Greg Gutfeld has had multiple on-air meltdowns over political violence since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, suggesting a left-tilting imbalance that stems from their “demonizing” rhetoric – and this week, he put a fine point on his point.
“Can you get the people who would demonize us to change, or is it too ingrained?,” the Fox News late night host said Friday night. “For them it’s more than a disagreement. They call you fascist, a threat to democracy, Hitler. And if you plant that seed long enough, somebody’s going to act on it.”
Gutfeld suggested that Kirk’s killing and the Texas shooting at an ICE facility are evidence that the way Democrats act about conservatives is stoking severe, violent acts. The show rolled a series of clips with various people saying things like “Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo” and calling Trump an “authoritarian,” “fascist” and “Nazi.”
“They’ve got to admit they are playing with fire,” Gutfeld said. “You have a repetitive inflammatory message you released into the wild, you have followers, many of whom aren’t well, who will act on it.”
Gutfeld acknowledged that he himself is a top-selling merchant of nasty insults – just ask “The View,” whose hosts he targets on a nightly basis – but insisted there’s a different nature to his brand of roast.
“For anyone saying, but Greg, you do it too – I don’t,” he said. “I don’t demonize people. … [I say things like] ‘If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, but eats like an elephant, it’s probably Joy Behar.’”
“See?” Gutfeld continued. “That’s petty. But it’s not deadly. No one goes after Joy Behar when I say she’s fat. I don’t say she’s a threat to democracy, just a threat to an all-you-can-eat buffet. In the hierarchy of slayers, that joke doesn’t come close to Hitler. […] Demonization has become their only tool.”
Gutfeld doesn’t mind the barbs thrown his way – “Call me short, loud, stupid, mindless, infantile, smelly. I’ll take it. … that’s how you let off steam. That’s how you defuse violence. Insults, ridicule, mockery. In the old days that’s how we dealt with differences. Not by calling us Hitler.”
At least one “Gutfeld!” panelist, Kat Timpf in this case, took issue with Gutfeld’s style of critique – particularly of Behar.
“I do agree that calling someone fat is not as bad as calling someone Hitler. Where you lose me is how that automatically means that calling someone fat is heroic,” Timpf said. “There is something I’ve been meaning to tell you for a really long time. I think now might be the time to do it. Should I do it? I don’t feel like Joy Behar’s fat. … She’s 82 years old. She looks great.”
Watch the entire exchange in the video clip above.
