SERVILE / DEFERENTIAL: Why did Gutfeld flip on Trump?

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2025

Gutfeld gets the word: Yes, he could—and yes, he actually did!

It's as we noted (again) yesterday. On at least three occasions during last year's campaign, Greg Gutfeld wondered if Hunter Biden was possibly having sex with first lady Jill Biden.

As we've noted, he didn't employ the circumspect locution "having sex." He turned instead to "banging" and "f*cking," with the F-bomb getting BLEEPed by the Fox News Channel's producers.

(The Gutfeld! program is taped.)

He did that at least three times. We say that because we observed and transcribed this garbage three separate times, and we weren't watching the program every night. This goes to the coarseness of this braindead "cable news" show, and to the willingness of Gutfeld's enablers—Kat Timpf included!—to cheer this astonishing conduct on, or at least to voice no words of complaint.

We transcribed this garbage three separate times, offering links to the videotape saved by the Internet Archive. For one example, you can see THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/30/24. 

In that case, we were transcribing the gentleman 's conduct from the August 29 Gutfeld! show. Back in July, we had also transcribed this occurrence, after wiping the slime off our clothes:

GUTFELD (7/23/24): Speaking of Jill, where's she been, huh? And come to think of it, where's Hunter? Hmmmmm.

AUDIENCE: Chuckles, groans

I hope they're not [BLEEP]ing.

AUDIENCE: Roars

GUTFELD (feigning innocence): What? 

I mean—

Just hoping! It's a good hope!

President Biden has scheduled a primetime—

AUDIENCE: Extended laughter, applause 

GUTFELD: Didn't see that one coming, did ya?

TYRUS: This Pornhub moment is brought to you by Greg Gutfeld.

GUTFELD: Yes! 

The blowhard who was once a professional "wrestler" was urging the good fun along. The audience, familiar with this running theme, had understood the drift of this jibe all along.

These events speak to the coarseness of this show, though possibly not to the apparent misogyny in which the show seems to be drenched. However you score that matter, this conduct was taking place on a primetime "cable news" program, not on a "late-night comedy show"—and we have to wipe the slime off our wardrobe every time we revisit it.

These presentations, and so many others, represent the startling change in the culture of the Fox News Channel—a transition from squeaky clean conservative "family values" to "conservative insult culture." 

Over here in Blue America, our major news orgs routinely defer to Fox. They've never made a serious attempt to report this major change in journalistic culture—this major change in the way the "news" is delivered to America's largest "cable news" audience.

The bloated blowhard urged Gutfeld on. Kat Timpf never complained about these astonishing presentations, or about the constant direct comparisons of liberal women to cattle, horses, cows, pigs, and dogs, to "livestock" and to whales.

On Friday, we'll show you the ridiculous way Gutfeld defends these insults. Today, we wanted to refresh you about the deference shown to the Fox News Channel by the apparently timorous beings in our own Blue American sphere.

On Friday, we'll instruct you concerning Gutfeld's absurd "hierarchy of smears!" For today, with Thanksgiving looming, we wanted to direct you to that one unusual profile of Gutfeld and the Gutfeld! show. 

We refer to this guest opinion piece written by John A. Daly (BernadrdGoldberg.com). It appeared at Mediaite in late August of this very year:

Mediaite: August 26, 2025
Opinion
How Greg Gutfeld Went From Fox’s Most Irreverent Host to Its Most Servile

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld is on top of the world right now, at least professionally. He co-hosts The Five, his network’s top-rated show that pulls in more than four million viewers every weeknight. Roughly three million people watch his late-evening show, Gutfeld!, earning him the moniker of “The King of Late Night” (which is also the title of his bestselling book). Earlier this month, his guest appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, drew the program’s biggest ratings of the year.

Indeed, Gutfeld’s come a long way since his hosting duties on Red Eye, Fox’s satirical, take-no-prisoners 3 a.m. program that debuted in 2007...

That's the way the profile began. Even Daly repeated the Fox News Channel branding claim according to which Gutfeld had become "The King of Late Night” (which was also the title of his bestselling book), in spite of the fact that he doesn't host a "late night' TV program.

(Please. Gutfeld! airs at 9 p.m. in the Central time zone, at 7 p.m. on the coast.)

Even Daly took the bait and repeated that branding claim. But as you can see from reading his piece—there is no paywall to block you—he took a very different approach to the Fox News Channel host.

In his piece, Daly describes an unusual part of the history of the Gutfeld! show. He reports that Greg Gutfeld was aggressively anti-Trump back in 2015 and 2016, when the current president entered the political wars. 

As you can see in Daly's profile, Gutfeld was anti-Trump. But at some point, the fellow flipped, Daly reports. According to Daly, Gutfeld became a "servile" admirer of President Trump, as anyone who watches the Gutfeld! show can see on a nightly basis.

So it goes as Daly describes the striking move from the Fox News Channel's "most irreverent" host to its "most servile." That said, Daly doesn't try to explain the way this flip took place.

In fairness, anyone can change his assessment of some political figure. But Gutfeld's flip has been extreme—and then too, there's that one suggestive passage from that earlier New York Times profile.

The lengthy profile to which we refer appeared in July 2023. Subscribers to the New York Times can click through and read the whole thing:

The New York Times: July 2, 2023
How Fox News (Yes, Fox News) Managed to Beat ‘The Tonight Show’
Greg Gutfeld has installed his brand of insult conservatism as the institutional voice for the next generation of Fox News viewer. And it’s catching on.

In that profile, the Times (accurately) noted the way the Gutfeld! show was building a very large viewership. Along the way, as we've mentioned before, the profile may have offered a hint as to the genesis of Greg Gutfeld's road to serfdom.

Below, you see the passage in question. As Candidate Trump seizes control of the GOP, the CEO of the FNC calls GG in for a chat. At this point, Gutfeld was still hosting a 10 p.m. weekend show:

Around this period, [Gutfeld] often did something that feels disorienting to rewatch, given the host’s present disdain for those who moralize about Mr. Trump: He moralized about Mr. Trump.

“I’ve heard people defend him about making fun of a disability, making fun of John McCain, making fun of women,” he said on “The Five” in December 2015, accusing a Fox colleague of “Trumpsplaining” away his behavior. “No one will ever stop defending the crass stuff he says.”

Before the election, Suzanne Scott, now the chief executive of Fox News Media, hosted Mr. Gutfeld in her office.

Mr. Trump had no chance anyway, he told her.

“She was like, ‘Greg, you should maybe prepare,’” he remembered, “‘for what happens if he wins.’”

It's hard to miss what that anecdote seems to suggest. When it became clear that Candidate Trump might even end up in the White House, the CEO summoned her irreverent host to her office and possibly gave him the word.

For the record, tens of millions of people do support President Trump; Gutfeld is hardly alone. That said, it would be hard to do so in a more servile way than is seen on today's Gutfeld! show.

Today, Greg Gutfeld a genuine, full-blown nutcase on the topic of the president's unmistakable greatness. Way back when, as Daly notes, he held a quite different view. 

Did this remarkable flip emerge as a career management play? We have no way of knowing.

That said, the Fox News Channel would of course be supporting President Trump. Did a certain Donald Trump critic decide to follow along?

Friday: Prepare to emit mordant chuckles (plus groans): "The hierarchy of smears!"