THURSDAY: Lawrence O'Donnell gets it right!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025

Times columnists bring in the snark: Lawrence O'Donnell has been on fire in the past quite a few weeks. 

Last night, holy cow! Rep. Khanna (D-Calif.) credited O'Donnell's program with launching the request which led to yesterday's release of all those Epstein emails:

Khanna Credits O’Donnell’s MSNBC Team with Epstein Emails Release: ‘Only Reason They’re Public’

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) credited MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell and his team for helping trigger the release of emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate by House Oversight Democrats on Wednesday that mentioned President Donald Trump.

The three bombshell emails, part of more than 23,000 documents recently obtained by the House Oversight Committee, included Epstein referring to Trump as the “dog that hasn’t barked” and talking about how an alleged victim “spent hours at my house with him.”

And so on from there.

So it went on last evening's show. On Monday and Tuesday evening's shows, O'Donnell blasted those who have been calling for Senator Schumer's head.

He said there isn't a single Democratic senator who is looking to replace Schumer as Senate minority leader. Last night, Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) appeared on The Last Word and seemed to agree with that claim.

Based on experience, O'Donnell may have some idea of what he's talking about. He served, for quite a few years, as top aide to the very powerful Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan during the Clinton years.

He's been inside those Senate rooms behind those closed Senate doors. He says he knows how the Senate works, and we aren't inclined to doubt him.

We're inclined to agree with those who think that the government shutdown had run its course as a strategy for Democrats—that the time has come for Dems to plan and execute the second part of their ongoing pushback against the provisions of The Big, Beautiful Bill. 

Does anyone really believe that President Trump was ever going to relent and reinstate those Obamacare subsidies? We don't think was going to happen—but in a weird two-voice echo, Bruni and Stephens are taking turns today beating up on the latest bungle by those laughable Dems:

The Conversation
Welcome to the Washington Demolition Derby

Bret Stephens: Hi, Frank. The Senate finally voted on Monday to reopen the government, and the House just agreed to do the same. So what—other than dividing their own caucus and canceling a lot of flights and terrifying people on food stamps and (with their entirely predictable capitulation) infuriating their base—[what] did the Democrats accomplish with the shutdown?

Frank Bruni: Here’s what Democrats accomplished, Bret: They exceeded my expectations when it comes to their talent for self-injury. After last week’s elections, the party was riding high, and the big political stories were President Trump on the ropes and ugly MAGA infighting over Nick Fuentes. Now we have ugly Democratic infighting over an end to the shutdown without any continuation of Affordable Care Act subsidies. By either not being able to hold ranks or not making sure at the start that Democrats were all on the same page, the party has snatched discord from the jaws of victory. Impressive stuff, don’t you think?

Bret: Reminds me of the great Will Rogers line: “I don’t belong to any organized political faith. I am a Democrat.” But maybe the party will catch a break if the latest Jeffrey Epstein disclosures manage to stick to the president—though I tend to doubt they will.

And so on from there. Bruni was full of conventional wisdom and snark. Stephens matched him stride for stride.

(Full disclosure: Gail Collins is no longer past of the weekly colloquy known as The Conversation. Where once it was Stephens and Collins, today it's Stephens and Bruni. The attempts at humor persist.)

What positive outcome would have occurred if the Democrats had persisted with the government shutdown? We don't have the slightest idea, and the pair of nattering nabobs never quite tried to say. At this juncture, we remind you of a basic fact:

The GOP still controls the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Republican victories were narrow last fall, but Democrats still hold no institutional power. 

Democrats hold no institutional power! Eventually, Stephens explained why that is, and Bruni correctly agreed:

Bret: The other imperative is for parties to meet their voters where they are. Trump is president again because Democrats didn’t seem to be living on the same planet as most voters. Until last year, they were the party that wanted to pretend there was no crisis at the southern border, that inflation was “transitory,” that Joe Biden was fitter than a fiddle, and promised that “every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to the medical care they desire and need,” as Kamala Harris put it in 2019. Now candidates like Sherrill and Spanberger are saying: We want better schools and lower costs and an executive who doesn’t scare the bejesus out of you—like a certain exterior decorator in the White House.

Frank: Before I respond more fully, Bret, what is a bejesus? I’ve used the word myself many times and now realize I have absolutely no idea. And does a bejesus do battle with Beelzebub?

Bret: No, Bejesus was a discarded character from “Beetlejuice.”

Frank: As for Democrats opening the door to Trump by tacking too far left on various social and cultural issues, you know I agree with you on that. One thousand percent. But that’s not the only moral of Sherrill’s victory or of Spanberger’s. And I’d note that the examples you just gave mash together “wokeness,” bad governance, aloofness and lies. The border: terrible governance. The claim that inflation wasn’t a big deal or would soon pass: suicidally dismissive. The insistence that Biden was at his peak: the summit of mendacity. What I see in much of that isn’t far-left madness. It’s the arrogance of power.

In the great "bejesus" exchange, you see one of the attempts at humor to which we've referred. That said, we agree with the list of ways those of us in Blue America managed to put Candidate Trump back in the Oval Office. 

We agree with Stephens and Bruni's list. That said, we did put President Trump back in the White House, and we did lose the Senate and the House, if only narrowly in the case of both Trump and the House. Given those realities, it seems to us that there was nothing we could expect to gain—and much that we could potentially lose—from an unending shutdown.

Dems need to mount Phase 2 of this promising Pushback Campaign. Sadly, we Blues got ourselves into this mess, in precisely the ways the two boobirds described. 

Now we Blues need to work our way out. It would help if we could wrap our heads around these basic facts:

We managed to do this to ourselves. There will be no magic way out.

THE DISAPPEARED: Gutfeld! isn't a "late night" show!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025

Obvious fact disappears: As you may have heard, the Fox News Channel's Gutfeld! program is, according to Nielsen, the third most-watched TV show in all of "cable news."

Its host also tends to dominate proceedings as a co-host on The Five–and The Five has the highest viewership of any "cable news" program!

