legends of young female fan to check out boosting ratings higher and wishing joe biden had done the super bowl interview. enjoy the game shannon. dan:you make a good point are yr snacks ready? we will watch a show and then watch the big game tonight thank you howie that is it for us today. thank you for joining i'm shannon bream see you here for the next fox news sunday. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ maria: good supgd morning everyone. g twok "sunday morning futures,"ev i'm maria bartiromo. thanks so much for joining us this morning.ir today, twoom fable to prosecuteo buset apparently just fine to rn the free world. stunning remarks from the

special council on thursday.l co on joe biden's mental capacity sparking joe to lose his cool ic a prime time speech thursday night. the there's even reference i don't remember when my son died.d. how in the hell dare he raise that -- frankly when i was asked a question i thought to myself --u waghs it any of damn business -s my memory is fine. ready, or did president biden and the democrats use different criteria when choosing biden's vp? >>st it's got to be a good president. to if matter who you are, things happen. it's got to be number one. maria: coming up, the chairman of the house oversight committee, james comer, on biden's mental capacity and the

alleged influence peddling and money laundering underway for years. this just days before former hunter biden associate tony bobulinski takes the hot seat behind closed doors this upcoming tuesday on the alleged millions of dollars the biden family has been accepting from china and other foreign adversaries. then, former director of national intelligence john ratcliff on what special counsel hur really said on classified documents and why the u.s.' adversaries are exploiting biden's a weakness from china to iran and beyond with. plus, heads are beginning to roll in the republican party with 268 days until next day as president trump seeks the gop if presidential nomination. republican donor and new york jets owner woody johnson on the shake-up underway on this super bowl stunned. -- sunday as a some republican senators are calling for mitch mcconnell to step down after no border security was put in place despite billions of dollars additionally expected to go to ukraine. utah senator mike lee on the botched senate border deal and

mitch mcconnell's future leading the senate. the fallout coming up. it's all a right here, right now on "sunday morning futures." ♪ ♪ b. maria: we begin with special counsel robert hur telling attorney general merrick garreland he will not recommend charges against biden from his time as a vice president largely because he is too feeble to prosecute, and an elderly man with memory issues. hur wrote when investigators interviewed biden, quote, he did not remember when he was vice president, forget forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended and forgetting on the second day when his term began. he did not remember even within

several years when his son beau died. following the damaging conclusions released in the report, president biden addressed the nation in a prime time news conference on thursday night. >> i ap am well meaning and i'm an elder layman, and i know what the hell i'm doing. i put this country back on its feet. i don't need his recommendation, my memory is fine. take a look at what i've done since i became president. none of you naught i could pass any of the things i got passed. how'd that happen? i guess i just forgot what was going on. maria: oh, yes, we are taking a look at a it. just minutes after the president claimed his memory is just fine, he confused the president of mexico with the president of egypt while addressing a question about israel's war existence hamas. against a hamas. >> i'm of the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in gaza, in the gaza strip has been over the top.

as you know, initially the president of mexico, city city, did -- sisi, did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in. i talked to him. i convinced him to open the gate. maria: now republican lawmakers are calling on biden's cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment to remove president biden from the oval office due to concerns over his meant ifal capacity. all of this in the middle of charges of corruption and money laundering from the house oversight committee which is about to interview former hunter biden associate tony if bobulinski in a closed door interview on capitol hill this upcoming tuesday, 10 a.m. eastern tuesday in front of the house oversight and judiciary committees. the first son, hunter, is expected to get interviewed at the end of this month. joining me right now in this "sunday morning futures" exclusive is congressman james comer. mr. chairman, thank you very much for being with us this morning. >> good morning. maria: your reaction to the special counsel's report.

>> well, it was pretty surprising that the special counsel would state the obvious in writing, that joe biden's mental capacity is diminished. i think we see that play out on a daily basis. what i'm concerned about is the fact that hidden within that document is evidence that the some of the classified documents he mishandled were from ukraine and china. and as you know, maria, and as special counsel hur should know, we've been leading a major influence peddling investigation of the president where we've proven that at the very least his son and brother had been influence peddling with those two countries. we want to know exactly what those documents were, and we want to know if hur actually interviewed jim biden and hunter biden because, look, this family well -- has been involved in influence peddling for decades. this is shady, this is counter to everything we stand for in america, and it's a threat to our national security.

so we have a lot of questions about hur's report beyond the fact that he tate thed the obvious -- stated the obvious with respect to the president's mental capacity. maria: it's obviously become a national security threat at this point given all of the formers coming into the country -- foreigners coming into the country, particularly the i chinese nationals. we're going to get to that in a moment. i know you're interviewing tony bobulinski this upcoming tuesday. what are you expecting to get from if him? >> well, tony bobulinski appears to be the one honest guy that was involved in all of these biden business deals. in fact, he was so honest it looked hike hunter cut him out -- like hunter cut him out according to the e-mails at the very end and kind of ripped tony off. but tony bobulinski was privilege to a lot of information about just exactly what the binds were going to do with china, and i think it's important for the american people to know exactly what cefc

was, who actually owned it and what role joe biden played in cefc. and i think tony if bobulinski has those answers, and we're very excited about his interview this week. maria: let's talk about in a moment. bobulinski worked with hunter biden in cefc. he said he met with joe biden in 2017 even though the president has continually denied that he had any involvement in his son's overseas business deals. in december bobulinski told me in part he should call his son hunter and brother jim as they can remind him of the facts. the american people deserve the truth. i call on mr. biden, he said, to stop lying and correct the record. both james biden and hunter biden are scheduled for closed door, sit-down interviews in the coming weeks as a republicans in the house dig deeper into these allegations against the president over influence peddling, money lawpped arerring and bribery. congressman, i want to get your take on how severe this is and how much money the biden family

has actually taken in. do you have evidence of millions of dollars that china has given the biden family? >> yes. and we have different accounts for what the purpose was, hunter biden told the banks it was a loan even though he didn't have any loan documentation. but we've had interviews and depositions from people that were involved in the biden schemes, and they've said it was for other reasons that vary all the way to simply a thank you payment from china for the good work joe biden did while he was vice president for the chinese communist party. so we have a lot of questions about the purpose of this money. i don't think any american is okay with the fact that joe biden's immediate family started receiving millions and millions of dollars just weeks after he left the vice presidency. china's our biggest adversary, and we need to know exactly what the chinese were paying the biden family members for. and i think we've seen now with

all the evidence that's played out they weren't paying hunter biden for his brilliant mind. they sure as heck weren't paying jim biden for his brilliant mind. we want to know what the chinese expected of the bidens and what exactly the bidens delivered. one of the things that tony bobulinski has said in interviews in the past is the fact that joe biden was the big guy. he was going to be a 10% equity owner in a deal cefc had with the bidens. and this is very concerning because one of the few things we have bipartisan support for in congress is to block the chinese the from buying farmland, from buying interest in our energy industry, from buying interest in our manufacturers. but it occurs that's exactly what cefc was trying to do. they were trying to implement the belt and road initiative in the united states which is counter to everything that we believe in in america. so tony bobulinski has a lot of insight and we're, again, really hooking forward to this

interview in a couple of days -- looking forward. maria: do you believe tony bobulinski has more recordings that he's been holding on to for a rainy day? >> i don't know, that's something we'll find out. we're, again, very optimistic about this interview because, look, he was on the inside. and, you know, he's been treated very poorly by the bidens. they've attacked him. you can interview tony bobulinski, and you get a picture of what those of us on the oversight committee have been through. we have been obstructed, we're been harassed, we've been intimidated by the white house, by the media, by the biden legal team. but at the end of the day, tony bobulinski's going to have an opportunity to tell the truth, and then jim biden and hunter biden will be days later in depositions and interviews, and they're going to have to answer to a lot of the questions and statements that tony bobulinski will make in his transcribed interview. maria: we're trying to

understand specifically what joe biden was being paid for, right? so when you look back in the history of biden as vice president, we know that he signed a memorandum of understanding back in 2013 or '14 where he allowed thousands of chinese companies to trade on u.s. exchanges and not follow any accounting rules. they don't follow the same securities and exchange commission rules that all the other public companies have to follow. we now see that chinese nationals are flooding the u.s. border. the homeland security committee was told that border chiefs believe that they are letting in chinese spies. we know there was a major cover-up of covid, and we know that they've been stealing intellectual property for decades. are any of these things reasons that joe biden allowed and he got paid for them? >> it certainly looks that it could be that way, maria. look, you throw in him canceling the china initiative which you and i have talked about on your show before, and what we see is a president that has a china

