Fox News host Greg Gutfeld wanted to let Bill Maher know he was “so sorry” on Monday night—in the form of an off-key satirical song. Hilarity did not ensue.
While making the media rounds to promote his latest book (which is really just a roundup of his favorite editorials from his long-running HBO series Real Time), Maher made his debut on Fox News’ Gutfeld! on Monday evening.
Once a favorite villain in the Fox universe, Maher has become the network’s favorite “liberal” in recent years as he’s become an outspoken critic of progressive policies and all things “woke.” This has also resulted in Maher and Gutfeld forming something of a mutual admiration society, bonding over their anti-woke expertise and disgust of so-called cancel culture.
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“There’s a new king of late night, and his name is Greg Gutfeld,” Maher gushed after Gutfeld launched his weeknight “comedy” show in 2021. The two would then smoke some weed and shoot the breeze on Maher’s podcast last year.
After delivering his opening show monologue on Monday night, which included Maher jokingly asking when the other guests would be allowed to talk, Gutfeld segued into introducing the Real Time host to his program. Which, for some reason, also featured the Fox star making a sexually explicit joke about an 81-year-old host of The View.
“You will be very lonely if you want everybody to agree with you, which explains why Joy Behar goes through three vibrators a month,” Gutfeld quipped to groans and cheers. “This would be the ideal time for a song.”
Sung purposely out of tune, the farcical jingle played over a montage of images of a joyous Maher and Gutfeld while the lyrics begged the HBO comic for forgiveness for their past disagreements.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Bill Maher,” the singers warbled. “Stupidly, I didn’t see that we agree. Such a surprise that we shared the same philosophy!”
The song, which is a parody of Paul McCartney's "Uncle Albert," went on to declare that the pair had found “surprising alignment” while reiterating that Gutfeld was “sorry” in a “heartfelt way.”
Throughout the rest of the episode, Maher occasionally clashed with the Fox News host over some topics, specifically over their disagreements on Donald Trump.
At one point, Maher mocked Gutfeld for being unaware that Trump has sued him in the past. “You’re in the news?” Maher incredulously asked.
Yet, for the most part, the two seemed to find common ground on what they felt was the most pressing problem at hand: wokeness.
“Liberalism is not the same thing as woke,” Maher grumbled. “Woke would like to think they’re an extension of liberalism. I’m an old-school liberal, they’re not. It’s very often the opposite.”
As for the cringeworthy Maher song, this wasn’t the first time Gutfeld has trotted it out for a Fox News bogeyman-turned-ally on the right-wing network. After Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) took heavy criticism from progressives for his unequivocal pro-Israel stance on the war in Gaza, Gutfeld aired the same tune (with Fetterman-centric lyrics) during a December broadcast.
“We’re so sorry, John Fetterman,” the Gutfeld! choir sang. “We’ve made fun of you for months, we feel ashamed. We’re so sorry, John Fetterman. But we’ve seen the light, and so tonight we wanna praise your name. Oh, John Fetterman, you’re so much smarter than most Dems in Washington. It’s true, we’re sorry.”
