Moments after Kevin McCarthy was removed as Speaker of the House on Tuesday afternoon, the hosts of Fox News’ most-watched show had to deal with the aftermath—and rather than reckon with the situation, they instead tried to convince their audience it was really no big deal.
McCarthy’s brief term as speaker was brought to a historic end by MAGA Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who forced a floor vote by filing a motion to vacate the chair. The last straw for Gaetz, who nearly scuttled McCarthy’s speakership election in January, appeared to be the shutdown-averting funding bill McCarthy passed with Democratic votes over the weekend.
In the end, with Democrats deciding they were not going to offer McCarthy a lifeline because they viewed him as untrustworthy, all it took was Gaetz and a handful of right-wing hardliners to remove the gavel from the California Republican’s hands.
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The conservative panelists of The Five, much like the bulk of the GOP, focused most of their ire on Gaetz while arguing that House Republicans had actually accomplished quite a bit under McCarthy in his nine-month tenure.
Noting that former President Donald Trump complained on social media that “Republicans are always fighting among themselves” rather than “fighting the radical left Democrats who are destroying our country,” Jeanine Pirro declared that she was “furious” over McCarthy’s removal.
“Now what we’ve got is total chaos when the Republicans are playing out their infighting on national television in a historic way instead of fighting Joe Biden’s policies,” she exclaimed. “The one time we are up in virtually every metric as it relates to the Biden administration, you’ve got the Republicans going out there and showing how dysfunctional they are as Matt Gaetz engages in fundraising.”
At the same time, she insisted that “they have done a lot in Congress” and “got lots of bills passed,” blaming the Senate for not wanting to vote on the House’s legislation. “They’ve done a lot in terms of oversight,” she added.
“This is the crazy thing, Democrats who hate the MAGA Republicans are joining with them to oust Speaker McCarthy,” Pirro sighed. “This is like the devil is in the middle of all of this chaos and Donald Trump is right. Why are Republicans fighting with each other like this?!”
While Pirro expressed fury over the political chaos in the House, her colleague Greg Gutfeld suggested that it didn’t really matter in the end and was not relevant to the network’s viewers.
Pointing out that Gaetz justified pushing for McCarthy’s removal because he “broke promises,” Gutfeld waved off those grievances as much ado about nothing.
“So who’s telling the truth? I don’t know,” he proclaimed. “I’m not sure that I care because I’m with Trump on this. We’re talking about this instead of the border, instead of crime, instead of inflation.”
Grumbling that Republicans “are doing this” instead of focusing on actual issues, Gutfeld then signaled to Fox News viewers that they shouldn’t care about the removal of the House Speaker.
“It’s a historic event, but it’s one of the few historic events that I don’t care about,” he said. “This has no effect on our viewers. Does it make our streets safer? No. Does it make our borders real again? No. Does it make our gas prices go down? No. It’s just sound and fury signifying incompetence.”
Shortly after this segment on The Five aired, a former Fox News employee texted the following observation to The Daily Beast.
“Yeah because we know Gutfeld would say the same thing if Pelosi had been ousted by the House progressives,” the ex-staffer said. “It’s a tired, cynical talking point to gaslight viewers to say if it doesn’t affect him, they should feel the same. No one has more contempt for Fox’s viewers then their own hosts.”