first, america last policy. and that doesn't make any sense. so we want to know, is the president compromise. if you look at the foreign corrupt practices act, it defines what constitutes a bribe and giving gifts and excessive payments to family members would constitute a bribe. maria: yeah. okay. >> so joe biden has a lot of explaining to do, and that's what we e hope to find out in our next three major depositions. maria: mr. chairman, real quick before with you go, you could not get it over the finish line to impeach alejandro mayorkas. i believe congressman steve scalise is coming back next week. are you going to try this again? what are your expectations? >> yeah, thankfully i wasn't in charge of that effort, but i believe that scalise will return this week, and it's my understanding that's on the agenda, so hopefully we'll get that job done and finally start to hold someone in this administration accountable for what's going on at the southern border. maria: okay, sir. we will be watching all of that. we so appreciate your time this morning, thank you. >> thank you.

maria: house oversight committee chairman james comer. thank you. up next, chinese nationals creating a mini army here in america. nearly 20,000 encounters of chinese nationals just since october. the majority, military-aged men on top of the 24,000 last year. finish are they running from persecution or being directed to come here from xi jinping? former director of national intelligence john ratcliffe on why biden reversed trump's border security policy on day one and has yet to acknowledge the chinese communist party exploiting the wide open border. stay with us. ♪ ♪ ♪ voya ♪ there are some things that work better together. like your workplace benefits and retirement savings. presentation looks great. thanks. voya provides tools that help you make the right investment and benefit choices. so you can reach today's financial goals. that one. and look forward to a more confident future.

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maria: well, your critics are saying you're going to start another trade war. >> it's not a trade war, i did great with china with everything. look, china came in, they were going to destroy our steel industry, and i put big with tariffs, 50 forth -- 50% for the most part. i have steel people that every time they see me, they start to cry, they hug me. of they say, you saved our industry. now we're letting it go. maria: "the washington post" is saying you're talking about 60 pr tariffs on chinese goods. is that in the cards? >> no, i would say maybe it's going to do more than that. look, i want china to do great.

maria: and that's former president trump in my exclusion arive interview here last week on his plans to counter china's aggression against the united states by leveling major tear tiffs -- tariffs on chinese imports. the ccp has ramped up its aggression against america, sending a spy balloon, ownerring secret police stations in major cities across the country, sending the underlying chemicals for deadly fentanyl into america and exploiting the crisis at the southern border with thousands of military-aged chinese nationals flowing into america illegally every day among other acts of aggression. meanwhile, china is strengthening its diplomatic ties with american adversaries. on thursday xi jinping spoke with president vladimir putin of russia on the phone, pledging to work together in defending their sovereignty, security and development interests according to chinese state-run media. the two planning on doing joint drills soon. joining me right now with reaction is former director of national intelligence john

ratcliffe. john, it's always a pleasure to talk with you. thanks for being here. >> you bet. good to be with you, maria. maria: let me start and get your take on this classified docks investigation, what you -- documents investigation, what you heard from special counsel robert hur. >> maria, i think that, you know, contrary to the spin from the biden white house and the media that a's trying to help them, joe biden, i think the most important takeaway was not cleared of wrongdoing. the special counsel clearly found that joe biden broke the law, that joe biden broke the law repeatedly, that joe biden broke the law willfully and that he broke the law knowingly, that he committed multiple felonies under multiple statutes including the espionage if act a, that he met every element of those crimes. now, where things kind of go astray is despite all of those crimes, the special counsel in this case, robert hur, pulled a jim comey. he essentially said just as jim comey did with hillary clinton

that even though joe biden committed every element of every crime that he set forth, that he wasn't going to recommend charges for joe biden. and he offered two reasons for that. one of them is a legitimate consideration. the other one was not. the one that was not was he said, well, we're not going to charge him because he's cooperated. i think you and i have talked about this before, maria. cooperation is not a defense under the law. it's something that can only be taken into account by a judge at sentencing. it's as if, you know, bank robbers don't get to return stolen property and not get charged because they cooperated with the government. the only legitimate basis for robert hur not to recommend charges is the noncampos mentis defense which is essentially that joe biden was too mentally infirmed to stand trial. the problem for that, of course, is it creates the catch 22 of if he's too mentally infirm to stand trial, how is he not too mental ally infirm, you know, to

