THE FOX NEWS FRAT HOUSE

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.

 

 

     

FOX NEWS POST-TUCKER

So FOX News has decided to replace Tucker Carlson with Bill O’Reilly’s one-time man-on-the-street interviewer, Jesse Watters--someone whose gravitas rating hovers in the same abysmal neighborhood as the network’s late-night darling, Greg Gutfeld.

What attracted folks like me to Tucker’s program was his unpredictability, his willingness to let guests talk, his repeated calls to spend time with family and loved ones, and his apparent devotion to a moral vision rooted in religious tradition---all of which informed his tagline opposition to “lying, pomposity, smugness, and group think.”  The “group think” moniker wasn’t limited to the multitude of Woke idiocies but also extended to third-rail GOP topics, most conspicuously to opinions about the war in Ukraine.  Republicans like Lindsay Graham who are welcomed on Hannity’s program frequently found themselves targets of Carlson’s anti-neocon, open border criticism. 

A Mediaite analysis of primetime ratings showed FOX News lost a million viewers after Tucker’s firing, viewership going from an average of 2.6 million in the four weeks prior to Carlson’s departure to a 1.6 million average in the four subsequent weeks.  The hemorrhage in Tucker’s 8 p.m. Eastern time slot was even more dramatic, falling from 3.27 million to 1.49 million viewers—an outflow that continues to this day.

I doubt the network’s brass expect to recover Tucker’s audience with Watters at the helm, a broadcaster whose comic persona and intellectual shallowness (He wasn’t sure Hawaii was the 50^th state.) detract significantly from the impact of his largely accurate but analogy-saturated critiques of leftist policies.  Indeed, one might argue that the Paul Ryan contingent on the network’s board have a death wish for FOX News as a Trump-friendly conservative voice.  What else can explain Greg Gutfeld’s ubiquitous presence as a regular host on The Five plus his own late-night show (soon to be at 10 p.m. Eastern and 7 p.m. on the West Coast). Gutfeld and his assortment of handpicked outcasts do provide unique perspectives, but perspectives largely communicated through the host’s obsession with foul language, sexual deviancy, and scatology--all conjoined with an insult-spewing persona that makes Don Rickles look like Pat Boone.   

Granted, Gutfeld excels at monologues that skewer Woke idiocies, but unlike Tucker, one senses a yawning spiritual void at the heart of his tirades, a void not filled by the intoxicants he touts with conspicuous fervor.  In a recent Wall Street Journal piece about the “irreverent” “King of Late Night” Gutfeld mused about taking over Carlson’s prime time slot.  Apparently replacing Tucker with a crude libertine who displays no discernible connection to faith, family, or activities cherished by ordinary Americans proved a bridge too far for network suits in prime time--but not at 10 p.m. (or 7 in the West).

Certainly there’s no way Gutfeld’s most regular panel member, Kat Timpf, could have taken Tucker’s place, though for some reason FOX has allowed this intellectually vapid, morally-challenged libertarian increasing time as a commentator whose appearances culminated in a panel chair on Bret Baier’s program.  Two on-point examples: Timpf ignores human, legal, financial, and social service disasters caused by an open border and instead regurgitates the unrealistic libertarian dogma that an open border would be fine were no welfare benefits available.  Similarly, she decries Governor DeSantis’s efforts to protect young school children from wildly inappropriate books with explicit sexual messages because such governmental action amounts to, in her mind, right-wing censorship.  Of course Timpf ignores the fact that absent such intervention one leaves in place governing school boards and curricula that facilitate the corruption of minors.  The months-long promotion of Timpf’s gossipy, self-referential book (You Can’t Joke About That) paired with the network’s limiting promotional appearances for Judge Jeanine Pirro’s substantive volume (Crimes Against America: The Left’s Takedown of Our Republic) provides more evidence that folks at FOX are working to eviscerate a once-conservative news outlet.

The assortment of temporary hosts that filled Tucker’s time slot over the last few weeks were generally competent but only Will Cain provided the kind of perspective and passionate delivery that rightly makes leftist heads explode, and only Joey Jones communicated the heartfelt compassion that Carlson also exuded.  If one could graft those two hosts together FOX might have something that comes close to the Carlson standard, but then the globalist suits at the network would have to fire that broadcasting centaur as an unacceptable threat to the D.C. Swamp.

 Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle