 All right, let's hear from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who spoke to reporters earlier this morning attempting to smooth fears about a recession ahead of President Biden's State of the Union speech that's happening again tomorrow night. Here's what she had to say. Well, look, you don't have a recession when you have 500,000 jobs and the lowest unemployment rate in more than 50 years. So what I see is a path in which inflation is declining significantly and the economy is remaining strong. So what do you think about that? Again, this is somebody who said, well, we might have missed it by a little bit. I didn't think we were going to be in a recession. A lot of people say we are in a recession. It's going to be transitory. We've heard it over and over again. But she actually has admitted several times, you know, because you've watched this network. She's admitted on air that, well, I misjudged it. Well, 41% of Americans believe that they are worse off since President Biden took office. Maybe you're among that 40%. So who's had a touch here? There seems to be some misinformation going around, joining us live now to comment, founder of Stock Swoosh, Melissa Armo. It's kind of confusing, Melissa, right? So we're still hearing the speculation. Are we in a recession? Are we not in a recession? And many people are going, look, I'm paying over $7 for a dozen eggs. I can't get a house. Yes, we're in a recession. That's what a lot of people are saying. But that doesn't appear to be the message that we're hearing from Janet Yellen. Well, if you listened to her speak this morning live, it was as if she was reading off a script. I mean, she just was almost out of breath, listening to her going on and on and on, trying to tell the administration of all the things that they've done. Even the Inflation Reduction Act. What did that actually do? It has not reduced inflation. So I think when you're looking at the economy and you're looking at what's happening, unemployment numbers are a lagging indicator. So her argument is that with low unemployment, we can't possibly be in a recession if we're not going into a recession. But the fact is unemployment numbers are a lagging indicator. I also want to add that you can be in a recession even with low unemployment as odd as that sounds. So we could already be in a recession. They don't want to admit it. And I don't think they're even going to admit it. When we brought up this topic, it was about a year ago when we were talking about this. They said they were trying to change the definition of what a recession was. Right. Right. Right. That was in 2022. So this administration, come hell or high water, is not going to admit to ever doing anything wrong or that they ever did anything wrong. And you know, I mean, so you look at some of these people and I say, you know, why can't they get some new people in some young blood, some people that really want to make improvements for people? Because like you brought up, it's the cost of eggs, it's the cost of food, it's the cost of housing, the cost of gas prices are still too high. So I mean, there's so many things that have gone up. And also the unemployment numbers don't account for all the people that left the workforce after COVID that still haven't come back. I mean, I can go into a store in New York and I can see 10 rows of lanes where they don't have checkout people. And so you've got three lines and the lines are out the door because they just don't have enough employees and that's not accounted for in those numbers. People left. They left the workforce. I mean, some states are actually still giving COVID stimulus money still in 2023. So people have to get back to work, not everybody's back to work. Yes, the numbers are low, but the cost of things are still high. We're in high inflation, the Fed's trying to fix it. And we're also in a period where we could be going into a recession. All people can do is budget, work hard, and again, try to find some extra jobs or part-time jobs to make some extra cash. Yeah, but you mentioned like the unemployment numbers. Obviously, the president's going to be, I'm sure, going to be addressing the economy during the State of the Union address. Again, that's taking place at nine o'clock Eastern and we're going to have coverage before and afterwards following that. But you know, he's going to paint a much different picture. He's going to be like, look, the jobs report came out Friday. Look at all these jobs that we added. Unemployment is down. And he's acting like he inherited this. But most people are saying, no, no, no, you just saw that report. There's a poll that came out from ABC and Washington Post saying, Democrats are now saying they were better off before he took office. What are your thoughts on that? What do you anticipate the president to say specifically to? And what should we take note of? Well, of course he's going to talk about that. But really, these are not new jobs. These are jobs that were added back. OK, these aren't jobs that were created after Biden took office. These are jobs that are coming back after COVID. OK, so unfortunately, Trump's last year in office was COVID. And would the outcome of the election had been different? Had COVID not hit, nobody will ever know. But the fact is that COVID did hurt the last year of Trump's presidency when you look at the data, when you look at the numbers. And so now it looks like all these jobs are being added back. But in reality, these are COVID jobs returning. There are still far too many people to let the workforce since COVID, as I said. And even still, OK, when you have prices this high, and it's not just saying, that's one particular product or one particular problem. The biggest problem is the cost of diesel fuel, which gets every single thing that we buy and every single thing twist to everything we buy. How does it get there? It gets here from a truck. And I mean, you can't escape what's happening with rising prices. So people have to work to pay for things. And the people that left the workforce, again, how are they paying for things stimulus? Will they eventually come back to the workforce? I think that the stock market is a forward indicator. And the unemployment numbers are a lagging indicator. And you don't see the stock market anywhere near the highs. While we rally for the last few weeks since the beginning of 2023 in the market, we are still so far off the highs that it's really hard to see a recovery coming anytime soon that strong. That's really going to take us past the point that we would be in a danger of going into recession or that we would be able to come out of a recession. Remember the stock market during President Trump? It was ripping. It was ripping up. It was ripping higher. People were happy with their 401ks. The market rallied because of the Trump tax cuts and many other things that happened that weren't his administration policies. Again, these weren't Trump's things. They were his policies that he put into place to try to help growth and small businesses and even large businesses which employ people. A lot of large businesses have laid people off in the last few months, Facebook, Amazon. I mean, the list goes on and on. Companies are cutting jobs and eventually that's going to reflect eventually in the unemployment numbers. Yeah, and as I mentioned, the President's going to pay a much different scenario when it comes to the economy. He's going to be pointing, even though you mentioned, Melissa, don't use that as an indicator to the unemployment numbers because these are just jobs that are coming back after COVID. But he's also going to be acting like, look, we added all these jobs, unemployment's down. But Republicans, as I mentioned, Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House, did meet with the President to talk about this debt ceiling. I mentioned one of the lawmakers there that graduated from MIT there creating this kind of clock, if you will, to create this kind of anxiety to come up with some kind of resolution. Obviously, we're going to expect Republicans to pounce on the President when it comes to the state of the economy. But they also need to take action and have a plan. What do you anticipate Republicans to say? And again, it's going to be Sarah Huckabee Sanders who's going to be delivering that response. What do they need to say, though? It can't just be, President is wrong. Listen to us. They need to have a pass to get Americans on the right track. Well, I'm not so sure the GOP does have a path. I mean, that was the problem even with the results of the election. So they need to come out strong. I'm not so sure if they're going to. But no matter who says anything, and as far as the debt ceiling goes, they're going to push it in the last minute like they always do. So they've got till June. So don't expect anything to happen. Anytime soon, it's going to be into the summer until they even come up with anything. Again, the GOP needs strong leadership. One of the reasons that Trump won, and while he's running and probably is going to win the nomination again, is because Trump is strong. Like him, love him or hate him, Trump is strong in his opinions and he has an opinion on basically everything. And so many of these people are weak. The GOP has too many, far too many weak leaders and that's the problem. And Democrats can say whatever they want. Biden can say whatever he wants in the speech. But at the end of the day, if you're a person that goes shopping and you pay your bills and you see what things cost, you don't care what the fight is. You know what the reality is. I mean, it's like saying right now that the sun is out and trying to tell me that it's raining. I know it's not raining. It doesn't matter how many times you're telling me that it's raining, if the sun is out. Can we change the definition of when it's sunny? Just joking. Melissa Armo, thank you so much. Always a pleasure. Good to see you again, my friend. Thank you. All right, coming up after the break, surfer Bethany Hamilton speaking out against the Trans Agenda. More details on that coming up.