'Your World' on rising gas prices

Gas price is seen at a Mobil gas station in Vernon Hills, Ill., Friday, June 11, 2021. The rising cost of gasoline is being felt across the U.S., as the national average price has gone up from $2 per gallon last year to $3 per gallon as of June 9, according to data from the American Automobile Association. ((AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh))

This is a rush transcript of "Your World" on October 14, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated

NEIL CAVUTO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: All right, we're continuing to monitor this Jen Psaki press briefing. You can see that our own Jacqui Heinrich got right to the heart of a matter that is sort of triggering a lot of controversy right now, a retweet by the chief of staff, Ron Klain, of some comments made by Jason Furman, who was a Council of Economic Advisers chair under Barack Obama, saying that most of the economic problems we're facing, inflation, supply chains, et cetera, are high-class problems.

We wouldn't have had them if the unemployment rate was still 10 percent. We would instead have had a much worse problem. But what got the attention was his retweeting the fact that this was a high-class problem, that inflation and where we're feeling it is impacting presumably only the well-to-do.

The fact of the matter is, of course, that gas prices have gone up, chicken prices have gone up. Pork prices, bacon, these are all staples that it's fair to say go well beyond the high class to pretty much every class. Everyone pays more for gas. Everyone is paying more for bacon and chicken and a host of other goods that are now in and out of better-than-one-decade highs.

Today, FOX on top an over-the-top reaction that is limited, we're told, from the White House to only the well-to-do.

Welcome, everybody. I'm Neil Cavuto. And this is "Your World."

And, again, you saw Jen Psaki try to calm the firestorm here, but to little avail, an inflation pinch that all Americans are feeling sort of relegated to just a few in the Grey Poupon crowd, well, complaining.

The fallout from this right now from Edward Lawrence at the White House -- Edward.

EDWARD LAWRENCE, FOX BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, first, everyone loves bacon, right?

The price of bacon is going up on this. Now, the CPI inflation is at 5.4 percent. And the reason -- part of the reason for that falls squarely on the supply chain issues that we have been talking about.

But let's run down some of the things that we all buy, meat, eggs, poultry, fish up 10.5 percent year over year. Fruits and vegetables are up, all types of gas you alluded to 42.1 percent of the past 12 months. Now, that last one seeps into everything we buy, which is why some are saying, as you talked about at the top of, this retweet could be the let me eat cake moment for White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain.

Now, the White House press secretary you heard put some context to it, but still the -- retweeted not once but twice three hours apart saying that it's high-class problems, because if it would not have inflation of 10 percent, that this would not be a problem.

But the president has not taken questions directly about inflation or the supply chain issues in the last week. This is what happened when he talked today about vaccines and his COVID response. Listen. Now, you see him walking away there.

In fact, then the president -- or the press was ushered out of a meeting. This was within the last 15, 20 minutes or so with the Kenyan president here at the White House, not answering questions again.

Now, the vice president for Consumer Brands Association says that the administration looks -- needs to look at some of the relaxing of rules. And we're talking about truck driving. They said maybe the weight restrictions on trucks or drivers being able to drive a little bit longer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATIE DENIS, VICE PRESIDENT, CONSUMER BRANDS ASSOCIATION: The cost of inputs has been record-breaking for months now.

And, ultimately, yes, we are seeing prices start to edge up for consumers. That's not a place anyone wants to go. I know our industry works very hard to make sure that they don't pass stuff on. But we're at a point where aluminum is up almost 100 percent, corn 115 percent.

This stuff is going to create bigger problems down the line.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAWRENCE: I talked with the transportation secretary yesterday about relaxing those regulations on driving. He says that option is on the table, but they need to weigh it against safety -- back to you.

CAVUTO: Edward Lawrence, thank you very, very much.

The president, of course, has not weighed directly in to reporters' questions on this issue how far this inflation problem goes. But it's fair to say he is trying to get ahead of it, but having little success doing so.

His latest proposal came yesterday when he proposed that ports, for example, a big one outside Los Angeles, stay open 24/7. The problem is finding workers and the problem is dealing with the higher costs to keep them doing that job, which might exponentially lead to higher costs supposedly that this is supposed to address.

Let's get the read right now from William La Jeunesse, who is at the Port of Long Beach, California -- William.

WILLIAM LA JEUNESSE, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Neil, there's a lot of finger pointing, right, at the truckers, at the warehouses, at consumer demand, and, of course, the president has expanded and extended unemployment benefits that might stop some workers from taking jobs.