On this perfectly reasonable basis, the New York Times has published two profiles of Greg Gutfeld and his insult-driven Gutfeld! show within the past two months. Today, we'll focus on two remarkably bogus ideas those profiles have continued to promulgate.

The first such misconception was sitting in the dual headline above this profile of Kat Timpf, one of Greg Gutfeld's nightly sidekicks on his eponymous Gutfeld! show. The profile of Timpf appeared in late September. It sat beneath these headlines:

A Baby. A Double Mastectomy. Many Opinions From Fox News Viewers.
Kat Timpf got pregnant, got breast cancer, then got back to work on the political comedy show “Gutfeld!”—all as a culture war brews over ambition, motherhood and women’s health.

That was (and is) the dual headline. Our question would be this:

Is Gutfeld! a "political comedy show?" Is it a "comedy show" at all?

That's the way the Fox News Channel describes the insult-driven show, but is that characterization accurate? We would say that the answer is no. 

We'd say that Gutfeld! is a corporate messaging show. We'd say its tribal messaging is smuggled in under cover of comedy stylings.

We're sorry, but Gutfeld! simply isn't a "comedy show" in the way that designation might suggest. Each night, the program opens with two or three minutes of jokes delivered by its highly transgressive host, but he then delivers a monologue on some issue or topic and the mayhem proceeds from there.

Over the course of four or five segments, the host states his view with respect to a series of such topics. After Gutfeld has stayed his view, a hand-picked panel of four stooges proceed to express their agreement with everything he has said.

On most evenings, two or three of these savants may be D-list comedians. But this is not your mother or father's "comedy show" in the way that term will imply.

That first misconception was sitting right there in that New York Times headline. The second misconception takes the form of a flat misstatement of fact.

That misstatement is advanced, right from the jump, in the newspaper's new interview / profile of Greg Gutfeld himself. The profile, written by David Marchese, appeared online last weekend. The coming Sunday, the profile is slated to appear in print editions as part of the New York Times Magazine. 

The profile of Gutfeld is already available online. As he starts, Marchese advances a flat misstatement of fact–and it's clear that Marchese knows this.

As we noted yesterday, this is the way the new interview / profile starts, New York Times headline included:

The Interview
Fox News Wanted Greg Gutfeld to Do This Interview. He Wasn’t So Sure.

Why can’t conservatives break through on late-night TV? For years, that was an open cultural question. The left, of course, had “The Daily Show” and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,” among others. Once the Trump era began, progressives could also point to hosts like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers as being politically simpatico. The right had, well, no one.

That is, until Greg Gutfeld. Formerly a health and men’s magazine editor, Gutfeld joined Fox News in 2007 to helm the later-than-late-night chat free-for-all “Red Eye.” He worked his way up the network’s schedule, and in 2021 his new show, “Gutfeld!” started airing on weekday nights at 11 p.m. on the East Coast. (It’s now on at 10 p.m.) Its format is different from traditional host-driven late-night shows: Rather than interview celebrity guests, Gutfeld presides over a round table of regular panelists, among them the former professional wrestler Tyrus and the commentator Kat Timpf, the designated (occasional) contrarian. The overall vibe is insult-heavy, aggressively anti-woke and relentlessly pro-conservative. It’s a successful formula. The show averages over three million viewers a night—numbers that dwarf its competitors’.

Sad.

Much of what Marchese writes in that opening passage is perfectly accurate. That said, some of what he writes plainly isn't–and it's already clear that Marchese understands that fact.

In our view, Marchese's portrait of the content of this show–or at least of the program's "vibe"–is perfectly accurate. The contents of this messaging vehicle are exactly as Marchese says:

The program's contents are indeed "insult-heavy, aggressively anti-woke and relentlessly pro-conservative." That "vibe" originates with its 61-year-old host and is then aped by an ever-changing nightly panel of four reliable stooges.

(On most nights, that congregation will include the aforementioned Timpf, the program's "designated (occasional) contrarian." For ourselves, we'd be inclined to add the word "very" before the word "occasional.")

To his credit, Marchese has apparently watched enough Gutfeld! broadcasts to offer a bit of skepticism about the program's casting. He's willing to say that Timpf has been placed within the cast to offer "occasional" contrarian views–but he also serves as Gutfeld's fifth stooge when he describes the Gutfeld! program as a "late-night show" whose viewership numbers "dwarf" the numbers of "its competitors."

Within the realm of "cable news," Gutfeld! actually is a heavily watched program. But based upon standard industry parlance, the program simply isn't a "late night show," and it's already clear that Marchese knows that.

Fellow Times subscribers, please! Is Gutfeld! really a late-night show? As Marchese plainly knows, these are some of this program's additional numbers:

When the Gutfeld! program airs:
Eastern time zone: 10 p.m.
Central time zone: 9 p.m.
Mountain time zone: 8 p.m.
Pacific time zone: 7 p.m.

Right there in Gotham itself, Gutfeld! airs at 10 p.m. Based on long-standing industry parlance, that fact would seem to mean that Gutfeld! is really a primetime program. 

In Gotham, it doesn't air at 11:30 p.m., the traditional starting time for "late night" (comedy) shows. But the misstatement in question becomes more glaring as we venture across the fruited plain. discovering that Gutfeld! goes to air at these times in other well-known cities:

When the Gutfeld! program airs:
Chicago, Houston, Dallas: 9 p.m.
Denver, sometimes Phoenix: 8 p.m.
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle: 7 p.m.

For the record, the Tonight show airs at 11:35 in New York–and at the same time out on the coast. By way of contrast, Gutfeld! airs at 10 p.m. in New York City, but at 7 p.m. in Hollywood and all the way up the west coast!

On what planet has any such program ever been described as a "late night" show? We'd say the question answers itself–and Marchese's insertion of the highlighted term seems to show us that he knows about this nationwide broadcast schedule:

In 2021 his new show, “Gutfeld!” started airing on weekday nights at 11 p.m. on the East Coast. (It’s now on at 10 p.m.)

The key phrase there is "on the East Coast." Marchese seems to understand the way this insult-driven program airs across the country. 