run the country. and so i think's going to cause political damage from now until election day for joe biden. but with, maria, i think this is actually going to have a significant legal impact beyond the public's perception of a two-tiered system of justice, an actual impact on the same a case and the same charges against donald trump. and the reason i say that that, maria, is if i'm the federal judge down in florida looking at this, judge cannon, i'm thinking why is this case even in my court? and the next time special counsel jack smith shows up in my courtroom, for my question for him would be, look, i've got a 300-page report from ooh another special counsel, from the same biden justice department, who says that the target in that case, mr. biden himself, committed every element of every crime set forth in here, but the department of justice says we're not going to charge a him. and yet here you are in my courtroom saying it's a matter of national interest that we not only move forward with these charges, but that we absolutely do so before the november

election. it just doesn't jive. and so i think that that's very likely what's going to happen here. maria: well, we're also waiting on the colorado decision in terms of taking trump's name off the ballot. so we are basically relying on the supreme court for all of this. >> yeah. i mean, i think it shows the wisdom of the founders in setting up a system of checks and balances, you know? very clearly here, you know, going back to, or you know, the hur report, you know, this is the biden administration using the justice department to commit election interference. and i think the supreme court is seeing that, you know, the state of colorado with a completely democratic supreme court following suit here was really just -- you know, arguments that don't make any sense under the 14th amendment. i was heartened to hear all of the supreme court justices, the liberal ones and the conservative ones, really question the soundness of the state of colorado's argument

that somehow the state would have supremacy over a federal candidate and the ability to disqualify them. you know, chief justice roberts pointed out very quickly that, look, if we we ruled in your favor, things are going to turn just the opposite where where red states are going to knock liberal candidates off of the ballot, and we'll have all chaos. but i think the most important thing was all of the liberal justices like ketanji brown and kagan and even sotomayor pushed back on this idea, you know, where the 14th amendment, everyone knows that the history of the 14th amendment, maria, was to take power away from the states, and yet here's the state of colorado saying it actually gave them more power, power over the federal government. and it just doesn't make any sense. and i think the supreme court will rule quickly on this, and i think they'll rule fan mousily on this -- unanimously, that the state of colorado will lose and president trump will win. maria: and you're expecting that ruling to come within the next week or two.

>> i really hi they have to move quickly -- think they have to move quickly. more states, democratic blue states are trying to knock trump off the ballot. you have super tuesday coming up. they already can't wait. i think that's why they're moving with you are general i city, they took this case. i'd be very surprised if they don't rule in favor of president trump within the next week or two. maria: let me get your take on what's going on in terms of the wide open border which we've talked about so many times. we have a new report here that the border patrol patrol chief warned homeland security committee about the influx of chinese migrants saying that we believe we are letting in spies. now, we know the numbers, i mean, the chart is incredible. look at this chart in terms of what has happened on joe biden's watch. more than 24,000 chinese migrants crossed the u.s. border illegally in fiscal year 2023. that's just three months. it started in october. and now we're talking about this revealing report that the border chiefs are worried that they are

going to spy and create havoc in america. also once they are rejected for asylum, apparently china won't take them back. china say, no, no, no, we're not going to take them back, they're not even chinese. a former assistant secretary of state told "the daily mail" that a beijing often denies that the migrants are, indeed, chinese. so once they come here, heir not going back. -- they're not going back. they need to get to america. what are they trying to do here? >> yeah. well, maria, let's put this in context. the customs and border protection is telling us that the fastest growing group that they're encountering at the border is coming from our number one geopolitical adversary, china. how fast is it coming? well, at the end of the trump administration, we had 342 chinese nationals in the year 2020. as you pointed out, we're at now 24,000 and 20,000 in the past two years. that's like a 7,000% increase. and so you're right, it's not a