But it is turning the Pacific off of L.A. and Long Beach into this parking lot that you see now. This is basically a floating warehouse because there's no other room basically onshore; 60 ships like this right now are being off-loaded within the ports, but there are 78 anchored offshore, are in a holding pattern near Catalina Island.

Now, this is the shortest distance between here and Shanghai, but we are told shippers are beginning to divert cargo through the Panama Canal to avoid this bottleneck. They're out here waiting two to three weeks, right? And time is money. And if they're paying for it, so are we.

But the president's port czar said about two or three hours ago that he's optimistic this new plan is going to make a difference.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN PORCARI, WHITE HOUSE PORT ENVOY: As a nation, we need to move to a 24/7 supply chain. You're doing your end. The cargo owners have stepped up and they're doing their end. And now we need to energize the rest of the system.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LA JEUNESSE: So, the ship that you're looking at, Neil, is really about three football fields' long, has thousands of containers there. It takes about -- oh, about two to three days to actually off-load those things when it finally does make it into the harbor.

But the president said this is a game-changer. But the experts we have talked to said, listen, the supply chain problem is not going to be solved overnight. And the prices are likely to continue to increase because of what you're seeing here -- Neil.

CAVUTO: All right, William, thank you very much.

Now back to the big quote, misquote, bad tweet, bad retweet of the day, and that is the chief of staff, Ron Klain, for President Obama -- for President Biden, I should say, essentially agreeing with the former Council of Economic Advisers chief under Barack Obama, Jason Furman, who has said essentially we're facing these inflation supply chains, other issues, but they're high-class problems, in other words, that the high class, the upper class are the only ones having to deal with this.

Kim Strassel is The Wall Street Journal editorial board member, also a FOX News contributor.

Kim, this is a major oops moment for the administration. There is no way you can step back and try to explain a remark that has the ring of letting them eat cake. What did you make of it?

KIM STRASSEL, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, what was remarkable about it, Neil, is how it completely and utterly gets it backward.

If you look at inflation, wealthy people are the people that have the least amount of problem with it, because they have got that excess cash and capacity. They're not having to make a choice between whether or not to buy a gallon of gas or whether or not to buy a gallon of milk.

Some wealthy people, you could argue, even benefit from inflation, like if they're in the business of financial assets or real estate. Inflation can help those areas. Inflation always fundamentally hits the average joe, it's terrible on.

These are the guys that they got 50 bucks to get to the next paycheck, and they have to decide they can't buy some of the groceries because they need to buy gas to get to work. And to suggest that you don't understand that looks so disconnected from the issues that are out there with America. That was the real gaffe.

CAVUTO: Yes, if you're an average American, you're hearing this, you don't even have to play politics with it and say, all right, what you experience in the grocery store, what you're seeing when you go to the gas station, these are addressable problems.

This is something that is not really hitting you. It's hitting someone else. It's hitting the rich. It just has an elitist dismissiveness to it that's hard to take back.

Now, I understand what Furman was saying, the former Council of Economic advisers chief, talking about this problem, that it wouldn't be this bad if we had 10 percent unemployment. But you're saying the only way to have or to address that is to have a lousy economy, which, of course, raises the issue of stagflation, an issue that bedeviled another Democratic president named Jimmy Carter.

Where's this going?

STRASSEL: Yes, right.

I mean, look, no voter ever wants to hear that the message from the administration is, really, it could have been worse. That's not a positive message. They want to know that people are fixing their problems.

And that's why voters have had a pervasive view over the years that politicians are disconnected. It's why we have that old gotcha question, do how much a gallon of milk costs? Because voters don't think that people who live in these bubbles really do understand that.

And it could be worse is not a positive message. Now, I understand why this White House is doing this. They want to pretend that the problem is not there, because they know that it imperils their $3.5 trillion agenda and that Washington spending is considered one of the problems behind this inflation.

But the American people see what is going on. And there's a certain point at which you have to address it, not close your eyes and pretend it isn't happening.

CAVUTO: Or cite other excuses for it.

I mean, one of the things that came through from the president yesterday in this 24/7 L.A. Port kind of active switch is to try to lay out the possibility that some companies might be gouging people here, in other words, to point the finger at them and not at the White House.

STRASSEL: Well, again, any American looking around at the moment understands very clearly what the problem is and why we don't have enough people to unload containers from ships.