(It's possible that other journalists haven't understood this matter in other Gutfeld-friendly reports about the Gutfeld! program.)

Why do we say that Marchese's opening passage is "Gutfeld-friendly?" To make the matter perfectly clear, here' the rest of Marchese's opening passage, continuing directly from above:

So Gutfeld, who is also a host of the daytime show “The Five” alongside Dana Perino and Jesse Watters, can now credibly lay claim to the title “king of late night.” (Also the name of his 2023 nonfiction book.) But it’s a kingdom in turmoil, with CBS announcing it is canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” next year and ABC briefly suspending Jimmy Kimmel’s show after comments he made related to Charlie Kirk’s murder. Those decisions were viewed by many as politically motivated and also as a possible infringement on free speech. This at a time when questions about the long-term future of late night as a viable genre—as well as censorship in comedy—are thick in the air. About all that, and much more, Gutfeld had plenty to say about in his own pugnacious fashion.

Sad. Back in 2023, in his own pugnacious way, Gutfeld dubbed himself "the king of late night." He did so in the title of one of his flyweight books. 

Two years later, Marchese is willing to advance this claim on Gutfeld's behalf, even though he seems to know that the claim is baldly inaccurate.

Is the Gutfeld! program a "comedy show?" We'd call that claim misleading. But is it a "late night" (comedy) show? We'd call that claim laughably false. 

It airs at 7 p.m. in L.A.! According to traditional industry parlance, prime time hasn't even started when this show airs on the west coast!

Marchese is widely praised for his interview / profiles. For ourselves, we don't have the slightest idea why a competent, fully informed mainstream journalist would want to carry messaging water for a pugnacious, insult-driven fellow like Gutfeld or for the Fox News Channel.

As noted, Gutfeld's program does have a very large viewership within the "cable news" context. That said, it isn't a "late night" comedy show. Indeed, it doesn't occupy a traditional "late night" time slot anywhere in this nation!

We don't have the slightest idea why Marchese chose to be the latest journalist to push this bit of marketing bluster in service to Gutfeld and Fox. We're willing to float the possibility that his editor doctored his copy. 

That said, that copy did advance a phony claim in service to Gutfeld and Fox–and it seems to us that Marchese performed an additional service to Gutfeld as his interview proceeded.

In our view, Marchese performs an additional service. Joining a journalistic cast of thousands, he makes the actual contents of this insult-driven "cable news" show fade and then disappear.

Tomorrow: Weird conduct disappeared

WEDNESDAY: The fuller "Masculinity monologues!"

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2025

Jesse Watters speaks: In this morning's report, we reproduced part of Jesse Watters' "Masculinity monologues," as captured by the leading authority on these Fox News Channel orations.

A tiny bit of background:

In recent months, we'd been wondering if we'd ever be able to capture the sheer absurdity of these soliloquies about the ways modern men and women should behave. There wasn't any obvious way search for the various things this Fox News Channel star has said—but then, we saw that Wikipedia has created a compilation of his pronouncements regarding these all-important gender issues.

In this morning's report, we published something like half of that authority's compilation. Below, you see Wikipedia's full account of Watters' wit and wisdom in this area. 

We wouldn't reproduce this material if it didn't strike us as a reasonable summary of the things this "cable news" nut-ball says when he heads off onto one of these jags:

Jesse Watters

[...]

Comments on masculinity

Watters has criticized former President Joe Biden for licking ice cream in public as "a grown man." He has instructed men on how they should wave and belittled those who grocery shop with their wives. In September 2024, Jesse Watters was criticized for comments he made on The Five regarding Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who had shared a photo of himself drinking a milkshake with a paper straw. Watters mocked the image as an example of Walz's lack of masculinity because he used a straw which he claimed made women not like Walz because women like masculinity. He said that asking for a "vanilla shake" instead of a "vanilla ice cream shake" also makes men look weak. The remarks sparked backlash, with critics accusing Watters of promoting outdated gender norms and using a trivial moment to push political commentary. Governor Walz responded by defending the post and encouraging a focus on real issues rather than manufactured culture wars.

In March 2025, Watters listed his "five rules for men" on The Five – don't be that serious just be funny, don't eat soup in public, don't cross your legs, don't drink from a straw and don't wave simultaneously with two hands because men wave with one hand, not both hands at the same time. He added that one of the reasons you don't drink from a straw is the way your lips purse which is very effeminate. He said referring to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz that Walz's excuse was, " 'Well I was drinking a milkshake.' Again, you shouldn't be drinking a milkshake. Milkshakes are for kids." Watters was reacting to Walz's appearance on the This is Gavin Newsom podcast, where he said that MAGA voters are "scared" of his masculinity because he doesn't joke that he can fix a truck and that MAGA focused on attacking him for his masculinity "obsessively" during the 2024 presidential election. His comments were widely ridiculed as revealing his insecurity on social media according to The Independent and an image of him and Donald Trump whom he strongly supports drinking from a straw surfaced on social media.

In April 2025, Watters said that "When you sit behind a screen all day, it makes you a woman. Studies have shown this," and as one of the panelists cackled, he repeated the claim; while debating a MAGA author's claim that President Donald Trump's tariffs will reverse a crisis of masculinity in the U.S. by bringing back jobs requiring physical strength. He also said "If you're out working ... you are around other guys; you're not around HR ladies and lawyers. That gives you estrogen." The Five co-host Jeanine Pirro pushed back saying "You sit behind a screen." The incident sparked backlash across social media.

That passage isn't well written. But so the leading authority has said, with some links provided, as it tries to capture the essence of these rules for the road. 

To what extent are these sorts of pronouncements supposed to be taken as serious? We'd say that isn't entirely clear. 

As we've noted in the past, Watters slithers back and forth between a pair of personas. He offers standard recitations of mandated Fox News Channel dogma, then lapses into what experts describe as "silly-boy entertainment mode." 

That said, he still refers to Governor Walz as "Tampon Tim," or simply as "Tampon," and he seems to take delight in suggesting that Walz, and other major Democrats, are secretly gay. So it goes as the Fox News Channel pretends to present "cable news."

