SENDS IN THE CLOWNS: Clowns pretend to discuss those health care costs!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2025

CEO's imitation of life: Imitations of (human) life are frequent among us humans. In yesterday morning's report, we treated you to an example.

The CEO of the Fox News Channel had truly sent in the clowns! In this case, the "clowns" to whom we refer included three relatively undistinguished comedians, one of whom is known to us as the nicest guy in the world.

A comedian certainly could know something about climate science, but none of these stumblebums seemed to. As you may recall, that left the star of the show, the seemingly disordered Greg Gutfeld, to propagandize a failing nation in the following way:

GUTFELD (10/2/25): We all love the pope. Why is he weighing in on climate change when all of the data is so corrupted? No one believes in this crap any more—except him!

GUTFELD: You know, Rich, the fact is that all of the data is found to be fraudulent. You can't accurately measure the earth's temperature—you'd need a huge thermometer for one. 

GUTFELD: The pope isn't expected to be up to date on this kind of stuff. And he should know that. He should know that, "Maybe I don't follow the climate science, so maybe I should stay out of it." Trump knows more about this than the pope does. I hate to tell you, Pope!

We know of no reason to believe that this man had any idea concerning what he was talking about. That said, the CEO had sent in the clowns, and millions of people across the nation were propagandized through that trio of sound bites. 

Tribal pleasure was layered in through a succession of ugly insults delivered in the form of alleged jokes.

These presentations represent an imitation of human life. So does the silence which is maintained by Blue America's journalistic and academic elites, where everyone from French and Kristof and Lawrence on down seems to know the rules of the game:

What happens on Fox stays right there on Fox. You don't want to tangle with Fox!

That imitation occurred on the primetime "cable news" program, Gutfeld! Almost surely, Gutfeld! is the most fraudulent example of "broadcast news" ever presented on American cable or air.

Equally stupid is the professional courtesy extended to this imitation of life. And as we've told you, the moral and intellectual squalor which pervades this 10 p.m. show (that's 7 p.m. out on the coast) is slowly being transition to the nation's most-watched cable news program, the Fox News Channel gong show known as The Five.

How fake do "discussions" get on The Five? This Wednesday afternoon's program provided a good example. 

Uh-oh! James Comey had pleaded "not guilty" to a criminal charge. But in a news report in Thursday's print editions of the New York Times, readers were exposed to some of the highly unusual elements of the case:

Comey Pleads Not Guilty and Will Seek to Dismiss Charges as Vindictive

James Comey, the former F.B.I. director targeted by President Trump, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges he lied to Congress. His lawyer said he would move to quickly dismiss the case, calling it a “vindictive” and “selective” prosecution.

[...]

If the hearing offered a guide to the defense’s strategy, it revealed little new about a case deemed so weak by career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia that they refused to have anything to do with it. That reluctance forced the White House to quickly insert a stand-in U.S. attorney to file the indictment.

Mr. Comey’s lead lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, vented his exasperation in the hearing, saying that his “first substantive contact” with prosecutors came Tuesday night. He said he still had not received specific details of the charges, including the identities of witnesses, beyond the two-page indictment approved by a split grand jury on Sept. 25.

[...]

On the left, at the prosecutors table, sat Lindsey Halligan, who was making her second-ever appearance as a prosecutor after she was hastily installed by Mr. Trump as the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia last month. She was picked after her predecessor was ousted after finding insufficient evidence to indict Mr. Comey.

Ms. Halligan, a former insurance lawyer, did not speak in court. Instead, she spent the hearing rocking and nodding in her chair as a junior federal prosecutor brought in from North Carolina spoke for the Justice Department. 

The long list of peculiarities proceeded from there. None of these oddities were ever mentioned as the corporate tools sent in by the CEO pretended to evaluate the case.

(The relatively agreeable Harold Ford sat in the anti-MAGA chair that day. Had Jessica Tarlov been in his place, she almost surely would have started mentioning these problems. At that point, the interruptions would have begun.)

None of the problem with this case were ever mentioned this day. "You know what? I'm happy they went after this guy," the former VJ Kennedy eventually said. 

"I hope they go after Clapper [next]," she said as the imitation of a discussion mercifully came to an end.

Viewers of the Fox News Channel heard nothing about the long list of apparent irregularities involved in this prosecution.  This kind of sifting typifies the pseudo-discussions engineered by the CEO on this most watched of all such programs.

As Gutfeld transfers his moral and intellectual squalor to this most-watched "cable news" show, how dumb—how embarrassingly childish—does it routinely get on The Five?

For that, we take you to last Friday's program. The CEO, on her yacht, had sent in this collection of clowns:

The Five: Friday, October 3, 2025
Kennedy: Fox News contributor
Jessica Tarlov: alternate co-host, The Five
Jesse Watters: co-host, The Five
Kayleigh McEnany: co-host, Outnumbered
Greg Gutfeld: co-host, The Five

Uh-oh! On this day, Tarlov was there. In the program's opening segment, the players pretended to discuss the issues concerning government funding of health care which lie at the heart of the ongoing government shutdown.