question of whether the people's republic of china and the ccp is spending -- are sending spies over here, human, you know, intelligence assets into our country, it's a question of how many. and what their purposes are. are they here to run chinese police stations? are they here to conduct industrial espionage? you know, let's, you know, think about it, maria. if the people's republic of china said, look, our border is now open, i promise you the united states intelligence community would send as many human intelligence assets as a we could into the borders of our geopolitical adversary as possible. but, of course, china's not as dumb as the biden administration. that's exactly what's happening here, and it's a huge national security concern, you know, of epic proportions. maria: i want to make sure that we show you what trump said. he said, look, i did great with china with everything, china

came in, they were going to destroy the steel industry, and i put tariffs, big tariffs, 50-100%. he said, look, i want china to do great, but just like the sunrises, we lose $500 billion every year to china. and if that continues today. -- and that continues today. why is joe biden not doing anything about the threat of communist china? i'm talking about everything, not just the chinese nationals coming across the border. the covid cover-up, the police stations, the fentanyl, everything. >> yeah. again, our number one political adversary, and he won't even call them an adversary, you know? they call them a strategic competitor. and, you know, as the director of national intelligence, you know, i wrote an op-ed talking about why china's our number one national threat and how sinister and question their -- nefarious everything they were doing at every level. and it's really inexplicable why joe biden has refused to

confront china even on issues where a million americans have died as a result of covid, and china won't cooperate in the investigation to try and prevent that kind of a pandemic from every happening again. to, you know, spy balloons, you know, you name it. really for the last three years our number one geopolitical adversary is has been taking advantage of america and worsening our national security posture against them because of joe biden and because of his policies. i think you have to say it's in part because he's taken millions of dollars from china as has members of his administration -- maria: right. >> -- before they got in the white house, and there are all these questions still about the biden family and the biden family doing business with china and the leverage they might have over him. maria: yeah. and, of course, then there's iran, iran having attacked our troops 170 times, john. real quick. >> yeah. absolutely. china, iran, all of our adversaries taking advantage of

america and a weak, a weak commander in chief. and it's, it's putting america in grave harm and our men and women in uniform at risk. maria: very disturbing. john ratcliffe, thank you. former director of national intelligence, john ratcliffe. quick break, and then senate minority leader mcconnell facing calls within his own party to step down following the botched handling of the border security bill. utah senator mike lee is here next. ♪ >> madam president, we cannot send billions of dollars to ukraine while america's own borders are bleeding. ♪

>> we'll have to deport a lot of them. it's not sustainable. i had the safest border in the history of our country. i built 56 is miles of wall, and that was good -- 561. but i also got mexico to give us 28,000 soldiers free of charge.

i told them we're not going to be happy if you don't do it. we're going to put tariffs on your cars and everything else that you sell us, which is a lot, if you don't do it, and they did it. they gave us 28,000 soldiers, and we had the best border we've ever had. now we have the worst border probably in the history of the world. maria: that was more of my exclusive interview with former president trump here last weekend on his plan to deal with the 10 is million people who have entered this country illegally on joe biden's watch. on wednesday the senator pee doed a bipartisan -- torpedoed a bill written by a group of senators that would have allowed up to 5,000 migrant encounters on a daily basis before the border would be shut down and anything could do anything about it. -- anybody could do anything about it. more than 1 million people have been encountered at the southern border just since october 1st which is approximately 100,000 more than last fiscal year.

now a handful of senate republicans are calling on minority leader mitch mcconnell to step down following his botched handling of the border bill which prioritized billions of dollars in aid to ukraine. joining me right now, one of those republican lawmakers who wants mcconnell out, the ranking member of the senate joint economic committee, utah senator mike lee. senator, thanks very much for being here. >> thank you, maria. good to be with you. maria: why do you want mitch mcconnell to step down? >> look, republican senators are not part of some feudal system. we each are represented to, we're each representing our own states. and in occasion after occasion, bill after bill we've seen senate republican leadership joining ranks with all or most democrats, sharply dividing republicans, actively alienating most republican voters and take a different position -- taking a

different position than most republican senators in order to enact democratic priorities and things that unite the senate democratic conference. so this is nothing personal against any individual in leadership. and yet we do have to deal with this issue because this is how we alienate if our voters, this is how we lose elections that should be won. we've got a real opportunity, maria, for republicans to take the majority this november. but if we keep doing things through our leadership that end up enacting priorities for the democrats, we're going to have brand confusion. and the voters who we need to show up to vote for republican candidates in senate races all over the country are going to be less likely to do that if they can't tell which team is responsible for what policy. maria: you know, i don't understand why the senate leadership thought that they needed to go back to the drawing board and come up with some new immigration policy. as far as i can remember, the republicans wanted one thing, secure the border.