Personally, we think it qualifies as news when this sort of foolishness, accompanied by gay-baiting and by the "cackling" of other panelists, is featured on The Five and Jesse Watters Primetime, the two most-watched TV shows in the American "cable news" multiverse. For whatever reason, Blue America's major news orgs insist on averting their gaze.

We offer this presentation by Wikipedia for entertainment purposes only. On the other hand, it strikes as news that stupidifications of this type emerge, on a fairly regular basis, from the high-powered clown cars which transport the major stars of today's imitations of "news."

THE DISAPPEARED: When the Times decided to profile Gutfeld...

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2025

...large parts of his shtick disappeared: By the numbers, Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters are the most-watched performers at the new-and-revised Fox News Channel.

At 5 p.m. Eastern, the towel-snapping, bro-aligned pair tend to dominate proceeding on The Five, the most-watched TV show in American "cable news." At 8 p.m. (Eastern), and then again at 10, they host their own eponymous prime-time shows—the nation's second- and third most-watched "cable news" programs.

A marked change in the corporate culture of the Fox News Channel has accompanied the rise of these new Red American stars. Here, for example, is a moment from yesterday's broadcast of The Five, with Harold Ford presiding:

FORD (11/11/25): Welcome back. People are now taking showers in complete darkness, and get this—psychologists say it might actually help you sleep better because the dim light gets you into sleep mode.

Greg, you have a strong opinion about this? Is this something that you do?

GUTFELD: This is another study done by men to protect men. Why would you shower in the dark? In case your wife walks in and you were doing something that wasn't involved in the showering process.

WATTERS, PERINO: [Laughter]

GUTFELD: "No, honey, this is good for my health. I'm showering in the dark."

With the rise of Gutfeld and Gutfeldism, the channel's former culture of "family values" has made way for a new focus on wayward or trangressive sexuality and an endless stream of "dick jokes." Then too, there's the endless stream of remarks by Gutfeld which seem to have an undisguised air of woman hatred. 

In a somewhat sillier vein, Watters is becoming famous for his weird ruminations about the way real men should behave in public settings. How silly does this inanity get? Wikipedia offers this overview of this endlessly weird bit of "cable news" performance art: 

Jesse Watters

[...]

Comments on masculinity

Watters has criticized former President Joe Biden for licking ice cream in public as "a grown man." He has instructed men on how they should wave and belittled those who grocery shop with their wives. In September 2024, Jesse Watters was criticized for comments he made on The Five regarding Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who had shared a photo of himself drinking a milkshake with a paper straw. Watters mocked the image as an example of Walz's lack of masculinity because he used a straw which he claimed made women not like Walz because women like masculinity. He said that asking for a "vanilla shake" instead of a "vanilla ice cream shake" also makes men look weak. The remarks sparked backlash, with critics accusing Watters of promoting outdated gender norms and using a trivial moment to push political commentary. Governor Walz responded by defending the post and encouraging a focus on real issues rather than manufactured culture wars.

In March 2025, Watters listed his "five rules for men" on The Five–don't be that serious just be funny, don't eat soup in public, don't cross your legs, don't drink from a straw and don't wave simultaneously with two hands because men wave with one hand, not both hands at the same time. He added that one of the reasons you don't drink from a straw is the way your lips purse which is very effeminate...

Watters is 47 years old. As you can see by clicking that link, Wikipedia's compilation of this relentless inanity continues at length from there.

Watters may come across as weirdly silly with respect to his proclamations about modern masculinity. Gutfeld may seem less pleasant. 

Gutfeld may seem less pleasant! Especially on his own Gutfeld! dhow, Gutfeld has conducted a long love affair with jokes like the one he delivered at 10:01 p.m. (Eastern) this Monday night:

GUTFELD (11/10/25): In Washington state, a large sea lion blocked traffic on a busy road. And I thought New York City was the only place with a sea lion problem.

[PHOTO of the five co-hosts of The View]

AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE]

"They'll even applaud the bad View jokes," the delighted host now said. At 10:02 p.m. (Eastern), he offered this crowd-pleasing chaser:

GUTFELD: In Ireland, reports of a lion on the lose turned out to be a dog with a fresh haircut. 

I believe we have a picture.

[PHOTO of Rosie O'Donnell]

AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE]

On a virtually nightly basis, Gutfeld pleases his audience with jokes in which the five women of The View are compared to horses, cows, elephants, whales and all manner of "livestock." 

O'Donnell is also a frequent target. Recent coarse remarks by the Fox News Channel's impish host have involved her gynecologist and also her therapist.

The rise of Gutfeld and Gutfeldism has involved a major change in the cultural landscape at the Fox News Channel. Some may approve of this cultural change. Others perhaps will not.

At this site, we're struck by the high degree of inanity in topic selection, wed to an endless array of comments which seem to reek of woman hatred. (Others have called this "misogyny.") Beyond that, Gutfeld's obsession with human body waste is another puzzling aspect of his pseudo-analytical stylings.

At this site, we're struck by the ugliness, and the relentless stupidity, of the Gutfeld cultural style. But even if the incessant tomfoolery strikes an observer as essentially harmless, the change in the cultural landscape at Fox is hard to miss—and the Fox News Channel is, by far, the most-watched and presumably, the most influential, of our three major "cable news" channels.

Presumably for that reason, Gutfeld and the Gutfeld! show have begun to attract a new degree of interest at the New York Times. In late September, the Times published a full-length profile of Kat Timpf, one of Gutfeld's pair of regular sidekicks on the Gutfeld! program.

Somewhat oddly in our view, the profile portrayed Timpf as a bit of a beleaguered feminist under attack from the Gutfeld! audience. The profile appeared beneath this dual headline:

A Baby. A Double Mastectomy. Many Opinions From Fox News Viewers.
Kat Timpf got pregnant, got breast cancer, then got back to work on the political comedy show “Gutfeld!”—all as a culture war brews over ambition, motherhood and women’s health.