After some silly blather from Watters, McEnany—she's a graduate of Harvard Law School—turned to Tarlov, positioned two seats to her right. At 5:05 p.m., McEnany—she also studied at Oxford—went where the rubber should be meeting the road:

MCENANY (10/3/25): Why does your party want to shut down the government for taxpayer funded health care for illegal immigrants?

That was the question she asked. But are the Democrats doing that? Is that why the Democrats are pursuing their current course?

Major news orgs have largely abandoned the task of trying to fact-check the various claims which lie at the heart of the current messaging war. But of one thing you can feel quite certain:

No citizen watching The Five will ever see a serious attempt to straighten such questions out.

To her credit, McEnany had directly posed a direct question. Here is a bit of what followed:

MCENANY (10/3/25): Why does your party want to shut down the government for taxpayer funded health care for illegal immigrants?

TARLOV: It's just not what's going on...Mike Johnson, and to his credit, he does a ton of interviews. But everybody is pushing back on him about that, showing the actual text, which says—we're talking about people who are lawfully here.

[...]

If you want to pull [that document] out—if you want to go to the part that's below the GOP account, you'll see that it's for people that are here lawfully—protected status, domestic violence survivors, etcetera.

At this point, the complexity had already strained the patience of Gutfeld and Watters past the breaking point. The pair now launched their mandated interruptions of Tarlov, and any semblance of a serious discussion came to an end.

Claims and counter claims flew. The incoherence was general.

McEnany was in the Perino chair this day—the chair reserved for the pro-MAGA panelist who is supposed to give the impression that she isn't completely out of her mind. That said, little attempt at clarification came from her. 

At one point, the pseudo-discussion turned on a conceptual question which has seemed to puzzle the players on this dimwitted entertainment / propaganda / messaging vehicle. That conceptual puzzle goes like this:

Can a person who is "lawfully present" be said to be "an illegal?"

It can get extremely dumb on this imitation news show. With apologies to the gods, Master Gutfeld was soon able to take no more—and with apologies to the gods for what we find ourselves forced to report, here's what he now said and did:

GUTFELD: This is a process that was gamed by illegals, OK? First of all, I looked back and I found out— 

Do you know what has more views that [the Democratic Party's health care] livestream? Rosie O'Donnell's colonoscopy!

PANELISTS: [Laughter]

WATTERS: No!

GUTFELD: And it wasn't—it wasn't even recorded!

WATTERS: Ha ha ha!

GUTFELD: That was four hundred real person views [of the Democratic livestream].

By now, it was 5:09; to appearances, he just couldn't take the tedium any more. And so, he turned to a favorite target. We apologize to the gods, and of course to O'Donnell herself.

In fact, there was no colonoscopy for other players to view. There were no images on his phone. But this is the clown car the corporate CEO has chosen, and soon the Harvard Law School grad was also enjoying the fun:

It was now 5:11. The play-acting had all broken down. The Harvard Law grad said this:

MCENANY: I can't stop thinking about Rosie's colonoscopy. I'm trying to get that image out of my mind

GUTFELD: Here, you want to see some stuff on my phone? 

[Leans over, shows phone to McEnany]

Looks like the Holland Tunnel. 

MCENANY [Delighted laughter]: Greg downloaded it!

There were no images on the phone. There was no colonoscopy there to explore.

We apologize to the gods—and to O'Donnell. As we noted on Monday, we were stunned by O'Donnell's clean, clear voice when we watched her recent podcast with Nicolle Wallace.

We were stunned by the clarity of what we saw and heard. We're still affected by what we saw. We plan to discuss that next week.

We plan to discuss the many things we saw and heard next week. But this is what now passes for the American public discourse when a CEO pries the lid off the can and her messenger children decide to come slithering out.

We have a word for Brother Gutfeld. We regard him as "unrecognizable."

We've never seen anyone anywhere as strange on an American "news" program. Yesterday, we said that he deserves some help. Tomorrow, we'll explain that.

McEnany seemed delighted by the chance to become a clown. Moment later, the pathetic Kennedy was complaining about "the hot turd of overspending" performed by the Democratic Party.

In the end, this seems to be the only way these children know how to talk. Judging from appearances, this is pretty much all they have.

We apologize to the gods—sand to O'Donnell herself—for the necessity of showing you what Blue America's pampered elites have been enabling all these years. That said no modern society can expect to survive a reign of inanity matching this. One observer has even described this tribal inanity as "a revolt from below"—as "The Revenge of the D-Minus Students."

Some of the circus clowns who gets sent in probably were D-minus students. McEnany's situation is different. Her testimony goes like this:

I was never a D-minus student. But I play one on cable TV!

Tomorrow: We visit the CEO's conversion of Gutfeld. Also, who in the world is Kat Timpf?