Tensions flared on Fox News’ The Five after co-host Greg Gutfeld forcefully rejected Jessica Tarlov’s attempt to frame political violence as a “both sides” issue in the wake of the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
Kirk, 31, was shot and killed Wednesday while speaking at Utah Valley University. Authorities arrested Tyler Robinson, 28, of Provo, Utah, who confessed to the killing and faces multiple charges, including first-degree murder.
On The Five, Gutfeld opened by noting a one-sided trend. “What is interesting here is, why is only this happening on the left and not the right? That’s all we need to know,” he said.
Tarlov interjected, pointing to other recent incidents of political violence, including the killing of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and other attacks that have targeted Democrats.
“Yeah, so what about Vance Boelter? What about Melissa Hortman that we just talked about?” she asked.
Gutfeld immediately cut her off, raising his voice. “None of us were spending every single day talking about Mrs. Hortman. I never heard of her until after she died. And the… Don’t play that bulls—t with me. There was no demonization, amplification about that woman before she died. It was a specific crime against her by somebody who knew her.”
The back-and-forth escalated as Gutfeld rejected the premise of equivalence between Kirk’s assassination and other killings. “The both sides argument not only doesn’t fly, we don’t care. We don’t care about your both sides argument. That s—t is dead,” he said.
He framed the dispute as one between reality and rationalization. “On your side, your beliefs do not match reality, so you’re coming up with these rationalizations, like, ‘What about this,’ or, ‘What about that?’ We’re not doing that, because we saw it happen. We saw a young, bright man assassinated and we know who did it. We are not coming up with rationalizations. We are calm, we are honest, and we are resolute. We’re not defensive.”
Gutfeld argued that left-wing rhetoric had created the conditions for violence. “If you sat around and you defended the mutilation of children, you’re not the good guys. If you sat 600, 700 cases of harassment against Republicans and you said, ‘But what about this? What about this?’ And then you see this murderer after calling somebody a fascist, you realize, ‘Maybe I’m not the good guy.’”
He added that Kirk’s assassin, Robinson, had been influenced by what he called “direct-to-consumer nihilism” and radical ideologies. “He was a patsy. He was under the hypnotic spell of a direct-to-consumer nihilism, the trans cult,” Gutfeld said. “If you can decide that biology is false, you can agree that murder is okay and that humanity’s expendable.”
Tarlov attempted to clarify that she was not minimizing Kirk’s death, but Gutfeld continued pressing his point.
“The two sides argument… it’s like pig Latin to a duck. Charlie had a conversation and he got shot. This thing is with us for good. And we all have to deal with that. So that means we can’t live by the same arguments that you might be reading about, about relativism among the media. It doesn’t matter. The media’s dead to us on this story. They built this thing up. We’re dealing with it. We’re gonna act. We don’t care what the what-about-ism is anymore. That s—t’s dead.”