Given Timpf's apparent lack of discomfort with the program's air of woman hatred, that fashioning struck us as somewhat odd. At any rate, the profile of Timpf has now been followed with a lengthy interview/profile of Gutfeld himself. The profile, written by David Marchese, was published online over the past weekend. 

The interview / profile is slated to appears in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine. Headline included, the profile starts like this:

The Interview
Fox News Wanted Greg Gutfeld to Do This Interview. He Wasn’t So Sure.

Why can’t conservatives break through on late-night TV? For years, that was an open cultural question. The left, of course, had “The Daily Show” and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,” among others. Once the Trump era began, progressives could also point to hosts like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers as being politically simpatico. The right had, well, no one.

That is, until Greg Gutfeld. Formerly a health and men’s magazine editor, Gutfeld joined Fox News in 2007 to helm the later-than-late-night chat free-for-all “Red Eye.” He worked his way up the network’s schedule, and in 2021 his new show, “Gutfeld!” started airing on weekday nights at 11 p.m. on the East Coast. (It’s now on at 10 p.m.) Its format is different from traditional host-driven late-night shows: Rather than interview celebrity guests, Gutfeld presides over a round table of regular panelists, among them the former professional wrestler Tyrus and the commentator Kat Timpf, the designated (occasional) contrarian. The overall vibe is insult-heavy, aggressively anti-woke and relentlessly pro-conservative. It’s a successful formula. The show averages over three million viewers a night—numbers that dwarf its competitors’.

Marchese is widely touted for his skill as an interviewer. For that reason, we were struck by some of the things he failed to report and discuss in this interview / profile hybrid.

Based on its viewership numbers, the Fox News Channel stands astride the "cable news" world as a modern colossus. It is therefore altogether fitting and proper that one of its most-watched performers is now being profiled by Blue America's most important newspaper.

That said, what kind of journalism is this, which may almost seem to go from bad to worse? Some of Marchese's effort in his interview / profile can perhaps be seen as enlightening. We were much more struck by the elements of Gutfeldism Marchese failed to directly report and thereby chose to disappear.

Gutfeld's style is "insult-heavy," Marchese correctly writes. One basic question would be this:

What keeps reporters at the Times from quoting his endless remarks?

Tomorrow: Weirdly wrong from the start

TUESDAY: In search of a new form of government!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2025

Rule by opening act: There seem to be quite a few different names for what might be called "rule by the rich." The leading authority on such systems starts with this familiar term:

Plutocracy

A plutocracy (from Ancient Greek πλοῦτος (ploûtos) 'wealth' and κράτος (krátos) 'power') or plutarchy is a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income. It can be considered a specific form of oligarchy (rule by the few) where the ruling few are wealthy. The first known use of the term in English dates from 1631. It is not rooted in any established political philosophy.

And so on from there. That same source offers this alternative term:

Oligarchy

Oligarchy (from Ancient Greek ὀλιγαρχία (oligarkhía) 'rule by few'; from ὀλίγος (olígos) 'few' and ἄρχω (árkhō) 'to rule, command') is a form of government in which power rests with a small number of people. Leaders of such regimes are often referred to as oligarchs, and generally are characterized by having titles of nobility or high amounts of wealth.

[....]

Aristotle pioneered the use of the term as meaning rule by the rich, contrasting it with aristocracy, arguing that oligarchy was a corruption of aristocracy.

Still according to that source, "kleptocracy" refers to "government by corrupt leaders who use political power to steal the wealth of the people." But then again, also this:

Kakistocracy

Kakistocracy (/ˌkækɪˈstɒkrəsi/ KAK-ist-OK-rə-see) is government by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous people.

The word was coined as early as the 17th century and derives from two Greek words, kákistos (κάκιστος, 'worst') and krátos (κράτος, 'rule'), together meaning 'government by the worst people.'

As far as we know, there is no established term for the form of government toward which our country is currently trending—government by self-assured male comedians. This thought came to mind when we read this report about the most recent proclamation by the extremely thoughtful Jon Stewart:

‘I Cannot F*cking Believe It!’ Jon Stewart Loses It on Democratic Senators Who Caved to Republicans

The Daily Show host Jon Stewart tore into eight Democratic and Independent senators who voted with Republicans to end the government shutdown on Monday, despite previously stating they would not back down.

“I can’t f*cking believe it!” Stewart shouted during his monologue. “And what, you ask, is ‘it’? Well, ‘it’ is the Democrats. You remember the Democrats? They shut down the government last month.”

It doesn't even have to be male comedians. Here goes a second report about someone who largely started out as a comedic monologist:

I Have No Faith’: Whoopi Goldberg Torches Democrats Over Shutdown Compromise With GOP

The View‘s Whoopi Goldberg slammed the eight Senate Democrats who “threw in the towel by siding with the GOP” over ending the government shutdown.

Senate Democrats held out for 40 days, refusing to vote in favor of the continuing resolution until Republicans agreed to negotiate on Affordable Care Act subsidies. That came to an end Sunday night when enough Democrats voted in favor of reopening the government without any guarantees on health care.

Gildberg's analysis is described a bit later in the report

We're flirting with a form of government in which we turn our powers of analysis over to gaggles of ranting comedians and comic actors. According to experts, a comedian could be a source of sound judgment, but some comedians aren't.

That isn't stopping our current array of comedians from loudly voicing their views about the end to the government shutdown. To us, it doesn't seem all that obvious whether the shutdown should have continued. Luckily, many of our comedians have been able to formulate views in which there's no room for doubt.

Fox News has spent years building its messaging product around the brilliance of male comedians and former professional "wrestlers." Other comedians rule the fruited plain through their thoughtful podcasts.

In this way, we the people are flirting with a form of government which has no name. "Sarcasticocracy" has been suggested, but the search goes on.

:

THE DISAPPEARED: Communist Communist Communist Communist!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2025

So goes the Fox News Channel: Who the Sam Hill is Zohran Mamdani? Because he's now mayor-elect of New York City, inquiring minds may want to know.