And it's because, on the one hand, we have been paying people to stay home and those benefits are still going, whether it be the child tax credit or whatever it is. And on the other hand, we have all of these government mandates and restrictions that are actually discouraging people from working, whether it's vaccine mandates or others.

You can argue about that from a public policy and health perspective. But the reality of it is, they're out in the work force. And until we change government incentives and disincentives to work, this is not going to get better.

CAVUTO: Very well put.

Kim Strassel, thank you very, very much.

So, you can hear from the president and whether he's to blame for this or not. Clearly, the administration isn't taking the hit for this, but to dismiss the fact that it's really happening and that everyone's affected, particularly the middle class, lower classes, and, oddly enough, the impact on the higher class not nearly so much, tends to compound the problem.

And in case you have any doubts that this inflation is still a problem, take a look at any gas station, because some eye-popping figures are passing us by as we speak.

And doesn't Madison Alworth know it -- Madison.

MADISON ALWORTH, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Neil, absolutely.

I mean, you can see the prices over my shoulder. These are numbers that are going to impact that middle-income family deciding whether to full -- fully fill up their tank or just go for that half-tank and hope that it gets better, but not very good news.

It's not looking like those prices are going to come down anytime soon. I will give you the full report coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAVUTO: Well, forget upper class.

It's hitting every class. So, whether you're going to the gas station in a limo or well, I don't know, something that isn't so fancy, all Americans are feeling the pinch at the bump. And some big numbers hit today that are spreading way the numbers we have seen over the last decade.

Madison Alworth has a lot more from us -- for us in New York City -- Madison.

ALWORTH: Hey, Neil.

Yes, I mean, you said it. Look at the numbers over my shoulder. When you're going for regular gas at this gas station in the city, you're going to be hitting near $5. If you have to pay for premium, you're paying over $5 a gallon. This is a lot of money.

We have been talking to people at this station. They said that they're trying to budget, maybe do half-a-tank or less than that. But the bad news is, we're seeing high numbers all over the U.S. and this is a lot higher than this time last year.

Take a look at this comparison that we have for you. So, today, the national average for gas is about $3.30 a gallon. Last year, it was $2.18 a gallon. That's over a 50 percent increase. There are only a couple states in the U.S. that are under the $3 mark today.

And that number is dwindling. There were eight states on Monday. So, you can see the trend. And it's not trending in the right direction, Neil.

And the states where you're going to pay the most for gas, you're looking at California, Hawaii, and Nevada. Now, we did that comparison from today last year. But, of course, the pandemic was still going on to that point. So we have seen some changes in gas during that time, still an increase. But it's not just during the pandemic.

These are really high numbers. Take this, for instance. In January of 2020, before the pandemic hit us really in the U.S., Neil, the average price of gas was $2.60 a gallon, nowhere near the prices that you're seeing behind me.

CAVUTO: And it's not stopping, apparently.

Madison Alworth, thank you very much.

Don't say my next guest didn't tell you, Patrick De Haan, the GasBuddy head of petroleum analysis, with us right now.

All right, so how much further do we go now? Five dollars in some areas, in Manhattan, playing out as much in the West Coast. Where do we go from here, Pat?

PATRICK DE HAAN, HEAD OF PETROLEUM ANALYSIS, GASBUDDY: It's the million- dollar question, Neil.

I think it's really going to be a function of some of these supply chain bottlenecks that we have seen. Of course, OPEC, will they increase production eventually? Last week, they said, no, we're on our own schedule. Keep in mind, OPEC is increasing every month until 2022.

But will the energy crunch overseas get worse? Will China get coal? Will they get more coal? Will the natural gas issues in Europe continue? I think, for now, there's more upside of the price of oil, which again today was back up to $81. We could be talking about $85 or $90. And we could be talking about a national average that $3.35, $3.45 or so, before we see any relief.

CAVUTO: What are people doing or what do you recommend they do, and especially people who tend to err on the side of the expensive, the good stuff, the supremes, the super unleaded?

I mean, someone saying, all right, maybe I'll get a lower grade, is it risky for them?

DE HAAN: Well, I'm not going to ever say go against what your car manufacturer suggests.

But a lot of my friends, anecdotally, say premium here in Chicago, for example, is $1.25 a gallon more than regular. What can we do? Now, some of these cars, some of the late model cars don't always require it. So check that very carefully in your owner's manual. Is it recommended or required? If it's only recommended, you can go back down to 87.

