WHAT LITTLE REMAINS: Why did Bill Clinton take those rides?

THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 2026

Things you won't learn on The Five: In fairness to the journalists who perform on The Five, let the word go forth to the nations:

Late yesterday afternoon, they worked to keep the public informed about the day's most important news topics. An impressive panel had been assembled. At this point, we call the roll:

The Five: Wednesday, 3/11/26
Emily Compagno: co-host, Outnumbered
Jessica Tarlov: twice-weekly punching bag
Jesse Watters: host, Jesse Watters Primetime
Dana Perino: co-anchor, America's Newsroom
Greg Gutfeld: host, Gutfeld!

Let the word go forth! The ritual overtalking of Tarlov occurred at 5:23 p.m. As part of the overall fun, Compagno had begun to reminisce about her hometown's "strip joint," the Hotsy Totsy, just a few minutes before.

On The Five, but especially on the 10 p.m. Gutfeld! show, conversation may sometimes tend to swerve toward the carnal when boredom begins setting in. But along the way, the panel on our nation's most-watched "cable news" program devoted itself to the task of exploring such major topics as this:

Jesse Watters Tells Co-Hosts That Shoes Aren’t the Only Clothing Item Trump Has Gifted

Fox News host Jesse Watters told co-hosts of The Five on Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s favorite shoes are not the only piece of clothing the president has given as gifts.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Trump has been giving out shoes to staffers, agency leaders, lawmakers, and other Oval Office visitors. Specifically, the president has taken a liking to Florsheim shoes, an inexpensive, American-made brand that he gifts to staffers so frequently, he’s taken to guessing people’s shoe size.

The co-hosts of The Five discussed the story on Wednesday, with Jessica Tarlov highlighting a quote from The WSJ report that claimed that “everybody’s afraid not to wear” the shoes because they were gifts from the president.  

“Jesse, the best part is that they wear them even when they don’t fit,” said Tarlov. “Like Marco Rubio has a four-inch gap in his shoes.”

And so on from there. Watters informed the other analysts about the time when the sitting president gifted him with one or more dress shirts.

The number shifted as Watters' story developed.  Mediaite continues: 

“This is what the president does,” said Watters. “I used to wear these really English spread collars on the air, and it used to really upset the president, and he’d see me and go, ‘Jesse, your collar is so spread it looks like it’s going backwards behind your head, so he bought me a bunch of shirts with a normal collar. Just like one shirt. And then, I felt like pressure to wear it. I mean, it was too big, but now I wear normal collars. But he was right, my English collar was really messed up.” 

It's refreshing to see a major journalist admit that he "really messed up" on at least one occasion. 

It was late in the show when the Fox quintet examined the president's focus on footwear. At the very start of the hour, the panel examined the claim that the Defense Department had recently spent—we're quoting Compagno—"$2 million on Alaskan king crab, nearly $7 million on lobster tail and $15 million on ribeye steak, and there is also ice cream." 

Watters quickly defended the spending, denouncing the idea that the troops should be forced to eat pasta. Starting at 5:02 p.m., this discussion took place above the following chyrons:

5:02 p.m. 
TRUMP: OUR MILITARY IS UNBELIEVABLE

5:03 p.m.
SURF & TURF / RPT: DOJ SPENT $22M ON STEAK AND LOBSTER IN SINGLE MONTH

5:04 p.m.
DEMS FREAK OUT OVER STEAK AND LOBSTER FOR TROOPS

For the record, the Dems are frequently said to be freaking out on this most-watched "cable news" program. Yesterday, the program's second segment ran above this chyron:

DEMS EXPOSED AS HYPOCRITES OVER HIGH GAS PRICES

Sometimes, these complaints may even possess a bit of substance, given the ways of the world. 

In yesterday's report, we showed you some of what was said on The Five on Tuesday evening, March 3. On that day, as you may recall, the panel pretended to discuss an event which never actually happened!

These "cable news" panels today! On March 3, the panel pretended that former president Bill Clinton had enjoyed himself, the previous week, during his deposition with the House Oversight Committee.