One day after he was elected, NPR's Rachel Treisman attempted to puzzle it out. Headline included, her "explainer" piece started like this:

EXPLAINER
NYC's next mayor is a democratic socialist. What does that mean?

New York City has elected a democratic socialist as its next mayor.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani won with a progressive platform focused on making the city more affordable, through free bus service, frozen rents, universal childcare and a higher minimum wage, among other ideas.

The state assemblymember represented both the Democratic Party and the Working Families Party on the ballot. He quoted prominent late-19th and early-20th century socialist Eugene Debs in his victory speech Tuesday night. And he is a longtime member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

[...]

As Mamdani's campaign pushed democratic socialism further into the mainstream, it has also raised questions about what the political ideology is—and isn't.

Most notably, President Trump has frequently and falsely criticized Mamdani as a communist in the lead-up to the election. Mamdani refuted that characterization in a June appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, to which he responded, "I am not."

Mamdani went on to describe his brand of democratic socialism, a term that is largely up to interpretation.

In our view, Treisman went on to make a valiant attempt to describe Mamdani's stated version of "democratic socialism." Four days later, the trio of friends on the Fox News Channel's Fox & Friends Weekend authored an alternate portrait of who and what Mamdani, and the rest of the Democratic Party, actually is and are. 

If we were to paraphrase what was said, we'd paraphrase it like this:

Communist Communist Communist Communist! Obama Obama Obama!

That account of what was said might be oversimplified. But if so, it isn't over-simplified by much.

The portrait in question was painted by this program's three regular co-hosts. Pete Hegseth and Will Cain are now long gone from the mix. The line-up now looks like this:

Co-hosts, Fox & Friends Weekend
Charlie Hurt
Rachel Campos-Duffy
Griff Jenkins

Campos-Duffy remains the straw which stirs this program's drink. As we've often noted, she's an exceptionally genial morning show performer—but only with respect to her friends.

The conversation we're about to describe took place near the start of the program's 7 a.m. hour. A person could spend a week examining the various things which were said, but we're going to move along a bit more quickly. As a general matter, we'll say this:

The conversation these lunkheads created helps illustrate the way our failing nation is being turned into a pair of dueling tribes. It illustrates the problem which arises when a major entity like the Fox News Channel adopts the practice known as "segregation by viewpoint"—when it hires people who will agree with each other on every possible point while giving voice to every aspect of their channel's corporate messaging.

Our guess this morning will be this:

Very few people in Blue America will be aware of how far off the rails these conversations have gone. That's because no major news org or journalist in Blue America reports and discusses the ridiculous fare which is routinely presented on the Fox News Channel. 

For whatever reason, these conversations are disappeared by Blue America's academics and journalists.

The conversation to which we refer starts right here, at 7:03 a.m. It continues along for the next ten minutes. This its principal theme:

Communist Communist Communist Communist! Obama Obama Obama!

As a bit of a saving grace, Campos-Dufy and Hurt didn't perform the vaudeville act they'd been performing in the previous several months. As part of this presentation, Campos-Duffy describes Mamdani as a Communist, and Hurt jumps in with this:

"A full-blown Communist."

At least that wasn't said this day. But as Campos-Duffy motored along, saying Communist Communist Obama Obama, very few other cries of alarm were actually left unsaid.

We won't transcribe the bulk of this segment. It started with videotape of former president Biden speaking at a fund-raider the previous night, with Campos-Duffy offering this:

HURT (11/8/25): Holy cow! It's like, he's not all there

CAMPOS-DUFFY (11/8/25): Again, shame on Jill Biden. She should be taking care of him. She should be enjoying him now that he's back home. Instead, she's like, "Get back out there!" There's no reason for Joe Biden to be out there now because he's not the leader of the party.

No one asked Campos-Duffy how she knew the role Jill Biden had played in this matter. She was simply advancing a familiar bit of demonization aimed at the former first lady.

So far, no Communists had been spotted. Inevitably, that small mercy would soon reach its end. At 7:06, the time-honored term of political panic was heard for the very first time:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: So there is a battle inside of the party. And it's sort of like— 

People say it's, like, the establishment Democrats versus the Communist/socialist wing, and I don't think that's quite what it is. I think it's those who are out and proud as socialists and those who think they still have to hide it, the way Obama did back in 2008.

Within this world, is a Communist the same thing as a socialist? At this juncture, that point still wasn't clear. Nor was it clear what this corporate TV star meant by either of these famous terms.

At the very least, it now seemed to be clear that everyone in the Democratic Party was at least a socialist. Also, that Candidate Obama hid that fact about himself during Campaign 2008.

Obama had always been at least a socialist—but what did that claim even mean? Neither of Campos-Duffy's friends asked, and the colloquy continued from there.

Are the Democrats a bunch of Communists, or are they merely socialists? Campos-Duffy was soon telling her friends this

CAMPOS-DUFFY: The debate isn't, "Are we socialist or Communists or not?" The debate is, "Should we tell everyone or not?"

It's a great point, Jenkins said. Soon we were on to this:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: [Obama] had to lie to us in 2008. But some of us were on to him. [Group laughter] I was!

Obama had lied about being a socialist, or maybe about being a Communist, way back in 2008! But Campos-Duffy had known all along.

With that, the friends began discussing the subpoenas which the DOJ had reportedly been sent to several former officials as part of the latest investigation of "the origins of the Trump-Russia probe." After a series of shaky claims, Campos-Duffy said this about that original probe:

CAMPOS-DUFFY: This weaponization of government—this very Communist idea of "I'm going to use intel agencies that are meant to capture terrorists to go after my own political opponents, and I'm going to use the government to take down a president who was duly elected and concoct this whole Russia collusion thing...—this whole thing was so toxic and it all starts with Obama. 

When you look at Mamdani winning here in New York City as a Communist, don't think about Mamdani—think about Obama. Everything that's bad that's happened, go back to Obama.

Mamdani won New York City as a Communist, we were now told. But it all goes back to Barack Obama, this Obama-loather now said.