The beauty about modern cars is knock sensors can hear that pinging if you fill up with a lower grade, and they can adjust your car engine accordingly. Having said that, Neil, just looking at some of the numbers here, to your point, one in eight stations in the U.S. is now over $4.

It's never been too hard to find those extremely high prices, California, even Orlando, Florida, for those going to Disney World, a station there charging hear $6.

But I think bottom line here, Neil, it's going to get worse before it gets any better.

CAVUTO: So you're also seeing signs of how this plays out in various countries. This is a worldwide problem, something we will be addressing on this show, but gas lines, something we had forgotten from the 1970s that are already popping up elsewhere in the world, could they pop up here?

DE HAAN: You know, Neil, wherever, wherever they do pop up, there have been -- now, keep in mind the trucker shortage right, this summer, that did afflict some areas like Las Vegas, where Americans after a year of staying at home, there was a lot of pent-up demand for some of those tourist destinations.

And that's when you started to see an inability for some of these stations, given the trucker shortage, to replenish their tanks as quickly as Americans are filling up. But that's going to be the exception here.

CAVUTO: Right.

DE HAAN: Thankfully, what we saw in the U.K. with the shortage, lines at BP stations in the U.K., and what we saw here with the Colonial Pipeline, the bulk of that was actually the panic that set in, not actually the pipeline outage here, and not actually the trucker shortage in the U.K.

So it's really on Americans to just calm down. We have gasoline. But there's been a lot of strain on getting into the station in time.

CAVUTO: Yes, they freak out and they get on line because they don't want to be without that as. Some of them go on lines where they're three- quarters full anyway.

It is weird, but it's playing out just as you said it would.

Patrick, thank you, Patrick De Haan.

And we weren't making stuff up about what's going on abroad, particularly in Britain, where long gas lines have become very, very common. Some of these images you're seeing actually are present-day. What you're seeing on the left side of your screen is, well, another day, in the 1970s.

I remember those gas lines. I remember the odd and even days you could get gas. Is that coming here, and sooner than you think?

After this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAVUTO: Do it or else.

Verizon now says that a majority of its U.S. employees must be vaccinated by February 1, any contractor, visitors, anyone who wants to visit their facilities by January 1.

More after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAVUTO: Well, it does seem like that great '70s show all over again.

I'm not talking leisure suits and bell-bottoms, though, even though I didn't have a problem with them back then, but the problem right now that is being lived out every day in large swathes of Great Britain, where long gas lines are forming, because they can't get the petroleum, as they like to call it, to gas stations throughout the country and the region.

It's spreading beyond just those countries, which is reminiscent of what we experienced what seems like a generation ago, about 50 years ago, in the early '70s and later again in the late 1970s, where you had OPEC embargoes, and then you had the compounded problem of inflation-ravaged recession, stagflation, as they used to call it, that produced record long gas lines that might not be entirely forgotten now, if historian Burt Folsom is right, the Hillsdale College distinguished fellow, kind enough to join us now.

Burt, I'm going to take it back in that time capsule. I know you're too young to remember it.

(LAUGHTER)

CAVUTO: I remember quite well, because I was the guy in charge of my' parents cars to take them to an even gas stations on those specific days.

Having said that, it was a nightmare. If it continues in this direction, and people panic, we could be seeing that again, right?

BURT FOLSOM, HISTORIAN: Absolutely.

Neil, let's look at it this way. To compare Carter with President Biden, Carter enacted many controls on oil. Of course, Nixon and Ford did too.

CAVUTO: Right.

FOLSOM: But Carter did more so.

And in President Reagan's first day in office, he decontrolled oil completely, and gas prices fell in half in about a year or two. Now, President Biden, by contrast, in his first day in office, revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. And we saw gas prices rise. And they have been rising ever since.

Messy -- when the government interferes in the free production of oil, often, there are big problems. And we're seeing that again, as we did with Jimmy Carter.

CAVUTO: It's interesting. In both those inflation bouts we went through in the '70s, it started with oil. It actually started with oil.

FOLSOM: Yes.

CAVUTO: And we quickly learned -- and I remember a lot of the experts at the time saying this is limited to oil, it won't spread. But we quickly learned that there is a domino connection to not only the way goods make their way to us, but the oil and these synthetic fuels that are that are part of these everyday items from toys to you name it.

And it affected the food supply and all of that, the same thing playing out now that hints to me this is not just a Johnny one-note on oil. This is pervasive enough to spread and take in everything else.

