Fox News host Greg Gutfeld criticized his own network’s safety protocols amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic Thursday, calling on Fox to allow the hosts of late-afternoon panel show The Five to disregard the “legal B.S.” and immediately return to filming in a studio together.
Likening remote filming to being in a “batting cage” when he’d rather “be passing the ball around,” Gutfeld railed at his network’s work-from-home orders.
“Let’s get back in the studio,” he said. “There is no science. We have the vaccines and we have the rapid testing. There is no reason for us to be doing this all the time, unless it’s legal B.S. Which is probably the case for everything in life. We are controlled by lawyers.”
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Gutfeld bashed President Joe Biden’s warning that vaccine hesitancy could result in extended COVID-19 restrictions on Thursday’s broadcast, grousing that “this is an indoor illness, not an outdoor illness” before taking shots at Fox’s own guidelines. Though Gutfeld has said he does not believe vaccination should be required of anyone, he argued that since he and the majority of his co-hosts had in fact been vaccinated, they should be allowed the privilege of gathering.
“We are hypocrites when we are giving our own advice on this,” he declared. “Because all of us, I believe, have been vaccinated. Some of us have gotten COVID and been vaccinated, which essentially makes you superhuman.”
While many Fox News programs have returned to their respective studios, The Five has been filming from remote locations for several months. After returning to its New York location in September—this time with the hosts all sitting at least six feet apart—the show reverted to remote broadcasts in December after regular co-host Juan Willams contracted coronavirus.
“Lecturing people on the science as we are sitting in our isolated boxes, is it really correct?” Gutfeld added. “I think that it’s like, we have to send a message. I mean, what message are we sending by being separate right now? I think it is time to return to the studio.”
After guest host Martha MacCallum seemed to cheer him on, saying “there we go,” Gutfeld said he felt they needed to look “at each other in the eye when we are talking so we know we are not interrupting each other.”
Just last month, Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of Fox News parent company Fox Corp., sent out a company-wide memo informing all employees that they would continue working remotely throughout the spring and summer and that they should not expect to return to offices until after Labor Day.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Fox News for a response to Gutfeld’s remarks.
At the end of the segment, meanwhile, co-host Dagen McDowell pointed out that the only reason she had not yet been vaccinated was that she only recently recovered from a bout with COVID-19. “I will be getting vaccinated, and it’s not political. I tell everybody to do it,” she added.
Dana Perino, another regular co-host of The Five, also recently posted a “vaccine selfie” on social media, as did with Fox News anchor Bret Baier.
