanghai theme park just to get access to build that

park, or the fact that they only get 25 cents of several dollar for every movie that's released over there which is half the global average or the fact that during the mulan controversy this past september, the chinese government came in and shut down the expansion rights of the hong kong theme park during that controversy, so are those things that he's going to put up with as ambassador, is he going to push back on the ccp and say enough is enough? those are the tough questions we have to ask and those are questions that all c-suite executives are going to be watching. maria: that's exactly right. it's all well and good until the chinese communist party takes over america and your kids and their kids don't have the same opportunities that you had. let me switch to streaming. wonderwoman, 1984 debuts in theaters and on hbo max on christmas day. can't wait to see it, chris. this as more films turn to streaming and video on demand releases throughout the

pandemic, including mulan on disney plus. what's the shift to digital all about? what does it say, post-pandemic. >> i hate to bring it back to china. quite frankly, warner media and at&t's strategy was to make the movie work big in china as it opened over the weekend. it opened to half of what the last wonderwoman did. that is a market that has theater going in the cultural fabric. here in the domestic landscape, we're going to see streaming really take over. it's a really tough situation for exhibiter as we know it right now. maria: we hope that the people in charge understand the threat and hold firm as the ccp continues to try to steal more intellectual property every day from america. chris fenton, it's good to see you this morning. please come back soon. thank you, sir. >> happy holidays. maria: we will be right back. stay with us.

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maria: welcome back. time for the morning buzz. 2020s grocery list with the most trending food and drink, 0-calorie soft drinks then for cheese mexican blended cheese and rounding out the top three flavored potato chips. line, what you think? >> i eat a lot of tacos during quarantine, but next year they are looking at almond butter and sparkling probiotic water as the place to be. i'm drinking beer and pizza next year, that's it. maria: wine was on the list as well. what's your favorite? >> i'm with ryan. on the out of touch with america. for me it's bourbon, not heavy whipping cream and

its bourbon, not diet cola. >> i approve. maria: cheers to you both. thank you for the great show, always a pleasure for me too hang out with you both. thanks to the fantastic panel for today. have a wonderful day. "varney & co." begins right now. take it away, stu. stuart: here's a headline to grab your attention, and apple card production by 2024. tesla is already shaken up the auto industry, imagine what an apple car would do. sources insist on apple car is in the cards. couple of details, it would be for single drivers, not taxi fleets and would feature what is described as innovative be autonomous driving and battery technology.