extraordinarily a completely unverified story that russia had their meat hooks in donald trump last five years. they have details about a hookers and ritz-carlton. brian: video. they don t have video. ainsley: they say there is. steve: we don t know. completely unverified. buzzfeed said we can t verify this, we don t know if it is true. why would they run it? they have a couple of intelligence officials said there was an addendum to a report given to president obama and president-elect trump. trump says that is not the case. he is pushing back as you all talked about very hard. minus, actually something coming forward, and some sort of evidence like a tape, and i think that we are in a place where we re talking about things that potentially could have happened. i think this news conference today will be really interesting. i think a couple of people that trump is putting in or potentially putting in his administration, dan coats at
ooh! ufo! false alarm, eyelash! steve: it is being called the trump bump. u.s. small business confidence soaring to record high in december, with more businesses planning to invest, an expand and hire. how can you launch your own successful small business? we have christie wright, a certified business coach and the host of the business boutique podcast. she joins us from nashville. good morning to you, christie. good morning. thanks for having me. steve: apparently small business optimism surges by the most since 1980. a lot of people are thanking donald trump. an exciting time to start small business. optimism in our country will be good news for the economy.
hurdles, to weigh in white house security staffer under george w. bush and president obama. host of fox & friends julian turner. good morning. steve: thank you very much for sticking around today. let s talk a little bit about russia and putin because famously as soon as it was named that rex tillerson was trump s guy, wait a minute. he s friendly with putin. which kind of from that perspective makes it very the least surprising nomination of the entire, you know, transition period that trump has made no bones about the fact that he wants u.s.-russia bilat. it s really not very surprising. steve: do you a problem that the guy is a businessman rather someone from politics or a diplomat?
outlets reporting what they re calling this a report. they re not even calling it facts. this morning we were talking in the news room, why are we talking about this, if you do not have a source, you can t just say some guy in uk is saying this, you have to have a source and anymore a source, if you can t do that, you don t report it. steve: it was opposition research, stuff gathered by republican against donald trump supposedly by the intelligence officer from the united kingdom and handedded over to hillary clinton. it s been swirling politico said we got this months ago but we didn t touch it because it s impossible to verify. here is the question. brian: cnn wept to town on the story. steve: cnn is not looking so good because they said donald trump received a two-page briefing about it at the conclusion on intel meeting on friday. ainsley: because this is we want you and president obama to know about this allegedly.
he thinks this whole thing is meant to distract from today s news conference. spokesman at the kremlin made this declaration. fabrication of such spoof stories is an obvious attempt to damage our bilateral relations. we don t have to wait to hear more from the president-elect him self about this. long-awaited first press conference as president-elect starts in about four hours. back to you. steve: peter doocy live on fifth avenue. thank you, peter. peter mentioned for couple of months. started out with the stories, hey, russia may have been trying to influence the election. remember back in the day it was john brennan reportedly at cia who said, we ve got the goods on him. then the fbi and the director of national intelligence both said we don t have that information. trump took a shot at intel community. fast forward to just about a week or so ago, trump said i was