that's it. they didn't want a whole gargantuan immigration policy that starts from scratch given that the house has already passed h.r. 2. why can't they just secure the border? >> yeah, that that's exactly right. h.r. 2 would secure the border. the idea that we had that republican senators joined up and made a commitment last fall, we united behind this idea that most democrats want more ukraine funding, a few republicans do also, but most democrats do. republicans really want a secure border. but the idea was that in theory we might be able to cobble enough votes to force border security on an otherwise unwilling administration that for reasons that we find baffling doesn't want to secure the border. and so that was the idea. the bill that was negotiated that we saw for the first time just less than a week ago a didn't do that. now, i like the people who negotiated it, great, they

worked hard and everything, it just didn't do what most senate republicans wanted and expected it to do. and what we publicly claimed it would do. so a number of us insisted, all right, let's just put in h.r. 2, maybe a couple other provision, slap that on to a ukraine funding bill and see how that does. we were told no. instead, they cut off the border security initiative altogether, said never mind that notwithstanding the fact that we'd made a commitment as republican senators to our voters that that's what we would do. we just scrapped it, and now 17 republican senators appear poised to join up with the democrats in order to enact democratic policy opposed by most republicans. not just in the senate and the house, but among the american people generally. maria: that's incredible to me. walk us through what was the most egregious things in this bill, because i know that there were billions of collars additional to -- dollars additional to go towards some of those ngos, the very groups that are -- >> yes. maria: -- they are actually allowing and executing the

transfer and the transport of these migrants. they're putting them on buses, on planes and sending them wherever they want to go in america. finish. >> yes. we have that problem, we have another problem with somewhere between $9-10 billion in two separate accounts under this bill that are scheduled to go towards some sort of humanitarian relief. now, there's no restriction on those things going to gaza. and now that we know that they could go to gaza, although we've exempted out unrwa, the worst of the worst of u.n. agents says, the most anti-semitic, the most cooperative as far as we know with hamas, we still have no guarantee that it won't be run through some other u.n. agencies that will do exactly the same thing and end up funding hamas and funding more acts of terror by hamas against our ally, israel. and its people. so this is one of many problems. we've also a got about $8 billion that could be used to pay the salaries of ukrainian

bureaucrats and the welfare system in ukraine. could also go to fund little economic pet projects like concert tickets and supporting clothing stores in ukraine. look, even if you like the idea of military aid to ukraine, this goes far afield from that. maria: yeah. >> i spent all day on the senate floor yesterday trying to the call up amendments to fix some of these problems, to at least make this thing less bad than it is. every single time, half dozen amendments offered, all i wanted was to get them pending so we could eventually dispose of them, address them, vote on them or otherwise deal with them. the democrats objected every time. you know what their response was? their explanation was or or well, no, republicans, you had your chance with this bill. you botched it because you rejected the proposal, so we're not going to let you do anything. maria: wow. so in terms of mitch mcconnell and the leadership there, obviously, they're not on your side. there's wide speculation that

mitch mcconnell will step down if president trump wins the election, or do you have the senators in place to push for mcconnell's removal? i know ted cruz doubled down on mcconnell's resignation saying that the border bill gave every democrat self-righteous cover. who would the -- who are the senators that you need to get together the actually make this happen? >> well, look, there's going to be a big, a real telling moment later today where with we'll be voting on cloture on the bill. cloture on the bill brings debate to a close on the bill itself. after that we don't really have is meaningful opportunity to amend it or change it. if the same 17 republican senators, under the direction of senate republican leadership, continues to side with the democrats and against senate republicans and against house republicans and against republicans all over the country in addition to a whole lot of non-republicans throughout the country -- maria: yeah. >> -- i think this will be set up as an election issue. an election issue that, if we

don't deal with it and deal with it now, we're going to lose elections. so we'll see what happens today. but in the meantime, i encourage all my senate republican colleagues to oppose cloture on this bill. they've shut us out, and they're hurting republicans. maria: senator, thank you, sir. mike lee. we've got woody johnson on the other side of this break. we'll be right back. life, diabetes, there's no slowing down. each day is a unique blend of people to see and things to do. that's why you choose glucerna to help manage blood sugar response. uniquely designed with carbsteady. glucerna. bring on the day.

