Fox News’ “The Five” risked going off the rails on Tuesday as co-host Jessica Tarlov argued in favor of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) viability for higher office by shouting out President Donald Trump’s apparent “lovefest” for Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Quick to take the bait, her co-host Jesse Watters then questioned if the president’s affections were “sexual” in nature and jokingly asked if he should warn first lady Melania Trump.
It began as the “The Five” panel discussed the rise in popularity of Democratic Socialists across the U.S. and specifically whether or not the affiliation would be a hindrance to Ocasio-Cortez if she wanted to expand her political power down the line.
“AOC will be formidable,” Tarlov argued. “There is a lot of enthusiasm behind her. But all of this about, you know, the folks who want to run for president cozying up to the DSA or being part of the DSA, the person who is the coziest with the DSA is Donald Trump.”
That’s when the talk program’s resident liberal pointed to Monday’s New York press conference with the president and the city’s mayor outside Gracie Mansion.
“I mean, the lovefest with Mamdani yesterday — the googley eyes are back, the, ‘You’re going to be a great mayor. You wanna come down to D.C.? We’ll talk again there. We’ll get you the money for Sunnyside Yard.’ He thinks Mamdani is a winner.”
“So he shouldn’t help New York? Is that what you’re saying?” Watters asked, playing devil’s advocate. But Tarlov pressed on.
“That is obviously not that scary. If Donald Trump thinks that Mamdani can be great, and that he loves this city and that there’s a lot they can see eye-to-eye, then they’re not a bunch of frightening socialists,” she said.
“I mean, we’ve done business with communists before, Jessica. With Stalin after World War 2,” Watters pressed before Tarlov finally said that Trump “was like in love with” Mamdani.
“He was looking at him like this,” she said, leaning in close to Watters and smiling.
“Like in a sexual way?” Watters retorted, staring ahead. “Should we warn Melania?”
But Tarlov was confident Watters saw what she saw.
“Right, he’s not genuinely charmed or taken by the fact that Mamdani is delivering on things for New Yorkers that he promised them,” she said. “He used his own words to talk about it.”
Watch the interaction below:
Mamdani and Trump notably held a press conference in Queens, New York, on Monday outside Gracie Mansion, where they discussed affordable housing, infrastructure, public safety and immigration, advancing a plan for a new neighborhood above Queens in Sunnyside Yard.
Breaking with the president’s ban of MS NOW, CNN and Politico from the White House — and the boycott against the president from other major news outlets in solidarity — Mamdani opened the press conference by explaining, “I told the president we would have all the members of the press here on the lawn and that is something that I believe in.”
“It’s interesting because they said they were going to boycott me, but they never boycott me, so I wasn’t very worried about that,” Trump said at the time, indicating to the number of camera crews and journalists at the event.
