STRANGERS: "Lock her up," the strangers cried!

THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2025

This is the downfall we've chosen: In fairness, Greg Gutfeld always seemed to be perhaps a bit odd, even before the Fox News Channel days.

His judgment may have seemed a bit strange. In last Thursday's report, we refreshed you concerning the incident when he "hired three dwarfs for the day."

At the time, he was working in the "lad magazine" industry. The incident is said to have gone like this: 

A Publishing Pest Moves On

For Greg Gutfeld, the 38-year-old former editor of the brooding lad magazine Stuff, the set-up was just too rich: an earnest group of publishing types were gathering at the American Society of Magazine Editors in Manhattan for a seminar in April on ''What Gives a Magazine Buzz.'' His first thought upon hearing of the meeting was, in his words, ''If you need to go to that seminar, you're hopeless.'' His second thought, he said, was dwarfs.

Mr. Gutfeld called a local casting agent and hired three dwarfs for the day. He equipped them with cellphones and bags of potato chips and sent them into the seminar. As editors from Rolling Stone, Glamour and O: The Oprah Magazine opined on the serious business of buzz creation, the actors began chomping loudly on handfuls of potato chips as their cellphones started ringing furiously. (The actors, of course, loudly took the calls.)

After 15 minutes or so of steadily escalating mayhem, the actors were ejected, but not before giving those editors an object lesson in buzz creation, Gutfeld style.

Sipping a Stoli and orange on Wednesday night in the Bellevue, a favorite Hell's Kitchen dive with glam rock on the jukebox and a coffin next to the bar, Mr. Gutfeld said the prank was in keeping with his personal credo. ''I love the idea of showing up at a place and just disrupting it,'' he said.

That was the start of a remarkably unflattering profile in the New York Times. It appeared in May of 2003, during Gutfeld's days in the "lad magazine" game.

"Lad magazines" were perhaps a natural home for a fellow who displays a weirdly poisonous attitude toward the liberal women he routinely compares to horses, cows, cattle, pigs, elephants and "livestock." Even today, at 60 years of age, he uncorks these gender-specific insults on a nightly basis.

Judged by prevailing standards of the culture, Gutfeld was always perhaps a bit odd. Today, even at the age of 60, his obsession with human body waste marks him as a bizarrely unusual person.

In that profile, he was quoted saying that he "loves the idea of showing up at a place and just disrupting it." Imaginably, that was merely an annoying instinct when his possibly tasteless disruptions were confined to the realm of braindead seminars within a gonzo industry. 

His peculiar instincts were merely annoying back then. But then, someone at the Fox News Channel thought he or she saw something about Gutfeld that he or she very much liked.

Today, Gutfeld's disruptions are staged on a very large platform within the "cable news" industry. On Thursday evening, July 24, he staged what may have been the stupidest presentation in the history of broadcast news, performing the ludicrous "issues monologue" we quoted again in yesterday's report.

In truth, it would be hard to make a stupider presentation. In an "issues monologue" littered with his trademark personal insults, he railed against the way "the media" had made a series of claims about the 2016 election—a series of claims which every sane person in each major party has long since scored as accurate.

He attacked an array of journalists for saying that Russia "hacked the election" in 2016. (Everyone agrees that Russia actually did that.)

After mocking her physical appearance, he ridiculed Rachel Maddow for having reported on the activities of Konstantin Kilimnik. (The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee identified Kilimnik as "a Russian intelligence officer" whose interactions with Trump's campaign chairman during the 2016 campaign "represented a grave counterintelligence threat.")

In support of Tulsi Gabbard's claim that Barack Obama was guilty of treason, Gutfeld launched an astonishingly absurd attack that night on the way the mainstream media had pursued the RUSSIA COLLUSION HOAX.  

It would be hard to make a dumber presentation than the one he delivered that night. Refreshing you once again, this is the way his ludicrous diatribe ended:

GUTFELD (7/24/25): The New York Times and Washington Post won Pulitzers for spreading the hoax. It's like Lia Thomas being named female athlete of the year just because she could fill her urine sample cup from four feet away.

So today the media is like a junkie that made your life hell for ten years, and now suddenly they claim it is all behind them...So should you forget the hell that they put you through? No, we can't let this go. They need to make serious amends because we're still living with the aftermath...

There needs to be consequences...There needs to be scalps.

There must be scalps, this weirdo said. With that, he turned to the army of stooges surrounding him on the set:

Gutfeld!: Thursday, July 24, 2025
Joe Germanotta: restaurant owner
Kennedy: former VJ
Guy Benson: Fox News contributor
Michael Loftus: comedian

Restauranteur, VJ, comedian? You're looking at his channel's idea of a journalistic brain trust. 

What did those helpmates say about the ridiculous things Gutfeld had said? For today, that will be the focus of our own report.

The four enablers' tale:

It was time to hear from the Stepfords! Under rules of the Fox News Channel, each of those four savants was expected to agree with everything Gutfeld had said. 

Instantly, though, an apparent problem arose:

One of the four was an actual journalist, or at least a journalist of a certain type. It was entirely possible that he knew how absurdly inaccurate his host's monologue had been.