FOLSOM: Yes, I think so.

And you notice the same thing. President Carter said that this inflation, the inflation that grew tremendously in his administration, into double digits, he said it was temporary.

CAVUTO: Right.

FOLSOM: And then it persisted and got worse.

We're hearing our leaders now say, oh, this is just temporary. But it was not temporary then. It is not temporary now. And, Neil, six months from now, you again are going to be talking about inflation.

CAVUTO: You know, it's interesting too. Different times, and we hope we don't get back to that time.

FOLSOM: Right.

CAVUTO: But it did affect Americans' ability to pay for things. So they stopped being able to afford paying for things.

And it did lead to a slowdown in the economy and this stagflation where you have a weak economy, but prices are still reading amok. And it took Paul Volcker, the Central Bank chairman at the time in the late Carter years and then into the Reagan years, to raise interest rates, sometimes a full point at a time, to deal with the crisis.

I hope we don't get to that, because that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

FOLSOM: It is.

We were reducing the Fed rate, but also reduced the money supply. That was a key thing. Under Carter, the money supply was increasing. And, see, a lot of politicians and people think, well, if you increase the money supply, that increases the wealth. It does not do so. It increases inflation.

CAVUTO: That's right, the cost of everything goes up in the process here.

And, again, that's playing out a little bit slower motion right now. But it is real.

FOLSOM: Yes.

CAVUTO: We just want people to be aware that rarely is this short-lived.

And, in fact, the two big inflationary bouts we had were not short-lived. And they go and spread their tentacles into everything else. That is the slam-dunk history on this. I'm talking not in terms of red or blue, Republican or Democrat, following the green. I remember quite well, because a lot of people were paying the green and really losing a lot, including jobs, one of the biggest recessions we had back to back in the 1970s.

Let's hope it doesn't happen again. But history indicates it certainly won't be brief.

All right, in the meantime, here, we just told you right now that Verizon is clamping down with vaccine mandates of its own, but they're also signaling it won't be for everybody.

And they're also indicating right now that they're confident that a variety of vaccines that are already out there just might do the trick, especially if doctors give the formal OK for you to mix and match them -- after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAVUTO: All right, as we speak, an FDA panel is reviewing Moderna and J&J's vaccine booster shots, this as we get news that COVID cases are dropping pretty sharply in this country. The seven-day average has them at about 86,000 a day from about 161,000 earlier this month.

So, the trend is the friend, probably welcome news to Dr. Bob Lahita, the director of St. Joseph's Institute for Autoimmune and Rheumatic Diseases.

Doctor, that's pretty rapid progress there. What do you make of it?

DR. BOB LAHITA, ST. JOSEPH UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL: I think it's great, Neil.

I think that the numbers are dropping. I'm just hoping that we don't have a resurgence when things get really cold and we're all packed together in our apartments and homes, particularly for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

But I doubt it. I think this virus is on the downward trend. And I think the vaccines have made that happen.

CAVUTO: Are we at the point with -- I think we're down to 63 million Americans who have not been vaccinated. But that's down four million from last week at this time.

I'm just wondering whether we have hit this, you will hear, much-talked about herd immunity.

LAHITA: We haven't hit it yet.

There's 57 percent of Americans that have been fully vaccinated. So we still have a ways to go. And we have states in the union, like Idaho, West Virginia and Wyoming, where the vaccinated population is less than 50 percent. And those are the areas where the blips are going to occur as we go forward.

CAVUTO: I'm wondering as well. This new push for booster shots and the rest, how do you feel about mixing and matching these various medications?

LAHITA: Well, I look at the end result. The end result is boosting immunity.

So, as far as I'm concerned -- and I -- this is not official. I think the official pronouncement is going to come shortly. But there's nothing wrong with mixing and matching.

I mean, if you put the mRNA in a patient who's had the J&J vaccine, which is a viral vector vaccine, the immune system is going to recognize the fact that the spike protein is again boosting immunity. So, neutralizing antibody and cellular immunity increases, regardless of the source of the vaccine.

So, mixing and matching, as far as I'm concerned, is a great -- it's a great idea. Whatever is available.

CAVUTO: Meanwhile, Pfizer's push to get a vaccine out to kids as young as 5. They're hoping for quick approval from the FDA. What do you think of that?