They said he'd enjoyed himself looking at photos of young women with whom he'd had sex, all thanks to Jeffrey Epstein. As we'll show you again tomorrow, no such event had occurred during the long deposition. 

No such event had occurred. But here's part of what was said, four days later, on the gong-show known as The Five:

WATTERS (3/3/26): Check out the look on Bill Clinton's face as Bubba reminisced a little too fondly about the good old times with [Jeffrey] Epstein, flipping through photos like it's a school yearbook. That is, until his lawyer swoops in, snatch the papers and reminds him this isn't story hour:

[Mimicking Clinton's lawyer]

"Back to business, Mr. President!" 

[...]

COMPAGNO: I mean, he was like—I felt uncomfortable seeing his glee at the pictures. Like, I felt like he was reminiscing clearly. I was like—I felt like I was seeing too much.

WATTERS: [Giggles]

COMPAGNO: I know! He loved it! 

(Laughs delightedly)

WATTERS (imitating President Clinton, snatching photos back from his lawyer): "Give me that back!"

Viewers were led to believe that Clinton had been delightedly looking at photos of young women he had mistreated sexually. The big lug Tyrus then stepped in to say this is just who Clinton is.

For Compagno and Watters this was big fun. There was only one problem with their clowning:

Nothing like that had actually happened during the long deposition. They were pimping an ugly tale about something that never occurred.

As far as we know, Compagno and Watters really believed that that was what they were looking at as they viewed a small piece of videotape from President Clinton's deposition. We'll guess that management told them that that had occurred, and none of the flyweights had bothered to check to see if they were being misinformed by their corporate bosses. 

The flyweights simply believed what they had been told. As we'll sketch in more detail tomorrow, they went ahead with the scripted tale about something that never happened. 

Inevitably, it got much worse on Gutfeld! that night, where Kat Timpf inexcusably said this at one point:

"You know, I'm not sure, but I'm starting to suspect that he might like to have sex with really young women."

So the lady inexcusably said. Timpf will offer no correction and Timpf will offer no apology. Given the wickedness of the times, that's simply not the way these messaging agents roll.

At any rate, President Clinton and his attorney, Cheryl Mills, were not looking at photographs of young women in the brief bit of videotape which played on the screen that day. Nothing even dimly like that occurred at any point in the president's long deposition, but the stooges sent in to perform on The Five went ahead and performed directly from script.

We've shown you part of what was said on The Five as Compagno and Watters laughed about an ugly event—an ugly event which simply never occurred. Large modern nations can't hope to prosper—can barely expect to survive—when corporate entities pay TV performers to go out and perform in such ways. 

Ysterday, it was on to the undisclosed size of Secretary Rubio's feet. It was to surf and turf, with some fun at the Hotsy Totsy, a much changed joint today.

Remind us to show you how far Watters has fallen from the stature of his illustrious ancestors. But before we show you the garbage that was spewed on the Gutfeld! program last Tuesday night, we thought we'd give you a bit of background concerning the contents of the deposition these stars were misrepresenting.

As we noted in an earlier report, President Clinton was deposed on Friday, February 27. For reasons which are all too clear, Hillary Clinton had been deposed the day before.

Today, we thought we'd detail a few points from the former president's deposition. Let's start with the brief opening statement Bill Clinton delivered that day.

Clinton was being deposed about his past association with Jeffrey Epstein, an association which ended in 2003. In his brief opening statement, he touched upon what might be called, following Plato's Seventh Letter, "the wickedness of the times:"

Bill Clinton, opening statement

First of all, good morning and welcome to all of you to our hometown. I appreciate you coming here. I'm here today, basically, for two reasons. First of all, I love my country and the Constitution, and I believe America was built on the idea that no one is above the law, especially presidents, and that we should all live by the same set of rules shaped with the Constitution.

Democracy requires every person to play their part, and I hope that by being here today, we can bring ourselves a little further away from the brink and back to being a country where we can disagree civilly and search for the truth and justice. And if that outweighs the partisan urge, the spectacle and point scoring, I will do my part and I hope you'll do yours.

