THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2026
Fox News [HEART] the State of the Union: Yesterday, shortly after 5 p.m., Jesse Watters was explaining why he loves the annual State of the Union address.
He's been described as "the silliest child" in the history of American TV news. Now, he began to lay out his thinking:
WATTERS (2/25/26): I love State of the Union Trump. I think it's better than Rally Trump, better than Sit Down Interview Trump, even better than "[Gutfeld!] Show Trump."
This guy owns this format. Because there's a physical division right in the middle of the chamber. So he creates a moment, then exploits the moment to get a reaction from the Democrats and the reaction proves his point. He accentuates it so deliciously that the Democrats are baited into going where they don't want to go...
In Watters' view, the sitting president "exploits" the situation, deliciously baiting the Democrats! More on that another day. We thought that first word choice was apt.
Before he was done, the thoughtful analyst further explained his (current) love for the time-honored State of the Union format—and yes, he made these "silly boy" comments:
WATTERS: It's also a great format for the president because the Republicans are just better looking. All of the cutaways to these Democrats—it's sad. It is a sad look. Our cabinet is more attractive. The Trump family is more attractive. I'm sorry—it's just the truth.
Also, Trump loves awards. It's become an award show now. You get a Medal of Freedom, you get a Medal of Honor. This person got a tax refund, she got fertility drugs.
It's like him hosting an awards show now which is great, and that is why it's so fun...
No, we haven't made that up. According to Watters, the annual address is a lot of fun because it's like "an award show now." Also, the format is great for President Trump because Republicans "are just better looking."
Yes, he actually said that! In fairness, let this be said:
On The Five but also on Jesse Watters Primetime, Watters slides in and out of a slithery performance style. Routinely, he transitions from attempts at straight analysis into an undisguised, self-deprecating "simpleton" comic persona.
That comic persona is part of his standard approach. But to our eye, he was completely serious in his comments about which cabinet, family and political party is just plain "better looking."
As you know, this analysis was being offered on our rapidly failing nation's most watched "cable news" program. (This afternoon, we'll run through the latest viewership numbers.)
To our eye, the silly lad seemed completely sincere as he told four million viewers that Republicans are just better looking—"more attractive"—than Dems. During this same pathetic segment, Greg Gutfeld mused about the physical appearance of Rep. Ilhan Omar, who we would score as highly telegenic, based on conventional norms:
GUTFELD: I have to point out—Ilhan Omar. She repulses me, and I'm trying to figure out why, because she's not unattractive.
She has an unusual amount and kind of anger. She has no right to that level of rage in the United States of America, the country who gave her corrupt ass a new life...She should be kissing the ground she walks on rather than spitting on it.
Her anger also reminds me of the radical who, given power, would destroy you. She would show no mercy for you if you were below her. Like, the look on her face is somebody who would step on your face instead of giving you a hand, and that is not the kind of person we should have in our leadership. It's not the type of person we should have in this country...
For the record, we've often said that this angry, incel-adjacent man seems to need some help. We've also said that he deserves that help. and his employer should provide it.
That said:
Like the young native-born Nebraska men in Willa Cather's My Antonia, Gutfeld has noticed the fact that this immigrant (refugee) woman is actually "not unattractive." (Text from Cather below.) That said, he's puzzled by his reaction to the Minnesota congressional rep.
Despite the fact that she's "not unattractive," he says he finds her repulsive--and he says he wants to find out why. As it turns out, he bases his assessment on "the look on her face"—the face he almost admits to find attractive—and after he shares his fearful fantasies with four million or more Red American viewers, he reaches his final assessment:
Rep. Omar is not the type of person we should have in this country.
Let us say this about that:
Rep. Omar isn't exactly "in our [dissolving nation's] leadership." She is in the United States House of Representatives, and that's because she keeps getting elected to that position, by people who are still allowed to reside in Young Master Gutfeld's country.
We refer to the voters in Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District—a suburban district whose population was recently listed as shown below by the Cook Political Report:
Minnesota Fifth Congressional District
White: 59.9%
Black: 17.1%
Hispanic: 10.1 %
Asian: 6.1%
Two or more races: 5.2%
The district keeps electing Rep. Omar with 74 percent of the vote. That said, the largest demographic group in the district is Gutfeld's own "color." According to the leading authority on the district, Somalis make up three (3) percent of the district's population.
Putting it a different way, there seem to be a lot of people who don't see the look on Omar's face which this corporate messaging agent sees. To his credit, he says he wants to find out why he sees what these others don't.
Just for the record, this $9 million per year corporate employee is rarely shy about letting his Omar-related demons emerge. A few minutes earlier, he had already made the comment shown below as he offered his own dumbed-down remarks about why he loved Tuesday night's State of the Union address:
GUTFELD: It's almost two hours long, this thing. I felt like Trump is like a maître d' at a restaurant who is so proud of the specials that he's going to go through them whether you like it or not:
"I've got the veal scallopini, I got the lobster thermidor, I got the quail surf and turf. If you need to lose some weight, we got the Cobb salad—and for Ilhan, we've got some goat on the menu.
PANEL: [Appreciative laughter]
That was before he told the world how repulsive he finds Rep. Omar, even though she's "not unattractive."