LAHITA: I think this is really an important component; 50,000 children under the age of 14 died in the USA since the beginning of the pandemic. That's a lot of kids. That's a lot of distraught families and a lot of grief.

And so children are really, really important to cover. The vast majority of the cases are between the ages of 25 and 54, where most of the deaths occur, but children can get infected, and they can do poorly. So parents have got to realize that. So it's really, really important.

I know family gatherings around the holidays are going to have little children at the table, say, at Thanksgiving. And we want to know that they're protected.

CAVUTO: Got it. Doctor, thank you very much. Good catching up with you.

Hopefully, we will get word soon out of this FDA panel. It would be for an emergency use of some of these various vaccine boosters, as well as maybe a separate reading on Pfizer's drug for kids.

So, they have a lot on their plate. We will see what they decide. Could come within hours or days. We're keeping an eye on it for you.

Also keeping an eye on that January 6 commission that's looking in to what happened that day. Resistance from a lot of former Trump officials, who have no intention to testify. And now the subpoenas are flying.

We will talk to Bret Baier after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAVUTO: All right, in the House, they are not too keen on this word from a number of top Republicans who worked with Donald Trump that they have no intention to testify on Capitol Hill. So the subpoenas are flying out, we're told.

And they're still looking to make sure all of this goes off and this committee hearing into exactly what was behind the January 6 insurrection will be solved and history will be known exactly what transpired, what led to it. But, at this point, there's a lot of resistance.

And it was an interesting premise for my colleague and friend Bret Baier to start up a book that was really devoted to Ulysses S. Grant, because he kicks off talking about that day on January 6. And it was interesting.

And it's so good to see you, Bret.

BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Hey, Neil. Thanks for having me.

CAVUTO: You spell it out.

And without saying too much specifically, you say: "In the midst of a real constitutional crisis in 2021, the story of Grant and 1876 took on new meaning." Of course, that was the election. It was controversial. It was going to be thrown in total disarray, kind of like the controversy over the 2020 election.

"I could see across the landscape of our history that there had been those crucial times that everything we stood for was at risk, when divisions were so deep that there were two separate realities being experienced by the citizenry."

You seem to make the point that, in 1876, President Grant rose to that occasion.

BAIER: He did. And he held the country together as it was teetering back towards a second civil war.

I'm not making a linkage between January 6 directly, but it does give you perspective of where we have been before as a country, and where -- how close we have been to kind of breaking up.

January 6, I'm covering it that day on Dana Perino's show as I'm finishing up this book. And so I thought starting it that way, to give us a perspective on things, was the way to go. The book ends, by the way, after the George Floyd protests and Grant statues being pulled down in the San Francisco park.

And a reporter says, why are you pulling this down? And they say, well, he's part of the Civil War. He had a slave.

And Grant spends his whole life fighting slavery, fighting for Black equality, for the right to vote. And it just made me have this appreciation of a presidency that largely is overlooked.

CAVUTO: It's interesting, too, because, obviously, Grant was already wrapping up his two terms. He was trying to deal with the controversy of this election.

I mean, I didn't realize until reading your book how close we were and the fears that were justified that the South would try to rise again. They were ticked off. They thought that the wrong guy was winning and all of this. There were concessions that were made to the South, that we don't realize how much Grant did to stave off that, because his critics will say that that deal led to a century of racial practices that were beyond the pale.

BAIER: Right.

So the thing that I found out -- and I thought that historians and people who looked back at that time really put the aftermath of the Reconstruction on Grant. Reconstruction was essentially coming to an end. The South was done with federal troops being down there. There was a lot of pushback even from Northerners to all of that.

So, by making this deal, he keeps the union together.

CAVUTO: But those troops left.

BAIER: And the troops left.

CAVUTO: And the South could do what they wanted to do.

BAIER: And they did.

But they stayed a part of the United States.

CAVUTO: And that was his bigger goal,

BAIER: And that was his bigger goal.

CAVUTO: Did he know what would ensue as soon as those troops left?

BAIER: He feared that that would happen.

But he thought that some other people who were taking his position would take the mantle, that he and Lincoln had this vision for equality.

By the way, I love coming on your show, because, when I'm talking about a book, I look at the book, and you have got the notes and the little markers on there.

CAVUTO: No, because I know I'm going to quote. Let's see if I can catch him on a screw-up here.

(LAUGHTER)

CAVUTO: And I never can.

I joked with you before we got on that you're running out of presidents now.

(LAUGHTER)

BAIER: Yes.

