Greg Gutfeld got two stinging personal insults for the price of one joke, taking swipes at former “The Five” co-host and rumored Fox nemesis Geraldo Rivera and the striking Hollywood writers in the same breath of his “Gutfeld!” monologue.
Monday night’s show opened with a culture-wars wag at Cinnabon, where employees at a Los Angeles store are reportedly striking for the right to wear pride pins and other LGBTQ messaging at work. Gutfeld used the strike theme to get his digs into an aside:
“Did you think I was talking about the writers’ strike?” he said. “Do you people even care?”
A soft jeer indicated that the Fox News studio audience does not, in fact, care about Hollywood writers and actors seeking new compensation structures with studios in a historic and painful double work stoppage. And with the audience on his side, Gutfeld began firing shots:
“Missing Hollywood writers is up there with missing Geraldo, Don Lemon, and jock itch,” he sneered.
And there it was, a stunning triple takedown of unionized writers (which “Gutfeld!” does not employ); Gutfeld’s recently fired former “The Five” colleague Rivera, who has hinted at a rift with his co-host as the reason he left Fox; and former CNN anchor Don Lemon, for some reason, by putting each in the same category as a common fungal infection.
The crowd held its collective breath for a moment, calculating the damage, and even co-host Tyrus exclaimed in surprise: “Whew! It’s never over.”
It’s not the first time since Rivera was fired from “The Five” and subsequently quit the network that Gutfeld has taken a dig at the mustachioed journalist – in mid-July, he made the first crack at Geraldo’s appearance on “The View.”
Watch the entire segment in the video above.