Question:
Will he ever go to that Fifth Congressional District to ask the people who were once his fellow citizens about the look they see on Rep. Omar's face? We'll guess that the answer is no. Sadly, this is the way the possibility of union ends, not with a bang but with a strangely frightened confession, amounting perhaps to a type of a whimper
It's the look he sees on Omar's face—on a face which is not unattractive! Five hours later, he drove his own Gutfeld! show along, as he quite routinely does, with the frequently debunked claim that Rep. Omar once married her brother, but also with a typical jibe about smelly Somali food.
This is who and what he currently is. Fox pays him to behave this way.
The stooges around him happily laughed. The baldly secessionist Fox News Channel makes its money by hiring and paying the kinds of people who are inclined to play such games.
We have no major opinion about Rep. Omar, who's one among 435. We do know that several of the world's top female models have been woman of Somali ancestry, starting with Imam herself.
Somali women have often been judged to be unusually beautiful. With apologies to Rep. Omar, Brother Gutfeld may be struggling with what he doesn't want to see on that perhaps attractive face.
We hoped to talk today about some of the astonishing claims the president made at that State of the Union address. The (familiar) misstatement
referenced in this Mediaite report was especially astounding, as it long has been.
In fairness, we've long suggested that the sitting president does in fact seem to be some (serious) version of what used to be called "mentally ill." (Many around him strike us in a similar way.)
We'll get to that another day. For now, let's return to the Nebraska of the late 19th century, keeping Herr Gutfeld in mind:
Last Saturday, we discussed the pleasure Willa Cather's narrator took as he saw his community's "immigrant girls" rise to become the mistresses of Nebraska's largest farms.
To our mind, another part of the chapter in question described an even more fascinating matter—the way the native-born boys of the fictional Black Hawk lacked the courage to act on their attraction to those physically beautiful, spiritually vibrant Bohemian and Danish girls.
Cather's narrator was named Jim Burden. (He's a gender-shifted version of Cather herself.) This morning,
Burden speaks again:
My Antonia: Book Two, Chapter IX
There was a curious social situation in Black Hawk. All the young men felt the attraction of the fine, well-set-up country girls who had come to town to earn a living, and, in nearly every case, to help the father struggle out of debt, or to make it possible for the younger children of the family to go to school.
Those girls had grown up in the first bitter-hard times, and had got little schooling themselves. But the younger brothers and sisters, for whom they made such sacrifices and who have had ‘advantages,’ never seem to me, when I meet them now, half as interesting or as well educated. The older girls, who helped to break up the wild sod, learned so much from life, from poverty, from their mothers and grandmothers; they had all, like Ántonia, been early awakened and made observant by coming at a tender age from an old country to a new.
I can remember a score of these country girls who were in service in Black Hawk during the few years I lived there, and I can remember something unusual and engaging about each of them. Physically they were almost a race apart, and out-of-door work had given them a vigor which, when they got over their first shyness on coming to town, developed into a positive carriage and freedom of movement, and made them conspicuous among Black Hawk women.
[...]
The Black Hawk boys looked forward to marrying Black Hawk girls, and living in a brand-new little house with best chairs that must not be sat upon, and hand-painted china that must not be used. But sometimes a young fellow would look up from his ledger, or out through the grating of his father’s bank, and let his eyes follow Lena Lingard, as she passed the window with her slow, undulating walk, or Tiny Soderball, tripping by in her short skirt and striped stockings.
The country girls were considered a menace to the social order. Their beauty shone out too boldly against a conventional background. But anxious mothers need have felt no alarm. They mistook the mettle of their sons. The respect for respectability was stronger than any desire in Black Hawk youth.
Our young man of position was like the son of a royal house; the boy who swept out his office or drove his delivery wagon might frolic with the jolly country girls, but he himself must sit all evening in a plush parlor where conversation dragged so perceptibly that the father often came in and made blundering efforts to warm up the atmosphere. On his way home from his dull call, he would perhaps meet Tony and Lena, coming along the sidewalk whispering to each other, or the three Bohemian Marys in their long plush coats and caps, comporting themselves with a dignity that only made their eventful histories the more piquant. If he went to the hotel to see a travelling man on business, there was Tiny, arching her shoulders at him like a kitten. If he went into the laundry to get his collars, there were the four Danish girls, smiling up from their ironing-boards, with their white throats and their pink cheeks.
[We skip past an individual story]
Sylvester dallied about Lena until he began to make mistakes in his work; had to stay at the bank until after dark to make his books balance. He was daft about her, and everyone knew it. To escape from his predicament he ran away with a widow six years older than himself, who owned a half-section. This remedy worked, apparently. He never looked at Lena again, nor lifted his eyes as he ceremoniously tipped his hat when he happened to meet her on the sidewalk.
So that was what they were like, I thought, these white-handed, high-collared clerks and bookkeepers! I used to glare at young Lovett from a distance and only wished I had some way of showing my contempt for him.
We don't recommend feeling or showing contempt for those young men. Instead, we advise you to pity the native-born boys who could see the vibrant beauty of the immigrant girls but were unable to act.
We thought of this favorite passage as Gutfeld mused last night. We advise you to pity the rapidly failing union which has fellows like these on the air as we Blues avert our gaze.
He attacks the smelly food she eats. He freely attacks her alleged "corrupt ass." He endlessly plays the incest card. He's oddly repulsed by her face.
Still coming: At long last, has he no shame?
Also, the 1962 U.S. Soviet meet, plus last weekend's hockey game
