Here’s a conspiracy theory worth pondering. On Monday, April 6, 2026, Fox News’ premier evening program, The Five, featured not only Dana Perino, Kellyanne Conway, Greg Gutfeld, and Jesse Watters, but also Kat Timpf in the chair typically occupied by Harold Ford or Jessica Tarlov. The conspiracy? Someone has been transforming the news organization into an unserious, morally vacuous source for information and opinion. Maybe it’s the former House Speaker and Mitt Romney’s 2012 running mate, Paul Ryan, who continues to sit on the board of Fox Corporation. Or maybe it’s Karl Rove, the Bush 43 whiteboard guru. Or maybe it’s some other Deep State figure who has penetrated the bowels of Fox News. But some cabal must be afoot to populate the network’s programs with contributors or hosts that stand slightly above late night comics when it comes to credible analysis.
The plot began three years
ago when Jesse Watters, formerly Bill O’Reilly’s “Man on the Street,” was
elevated to the 8 p.m. (ET) anchor spot replacing Tucker Carlson. While Watters occasionally strings together salient
talking points, on a gravitas scale he rates near Pee-wee Herman. To his credit (if not his credibility) Watters
regularly observes that his prestigious journalistic position was a stroke of
luck, not a status achieved through professional merit. On Watters’ Primetime show he chums it up with folks like “K-Mac” (Kevin
McCarthy) and “VDH” (Victor Davis Hanson) during interviews where serious
issues are approached on his part like exchanges between frat house buddies. This insouciance turns into Gutfeld-inspired
frivolity and stupidity on The Five
where, in the aforementioned episode, he turned a question about Democrats
touting tax cuts into an analogy involving a return to the missionary position after
experimenting with various sexual alternatives.
Gutfeld is a
different matter given the fact that he regularly composes poignant diatribes
eviscerating leftist absurdities. The
problem is that his not-so-late-night obscenity fest (7 p.m. on the West Coast)
totally destroys his credibility as a serious individual whose opinions are
worthy of consideration. On Gutfeld! his psychological instability and
moral vacuity are clearly displayed. Compulsive
sniggering, a scatological fixation, plus jokes that completely discard the
notion of taste reveal that Gutfeld is “a sick man,” as Paul Mauro recently
observed when countering the host’s ecstatic praise for an erotic chatbot. While “late night” Gutfeld generally
tows a pro-MAGA political line, his comic persona is that of a rank degenerate. (No, Greg, it isn’t funny that you have some
young pool-boys confined in your basement.)
Indeed, Gutfeld’s comic “brand” is that nothing is sacred, a shtick that
completely obviates his serious monologue about Democrats destroying the
boundaries a society requires. Finally, Gutfeld’s
comic (and at least partially real) personality has lowered the intellectual
and moral tone of The Five, especially
in terms of acceptable language and imagery (cf. the aforementioned Watters
analogy).
Kat Timpf’s addition
to The Five on April 6 was the coup de grâce for that
episode’s integrity. Timpf, who
infiltrated FOX via Gutfeld’s late-late night program, Red Eye, brought to the highly rated evening show Gutfeld’s personal moral
void plus none of his political insights. Though careful to mute her freshman level “libertarian” views about borders, drag queens,
and drug and prostitution legalization that air on Gutfeld!, when given a chance to speak on this more serious program,
Timpf was still able to plug her idea that no joke is off limits -- the premise
of her first self-referential book.
When asked about a very successful SNL gag that implied Trump’s attendance at a theater performance might
result in a repetition of Lincoln’s fate, Timpf (along with Gutfeld and
Watters) shrugged it off as nothing important -- no thought given to
“unintended” consequences or the uproar that would inevitably (and rightly) ensue
were the same barb directed toward Barack Obama. Only Kellyanne Conway provided a reasonable response
by noting that liberals are vastly more willing than conservatives to condone
political violence and said so just a few
days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Timpf was also able to declare that she often
employs the f-word in less restrictive contexts and can joke about her own mastectomy
-- as if a self-referential and presumably humorous observation about a
personal crisis justifies tasteless and harmful jokes about anything else. Such justifiably forbidden comedic territory
is a landscape upon which Gutfeld!, SNL , and Jimmy Kimmel regularly tread.
While I don’t care for Jessica Tarlov’s pre-packaged TDS
talking points, at least her comments represent a perspective that can’t be casually
dismissed as coming from a “Poo Detective” (Gutfeld!)
or someone who hysterically berates the thoughtful Federalist correspondent Brianna Lyman for a crocheting hobby. According to Timpf, Brianna is “blowing it”
if in her twenties she’s not at a bar getting wasted, smoking cigarettes,
throwing up, then going back to the bar. (See Timpf lose it here at minute 9:30.)
If Fox News wishes to foil the news-rot conspiracy against
it, I suggest utilizing Will Cain for Primetime
and employing Johnny Jones, Lisa Boothe, Kayleigh McEnany, Lawrence Jones, Paul
Mauro, and Erin Maguire to fill open opinion slots. Also insist on more decorum from Gutfeld or
confine him to late-late night.
Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in
Southern California. His book Moral Illiteracy:
"Who's to Say?" is also available
on Kindle , as is his book Poetry with a Moral Edge.