Gutfeld threw to that panelist first—and the panelist seemed to find a way out of this awkward mess. After a callback to Gutfeld's earlier joke about "anal," he threw a favorite tribal target onto the funeral pyre.

He returned to a fleeting claim Gabbard had made during her presentation about President Obama's treason. It was a fleeting claim about Hillary Clinton.

The claim had already been judged to have been an artefact of the Russian hacking—the hacking whose very existence Gutfeld had crazily denied. Avoiding the sheer absurdity of Gutfeld's monologue, the journalist turned to that.

I have no idea if it's true, he instantly said. But making use of Fox News Channel standards, he went with it anyway:

BENSON (7/24/25): I have to admi I'm a little obsessed with the Hillary Clinton detail. I have no idea if it's true or not, but the idea that they had to sedate her because she was having these bouts of violent anger—

KENNEDY: [Performative laughter]

BENSON: —and cheerfulness! So that the anger actually kind of works, right? That makes sense. That tracks for Hillary Clinton.

 I don't remember the bouts of cheerfulness. Maybe she has a really good poker face on that one. But—

GUTFELD: [Performative chortling]

BENSON: Can you imagine? If they were sedating her because of these mood swings before the election, what sort of horse tranquilizers did they need after the election for this poor woman after she lost something she was expecting to win?

So that's the detail that I keep reading up on, and I hope we learn more about it. 

That's the detail he reads up on! He didn't have a word to say about Gutfeld's ludicrous claims.

In that way, the journalist was able to avoid commenting on Gutfeld's presentation. Instead, he threw a familiar figure onto the fire, pleasing his host with an unfounded claim about a favorite tribal target.

Hillary Clinton had been thrown on the fire. The sheer absurdity of Gutfeld's monologue had been ignored in the process.

Now it was time to hear from the other tools on the set. Given the way these panels are assembled, there was zero reason to believe that any of the other three had even the slightest idea about the obvious lunacy of Gutfeld's basic claims.

They did know what you're expected to say—what you should say when you're paid to appear on a Fox News Channel program.

Gutfeld turned to the comedian next. "There needs to be scalps," the host had said. After a long and rambling effort, the comedian ended with this:

LOFTUS: I want someone to go to jail.

AUUDIENCE: [Cheering]

LOFTUS: I'm tired of the legal blue-balling.

Loftus said he wanted someone to go to jail. At that point, the audience cheered.

Now it was time for the restaurant owner. As it turned out, he had the same basic idea!

GUTFELD: How do we hold these people accountable? Should we move on and forget that it ever happened?

GERMANTOTTA: No, you can't move on. We've been lied to so long, all right? And they're the de facto leaders of the Democratic Party, and therefore dirtbags, right? So how can we let them go, right?

I mean, they have a—I think they have them cold, right? The question is, who's gonna do it? I think Tulsi Gabbard has a great shot at getting it done with Pam Bondi, and I just keep my fingers crossed. 

And I'd love to see Hillary walk out in handcuffs! I mean, that would be my—

AUDIENCE: [Sustained applause]

Of all the dirtbags, Hillary Clinton was the bag he hoped to see in cuffs. Gutfeld added this snide remark:

GUTFELD: They can't do the leg cuffs, for obvious reasons.

That was a callback to the ancient insult—a favorite of Limbaugh's—according to which Hillary Clinton's "kankles" have never been quite slender and sexy enough. 

Benson spoke about the horse medication they must have given to Hillary Clinton. Loftus said he wanted to see someone go to jail. Germanotta said he wants to see Hillary Clinton in handcuffs.

This was all these panelists had! No one said a word about the sheer absurdity of the monologue they had just listened to. And then, Gutfeld turned to the former VJ, who's almost as sour as he is.

Gutfeld threw to the former VJ. She completed the panel's pseudo-discussion of Gutfeld's ludicrous monologue:

GUTFELD: Where are we, Kennedy? Finish it up!

KENNEDY: You know, and I think—

[Gesturing to audience]  

I think you guys are going to like this:

[Loudly chanting and clapping her hands]

LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!

AUDIENCE: LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!  LOCK HER UP!

KENNEDY: [Delighted laughter] 

GUTFELD (ironically): You're so craven!

Warning! You really need to watch the tape to drink the inanity in.

Scott had pried the lid off the can. On this prime time "cable news" program, that pathetic pseudo-discussion was part of what slithered out. 

Gutfeld had staged what may have been the stupidest presentation in the history of broadcast news. A collection of stooges then came up with this critique:

We need to lock Clinton up! 

Within the context of a news discussion, that seems to be who and what these enablers are. Within that context, that seems to be all they have.

This is the essence of the fraud on the American public which is performed each day, and then each night, by the corporate messaging enterprise known as the Fox News Channel. 

In fact, those strangers were conducting a fraud against the very possibility of an American nation. And as these strangers conducted that fraud, the finer people in Blue America all chose to avert their gaze.

The better people all chose not to speak! Again and again, through many long years, this is the downfall we've chosen.

Tomorrow: Variety and Mediaite can't seem to see what's sitting right there before them