CAVUTO: But you do a great job with this.

And it's interesting that you weave the present and the past and then get back to the present.

And I don't want to put you on the spot, but I love putting on the spot. What you seem to buy there is that President Grant rose to the occasion. Different case because the election this time directly involved President Trump.

Did he?

BAIER: Well, I mean, I will leave that for others to decide.

I think that we are not finished with all of that, as evidenced by his recent statement that he put out just the other day.

CAVUTO: Right.

BAIER: And I think...

CAVUTO: He doesn't want any Republicans voting in '22, and '24, by extension, until this whole fraud thing that he calls -- addressed.

What did you make of that?

BAIER: And I think just that statement alone hurts Republicans who are in a pretty good place politically, if you look at the positioning ahead of 2022.

CAVUTO: Yes.

BAIER: I know there are a lot of people that want to go back down that road of the election, and they're not finished with audits and looking at things.

But until some legislature acts, until some court actually moves on evidence, until something's turned, the election is over. And Republicans, most of them want to talk about the future and how they can change it.

CAVUTO: In looking back at Grant, I was most impressed -- he had a very scandal-plagued administration, but his predecessor was even worse, in fact, laid the groundwork for this disaster that he had to solve.

But I always wonder about his post-presidency. He -- he did a lot. And I'm just wondering. He was always very fearful of what the country could become, and it weighed on him.

How was that man leaving office?

BAIER: Well, first of all, he trusted a lot of people.

CAVUTO: Yes.

BAIER: And he put his trust in sometimes the wrong people, not only in his administration, which caused some petty corruption scandals that got a lot of attention, but, afterwards, he invests his money and loses it all.

CAVUTO: Right.

BAIER: And he has to write magazine articles to make money.

Mark Twain, his friend, says, how much are you getting paid for that? He says $500. He goes ballistic and says, you have to write a memoir, and I will, -- I will sell it and pay it -- pay for you.

He writes the memoir. He gets throat cancer. He writes through the pain...

CAVUTO: Right.

BAIER: ... and finishes the memoir days before his death.

Mark Twain goes on to sell that book, the biggest sale of a book ever in that time, $300,000 to his wife, Julia, which is roughly about $14 million.

CAVUTO: And that was his goal. He wanted to protect them.

Some little interesting scuttlebutt issues, that he drank a lot, that he had a lot of those problems. Did he?

BAIER: He did early. As a soldier, he was in the Northwest Territory, and he got busted being drunk and got kicked out of the Army, essentially. And that stayed with him.

And some of his contemporaries who were jealous of his ascent in the Civil War used that against him. No evidence that he was...

(CROSSTALK)

CAVUTO: But Lincoln was fine with it, right?

BAIER: Yes.

CAVUTO: You had relayed a famous story.

BAIER: Yes, where he said -- one of the generals said, he's drinking out there. And Lincoln said, well, tell me what kind of whiskey he's drinking, because I want to get barrels of it, because he's winning this war.

CAVUTO: You know, we forget he's the reason why the North won. He's the reason why we had the country together. He was the reason why -- he was doing everything he can to keep the country together.

Where do you think we would have been had he not been president?

BAIER: In a really bad place.

The other thing you can think about is, if it was Lincoln and then Grant, and we didn't have Johnson in there, the country would have been -- would have avoided years and years of strife, and it would be a different place today.

CAVUTO: There are still people read your book, Bret, and then think about, well, we understand why Grant did what he did to make this deal, to settle this election issue, to make concessions in the South.

But it did bring on 100 years of racism and cruelty that went on and on and on. I understand what you're saying, obviously, about getting the country forward, but did you get from your notes -- and I know you went to get Grant letters and all the research, personal or otherwise -- that he ever regretted it, that it was a deal, yes, it kept the country together, but at a huge price?

BAIER: He knew.

He knew if someone didn't take the mantle after him, that that could be the price that that was going to pay. But keeping that union together was his ultimate goal. He was so well-respected, a million people turned out here in New York for his funeral, lining the streets in Union uniforms, Confederate uniforms.

He has two Confederate generals and two Northern generals as his pallbearers. I mean, he was really quite a man.

CAVUTO: Amazing. Amazing.

Highly recommend it, "To Rescue the Republic: Ulysses S. Grant, the Fragile Union, and the Crisis of 1876."

BAIER: We didn't get to the pink notes. Those are the different ones.

CAVUTO: Oh, those are the nasty questions.