Indeed, that original probe had been very Communist, Campos-Duffy said. The other friends nodded along.

People watching this segregated show are routinely handed a novel—a novelized story about recent American history. A different form of moral and intellectual disorder prevails at 10 p.m. each weekday night on the aggressively stupid Gutfeld! show.

Gutfeld! is the third most-watched TV program in our nation's "cable news" industry. The New York Times has finally begun to write about this extremely unusual program—but the Times still seems reluctant to report what happens on this show.

Our guess this morning will be this:

Very few people in Blue America will be aware of how far off the rails the Fox News Channel's major programs have gone. That's because no major journalist or news org in Blue America reports and discusses the contents of this channel's actual fare. 

For whatever reason, the contents of this channel's programs have been disappeared by Blue America's academics and journalists. Campos-Duffy goes unreported and undiscussed. So does the very strange Gutfeld.

Who the heck is Zohran Mamdani? He's a Communist, Fox News viewers were told. 

Also, it all goes back to Barack Obama! It sounds like President Obama was a Communist all along. His conduct was very Communist.

This is very low-end stuff. It's also the soul of the Fox News Channel, and it's worth reporting.

On Gutfeld!, the disorder takes a different form. For whatever reason, the New York Times still refuses to report what actually happens on that extremely strange "cable news" show.

Tomorrow: Blatantly false from the start

MONDAY: Democrats still lack any significant power!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2025

And so, the end of the shutdown came: Should ten Democrats have decided to vote to stop the shutdown? We'll link you to a pair of possible answers.

In this column for the New York Times, Ezra Klein says he wouldn't have voted to end the shutdown, but by the end of his piece, he takes a nuanced view of the matter:

What Were Democrats Thinking?

[...]

More than anything else, this is what led some Senate Democrats to cut a deal: Trump’s willingness to hurt people exceeds their willingness to see people get hurt. I want to give them their due on this: They are hearing from their constituents and seeing the mounting problems, and they are trying to do what they see as the responsible, moral thing. They do not believe that holding out will lead to Trump restoring the subsidies. They fear that their Republican colleagues would, under mounting pressure, do as Trump had demanded and abolish the filibuster...They don’t think a longer shutdown will cause Trump to cave. They just think it will cause more damage.

If I were in the Senate, I wouldn’t vote for this compromise. Shutdowns are an opportunity to make an argument, and the country was just starting to pay attention. If Trump wanted to cancel flights over Thanksgiving rather than keep health care costs down, I don’t see why Democrats should save him from making his priorities so exquisitely clear. And I worry that Democrats have just taught Trump that they will fold under pressure. That’s the kind of lesson he remembers.

But it’s worth keeping this in perspective: The shutdown was a skirmish, not the real battle. Both sides were fighting for position, and Democrats, if you look at the polls, are ending up in a better one than they were when they started. They elevated their best issue—health care—and set the stage for voters to connect higher premiums with Republican rule. It’s not a win, but given how badly shutdowns often go for the opposition party, it’s better than a loss.

Ezra would have continued the shutdown even as people suffered. On the other hand:

What happened isn't a win, he said, but it's better than a loss. That's the way the column ended. 

On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough said there was nothing more Democrats could hope to get out of an extended shutdown. He said they had already won the standoff by giving the electorate a chance to see President Trump behaving an undisguised ogre with respect to nutrition assistance and to subsidies for health insurance.

We're inclined to agree with that view. Thanks to Mediaite, here's part of Scarborough's discussion this morning with Senator King (I-Maine).

Some people are responding to the "cave" by the ten Democrats with a great deal of fury. We would offer this:

Those of us in Bue America bought this deal when we did the various things that made Election 2024 turn out the way it did. When we kept pretending that the southern border was closed. When we kept failing to explain what was occurring at the border. When we kept pretending that something seemed to be wrong with President Biden.

When we kept pretending that complaints about inflation and the cost of living were delusions on the part of the voters. When we kept pushing for some of the social justice issues which, rightly or wrongly, went well beyond anything that made sense to a large percentage of American voters.

When we kept pushing and pushing and looking for ways to get Candidate Trump locked up. We kept ignoring the interests of regular people as we invested ourselves in that project.

Under the circumstances, it's a miracle that Candidate Harris came as close as she did. It's a marker of how unpopular Candidate Trump actually was—but we still managed to get him elected to the White House again, and he even emerged with narrow majorities in the Senate and the House.

No, the border wasn't secure—and everyone knew that but us. In the process of pretending otherwise, we created the narrow but absolute power imbalance we're still stuck with today.

Democrats still have no particular power to stop the ogre-adjacent behavior being displayed by President Trump. Also this:

To this day, no one has tried to explain the policy at the southern border during the Biden years. No one has tried to explain, and no one has tried to apologize for all the arrogant dissembling in which we Blues were involved.

At this point, Blue America needs to find a voice the public will trust to explain the current situation involving the way the president is throwing lower-income people under the bus and into the cold. (We've advised you to pity the child with respect to the behavior of the current president.)

It will have to be a voice the American public will be inclined to trust. It might even help if it's a voice which can explain, and perhaps apologize for, our own tribe's unwise behavior during the past however many years.

The border was open and everyone knew it. We Blues were saying that it was secure. Everyone knew it wasn't secure—everyone except us!

Ezra's willing to let the suffering continue. Ezra is clearly a good, decent person. Is it possible that he's imaginably being a tiny bit cavalier, or that it might almost look that way to other good, decent people?

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. In our view, this isn't the easiest call.

THE DISAPPEARED: The New York Times has discovered Greg Gutfeld!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2025

His conduct still gets disappeared: The battle over the government shutdown—the battle over food assistance; the battle over affordable health care—is taking place within a larger context.

We refer to the nation's political discourse, or perhaps to its imitation of same. We've often told you this:

It's relatively easy to be aware of the various things which get reported and said. It can be extremely hard to be aware of the many things which get disappeared.

Many things do get disappeared within the American discourse. Having offered that tantalizing suggestion, we start our week with this:

Viewership numbers for cable news programs are now available for the month of October. Below, you see the way the Nielsen numbers looked last month for the fifteen most watched "cable news" programs.