The second reason I'm here is that the girls and women whose lives Jeffrey Epstein destroyed deserve not just justice, but healing. They've been waiting too long for both. Through my brief acquaintance with Jeffrey Epstein, though it ended years before his crimes came to light, and though I never witnessed, during our limited interactions, any indication of what was going on, I'm here to offer what little I know so I can do my part to prevent something like this from happening again.

[...]

I do think you should be talking to me. I think you should have called me. I did take those plane trips with him, and you have a right to ask those questions. So I'm glad to be here and I understand what the oath is.

We, each of us are the victims, nothing less than the truth and accuracy. We owe that to the American people. And I actually hope that you will be able to come up with some suggestions that will reduce human trafficking and especially focus on underage girls. I hope you'll be able to do that. 

Praying for healing for the women who were once mistreated underage girls, Bill Clinton spoke of the need for "truth and accuracy." Four nights later, two collections of circus clowns were let out on our nation's most-watched "cable news" channel, whereupon they giggled and laughed about the actual facts concerning some of those young women's lives. 

In his opening statement, the former president cited the plane trips he had taken on Jeffrey Epstein's large plane. He said he had "never witnessed any indication of what was going on" between Epstein and the many girls and young women Epstein was later known to have assaulted and abused.

Early in his deposition, the former president cited the reason for those trips. We regard this as a basic part of the overall story:

PRESIDENT CLINTON (2/27/26): Sometime after I left the White House, either in late 2001 or early-ish 2002, I received a call from Larry Summers, who had been on my economic team and was later secretary of the treasury...He said that he was calling because a man named Jeffrey Epstein, who had made a substantial commitment of several million dollars—I think it was 10, but whatever it was—to brain research and that he was an information hungry person and he wanted to spend some time talking to me about economics and politics. 

And he said he's got this massive airplane, and he said he would take you, your staff, your Secret Service detail, and anybody else you wanted to bring on the trips that he knew I was planning to set up a global network to provide lifesaving AIDS medicine to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.

Say what? The trips in question were part of an effort to save lives around the world? 

No one challenged that basic assertion during the day's deposition. Continuing directly, the former president also offered this:

[Continuing directly from above]
And I should back up and say, when I left office, we had done all the preliminary work to set up the global funds on HTV malaria, but it was not yet funded. And there were other instruments and institutions who were later founded, including President Bush's PEPFAR program. It had not yet been funded.  

There were only 200,000 people in the entire developing world who had AIDS medicine, most of them in Brazil, which had a big drug operation on its own, and in Thailand, which also had its own drug population.     

In Africa, there were like 30,000 people or something, just next to no people, and they were dying like flies. And I thought we had found a way to drastically drive the price down, and that if we could drive the price down, we could empower people to administer the medicine right, we could save a lot of lives, and I was obsessed with it, and I was being helped by a man named Ira Magaziner who had helped us in the White House and whom I had known since we lived as Rhodes scholars together in 1960s. So anyway, that's why when Larry Summers said this, I thought, "Well, this would be great." And so we followed up and took the trips.

Most likely, this was all "fake news!" But none of this was ever challenged during the deposition.

Last Tuesday, no one provided any such background information on The Five. Instead, Watters and Compagno entertained themselves with lurid thoughts about a bit of ugly behavior which had never occurred.

It got much worse on Gutfeld! that night. For now, we thought we'd show you a bit of language from the foundation the former president was in the process of creating when those plane trips occurred:

About the Clinton Foundation

The Clinton Foundation is a nonpartisan organization founded by President Bill Clinton. Since 2001, the Foundation has transformed philanthropy through programs that develop leaders and accelerate solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.

Programs funded by the Clinton Foundation include the Clinton Health Access Initiative, which has reached more than 30 million people with lifesaving HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis medication by pioneering new approaches for procuring and delivering treatment.

Thirty million people, the foundation says. No doubt, that's all fake news.

As we noted a few days back, you rarely hear about matters like that because no one actually cares.

Tomorrow: The garbage which flowed on the Gutfeld! program that very same Tuesday night

Saturday: What the survivor said