BAIER: Oh, OK. Got it.

(LAUGHTER)

CAVUTO: But I like you. But I just said, well, do I really want to do that? No, no.

No, I kid you.

BAIER: Thank you for having me.

CAVUTO: But I highly, highly recommend it. And take heart here. There are still many, many more presidents to go.

(LAUGHTER)

CAVUTO: But he does have a deft touch with this stuff and humanizes it.

And you realize some of these iconic figures you hear so much about, they were human beings. They went through a lot. You should keep that in mind.

We will have more right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAVUTO: Well, apparently, Wendy's has had enough.

They knows a lot of people are getting frustrated waiting on drive-throughs a little too long. They will say right now that if your fries are cold, they will replace them with hot and crispy fries, but you might want to park somewhere else to deal with that while they're getting it to you.

Enter Mike Gunzelman, Kat Timpf.

Mike, I don't know those are Wendy fries.

MIKE GUNZELMAN, FOX NEWS HEADLINES ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER: Oh, yes.

CAVUTO: But, of course, you know what they're saying is, we acknowledge we got a problem here. We're trying to address it.

Would that address it for you, getting some hot fries to replace the cold fries?

GUNZELMAN: Listen, I love fast food, Neil. And we are definitely pretty strong. So, shout-out to Wendy's.

Not a sponsored ad or anything, but these are definitely, definitely good food.

So, listen, anything that can better the fast food experience, because, listen, the lines to get the food a lot longer no matter where you go, whether you go inside to restaurants or diners or bars, but even in the drive-throughs. But, yes, the Wendy's fries definitely good. Good job.

CAVUTO: Boy, you can be bought off easily, can't you?

(LAUGHTER)

KATHERINE TIMPF, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Yes.

CAVUTO: Kidding. Kidding.

Kat, what do you make of it? You don't strike me as a fast food person. But maybe that's a good thing, because the lines are getting a lot longer. They have actually done studies of this to conclude what we all know. They are getting longer.

TIMPF: No, I like to eat fast food, but only, like, alone late at night in the dark.

(LAUGHTER)

TIMPF: I think that's when it tastes the best.

(LAUGHTER)

TIMPF: Try it.

CAVUTO: This whole conversation is making me very uncomfortable, though.

(CROSSTALK)

TIMPF: Listen, but that means getting it delivered.

CAVUTO: Ah.

TIMPF: And so I don't see how this works in practice.

CAVUTO: Colder still, right.

TIMPF: Because these say it applies for delivery too.

But I might not be a perfect human, but I'm not going to be somebody who, like, looks at a delivery guy, who I already feel like a huge jerk making him bring me fast food, being like listen, these fries are cold. You got to go back.

CAVUTO: Amazing.

TIMPF: Like, I'm never going to do that.

So it is a huge bummer. It ruins the entire experience when you bite in the fry and it's cold.

CAVUTO: Well, but I can understand they have a problem. They can't get enough people to work there. Every one is stretched thin. I get it.

But I'm just wondering if there's going to be a big old customer revolt.

Gunz, what do you think?

GUNZELMAN: Well, here's the thing.

This is a serious matter, because we're seeing it, like I said, in restaurants, and especially with this. I brought my niece. All of a sudden, the Happy Meal became an unhappy meal because you're just waiting forever.

My Big Mac became a big nap, because you're waiting forever.

(LAUGHTER)

GUNZELMAN: And we -- society in general, we are so impatient. We want things on a flick of a switch, to the push of a button. And we don't like lines.

CAVUTO: Well, then what is your timeline?

Real quick, Gunz, how long will you wait on a drive-through for your food? Because this seems to be focused on drive-throughs. How long?

TIMPF: Yes, 30 to 45 seconds. And the same thing goes with gas lines. We aren't going to wait.

CAVUTO: All right. All right, 30 seconds.

Kat, if you were on a drive-through how long would you wait, tops?

TIMPF: I will wait forever, because I don't drive. So it's always someone else that's behind...

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

CAVUTO: So, you're in the back here limo. You roll the window down.

TIMPF: No. No.

(LAUGHTER)

CAVUTO: I can just picture that.

TIMPF: No.

GUNZELMAN: Oh, Kat.

CAVUTO: All right, guys, we don't know. We don't know.

But, I mean, otherwise, just customers are getting fried.

(LAUGHTER)

CAVUTO: Getting fried.

I tried, all right?

Here's "The Five."

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