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nevada and the virgin islands on top of victories in iowa and new hampshire. joining me right now is the former u.s. ambassador to the united kingdom during the trump administration, longtime rnc donor woody johnson. johnson has also been a donor, and he is, of course, the owner of the new york jets and is in las vegas for tonight's nfl championship game. ambassador, great to see you again. thank you for being here. >> good morning, maria. thanks for having me. maria: i want to get your take first on the are rnc as a donor, support, former ambassador. what is your take on what's going on with the republican national committee and this expectation that heads are rolling as trump seeks the go gop nomination? >> yeah, the status status quo is not going to win this for us, maria. we have to make changes. we've lost a couple elections, and every election cycle is different. so new, i think the president, the former or president is correct, we need a change here, and we need to get to different leadership because this

election's going to require different skill sets. most of which is raising money, but other -- early election, you know, dealing with the early election cycle also is a key issue. maria: yeah, it's a good point that a you make because president trump also talked about the fact that he would like the voting to be done on election day and not have is weeks of election. your thoughts on whether or not that's possible this upcoming presidential election. >> yeah. i mean, election -- having election on election day would be the goal. it changed during covid, and i think we have to over time change that a back. and change the state laws and everything else to get voting on voting day with very few exception, military and maybe some others, but not decide the election two months in advance. maria: an rnc spokesperson is denying the news that mcdaniel would step down after the south carolina primary. what do you want to see happen ahead of the election, and what are your thoughts about

president trump returning to the white house? >> well, the second question first, yes, i think that everybody, americans remember how good it was or how much better it was on the border and inflation and gas prices and grocery pricesall that during the trump administration, and they want to get back to it. so i think the most important thing is getting the former president back in the white house which looks like it's happening. maria: all right. woody, stay right there. we're going to take a short break, i want to get more from you and your standpoint going into election 2024. we're talking with woody johnson. we'll be right back. ♪ here's to getting better with age. here's to beating these two every thursday. help fuel today with boost high protein, complete nutrition you need... ...without the stuff you don't. so, here's to now. boost. ♪oh what a good time we will have♪

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maria: welcome back. i am back with former u.s. ambassador to the united kingdom, woody johnson. ambassador, it's superto bowl sunday, love it. this is a huge audience. how big do you think this audience is, and why is president biden blowing off the traditional interview that the president always does on super bowl sunday? >> well, the first question, everybody in america's going to be watching today, so it's going to be well over 100 million, probably 120 million people watching. why, why president biden is blowing off this interview blows my mind.

i can't believe that a politician would bypass the opportunity to do this. and have all those eyewalls on -- eyeballs on him and listen to what he wants to do with the country. maria: yeah. let me get your take on the business of football today. we just heard the other day that we're going to hear a new streaming service, fox as well as -- fox corporation as well as discovery is and disney if team -- disney teaming up to have a streaming sports network. your reaction. >> well, i think the dynamics of the distribution of nfl product is going to change over time, and this is an example of trying to, trying to get a difference niche and different partners involved in distributing nfl football products. so this is the start. i think you'll see a lot more of this in the next few years. maria: how's business going in football? >> it is going fantastically well. we have a great relation with our players and with our

sponsors and our fans, and so the only negative is after the super bowl there's no more football, so what do we do for the next six months. [laughter] maria: so everybody wants to know, is aaron rodgers coming back? woody, is aaron rodgers coming back? if everybody wants to know. >> yes, yes, he's coming back. yeah, he'll be back. he's in fabulous shape. he maybe could have played in january, but he'll be, he'll be ready to go. he's a great leader on the team, and is we're just trying to build the team around a him that will allow him to be successful. as we know he will be. maria: everybody looks forward to that. woody, who's your pick for super bowl sunday today? if. >> well, maria, you know, these two teams are really, it's going to be -- this is going to be one of the best games. we're in las vegas which is a town that knows how to do these vents. these teams -- these events. these teams each have great

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