The numbers represent the average audience for the particular program. For the full report from Adweek, you can just click here:

Here Are the Cable News Ratings for October 2025 / Total viewers
1. The Five, Fox News: 3.7 million
2. Jesse Watters Primetime, Fox News: 3.1 million
3. Gutfeld!, Fox News: 2.8 million
4. Special Report with Bret Baier, Fox News: 2.8 million
5. Hannity, Fox News: 2.6 million
6. The Ingraham Angle, Fox News: 2.6 million
7. The Will Cain Show, Fox News: 2.2 million
8. Outnumbered, Fox News: 2.0 million
9. America’s Newsroom, Fox News: 2.0 million
10. The Faulkner Focus, Fox News: 1.9 million
11. The Story with Martha MacCallum, Fox News: 1.9 million
12. America Reports, Fox News: 1.9 million
13. The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC: 1.6 million
14. Fox News @Night, Fox News: 1.5 million
15. Fox & Friends, Fox News: 1.3 million

You are correct, sir! Among October's most-watched "cable news" programs, fourteen of the top fifteen aired on the Fox News Channel.

(Just so you'll know, CNN's most-watched program was The Arena with Kasie Hunt. Airing at 4 p.m. Eastern, it averaged 611,000 viewers.)

To what extent do these three channels shape the American discourse? That would be hard to determine. But for better or worse, there is no doubt that the Fox News Channel dominates this competition. Across the sweep of the full day, it had three times as many viewers as MSNBC during the month just passed, almost four times as many as CNN.

The Fox News Channel rules the seas and has done so for years! For better or worse, the New York Times has started reacting to that fact, with special attention being paid to that channel's Greg Gutfeld and his band of merry men and women.

To its credit, the New York Times didn't pull Gutfeld's name out of a hat. Along with his towel-snapping pal Jesse Watters, Gutfeld dominates the pseudo-discussions on The Five, where the two lads serve as regular co-hosts. 

On that most-watched program of them all, this pair of potentates tend to split the "interruption of Tarlov" duties, a key part of the program's tribally pleasing frisson. Gutfeld tends to dominate the attempt at conducting something resembling real discussion with the long filibusters in which he delivers his attempts at constructing coherent political theories.

That horseplay plus disquisition performance occurs each day at 5 p.m. Eastern. Three hours later, Watters hosts his own nightly show—the second most-watched TV show in all of cable news.

Gutfeld's eponymous program follows two hours later. 

Due to this double-dipping, Watters is seen by more people, on a nightly basis, than anyone else in cable news. Gutfeld runs a close second. 

Presumably, this helps explain why the New York Times has now featured Gutfeld and his eponymous Gutfeld! show in two large recent profiles. The latest such profile, written by David Marchese, starts off exactly like this, headline included:

The Interview: Fox News Wanted Greg Gutfeld to Do This Interview. He Wasn’t So Sure.

Why can’t conservatives break through on late-night TV? For years, that was an open cultural question. The left, of course, had “The Daily Show” and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,” among others. Once the Trump era began, progressives could also point to hosts like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers as being politically simpatico. The right had, well, no one.

That is, until Greg Gutfeld. Formerly a health and men’s magazine editor, Gutfeld joined Fox News in 2007 to helm the later-than-late-night chat free-for-all “Red Eye.” He worked his way up the network’s schedule, and in 2021 his new show, “Gutfeld!” started airing on weekday nights at 11 p.m. on the East Coast. (It’s now on at 10 p.m.) Its format is different from traditional host-driven late-night shows: Rather than interview celebrity guests, Gutfeld presides over a round table of regular panelists, among them the former professional wrestler Tyrus and the commentator Kat Timpf, the designated (occasional) contrarian. The overall vibe is insult-heavy, aggressively anti-woke and relentlessly pro-conservative. It’s a successful formula. The show averages over three million viewers a night—numbers that dwarf its competitors’.

That's the way the profile starts. In certain fairly obvious ways, it goes downhill from there.

In other ways, this profile, which takes the form of an interview, can be seen as extremely revealing. The piece appeared online this weekend. It's scheduled to appear next Sunday in the New York Times magazine.

Gutfeld and Watters play prominent roles within the "cable news" industry. Arguably, they've now become the two biggest stars at the dominant Fox News Channel. 

That said:

As we've noted again and again, publications like the New York Times rarely report or discuss what happens on that channel's programs. In that way, the highly unusual content of those TV programs tends to get disappeared.

What does happen on the programs of the Fox News Channel? Last Saturday morning, on Fox & Friends Weekend, we saw a conversation between Rachel, Charlie and Griff which we thought should be reported. We'll start with that three-way exchange tomorrow morning, after which we'll move along to the way Marchese chose to interview Gutfeld—to the basic facts Marchese reported, but also to the basic facts he apparently chose to suppress.

We'll also look at the ludicrous ways Gutfeld answered Marchese's interview questions. At the age of 61, and with Tucker Carlson excepted, Gutfeld may be the strangest person who has ever played a major role on American "cable news."

That said, his disordered behavior has shot this man to the top of the "cable news" pile. Then too, there's the disorder displayed by Marchese himself—or perhaps by his editors—in the things he chose to report about Gutfeld's behavior, but also in the things he chose to suppress.

Stating the obvious, the New York Times is a very important newspaper. We readers are told many things about this world by the New York Times. Other important parts of our struggling nation tend to get disappeared.

For whatever reason, the New York Times has started to talk about Gutfeld. In comments to the Marchese interview / profile, many readers say they'd never heard of Gutfeld until this profile appeared.

Gutfeld and his eponymous program have now been the subject of two lengthy pieces in the Times in the past few months. For whatever reason, the paper still refuses to report what his strange man says and does.

The Fox News Channel rules the waves at the present time. For reasons we can't explain, Blue American orgs like the New York Times still aren't willing to take their customers on that particular sea cruise.

Tomorrow: Fox & Friends Weekend goes off