BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): We're seeing returns already. What's turned on the return?
CHARLES PAYNE (FOX BUSINESS HOST): Just more returns have come in and the numbers have changed. It's almost like calling a baseball game in the first inning. Right? So -- but of course, maybe some folks in the media thought that the score would change and so let's leap on this bad news while it’s quote, unquote, bad news. And I think it was just, dishonest, and certainly nefarious, perhaps, who got caught up in this more than anyone else is Kamala Harris, who tweeted this out, you know as a “we told you so. You're not making any money from the tax plan.” The irony, of course, is this is the kind of story the media put out before these returns came. “Your refund might be smaller because the major goal of the 2018 tax overhaul was to put more money back in the pockets of working Americans.” That was the kind of honest, reasonable stuff we saw before these returns came in.
AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): How do those headlines affect the economy and the markets?
PAYNE: Well the headlines -- let me tell you. I have a premise that the media, America's media, almost pushed America into recession, the media.
STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): When?
PAYNE: In December. We just got late some December data, in fact, December data is just coming in. Savings, for instance, in November was 6.1 percent. They went to 7.6 percent in December. That number is unheard of. What makes it even more remarkable, our incomes went up one percent. Put it this way, 150 percent more than Wall Street thought. Our incomes are soaring. It's December. We stopped spending and we saved all this money. If you look at all the headlines in the month of December, which by the way influenced the algorithms which also pushed the market lower, I'm telling you that America's media was this close to pushing America into a recession.
