Jessica Tarlov, the liberal contrarian co-host of Fox News’ “The Five,” puzzled observers over the weekend by offering a blanket apology on behalf of her entire profession.
Regular viewers of the network, already accustomed to Tarlov’s bleeding-heart tendencies, were incensed after seeing her grovel before pollster Larry Sabato during a discussion about the impact of cable news on voters’ opinions and expectations. Sabato, a professor with the University of Virginia, had just finished expounding on his distaste for Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and other channels debasing Americans’ political discourse.
Still, watching them is a hard habit to quit, the UV prof stated.
“I watch more TV news that I ever have before,” Sabato admitted. “TV funnels what’s selling on social media, I think, more than the reverse. That makes me rage.”
Sabato’s remarks on the Prof G podcast, co-hosted by Tarlov and Scott Galloway, were prompted by Tarlov’s question about what enrages him the most about Trump-era politics. But it was her eyebrow-raising reaction that lit up the internet on Monday.
“As someone who’s on cable news, I apologize to the entire world for what we export,” she agreed.
While no clarification was offered about what she meant exactly, it provoked laughter out of Sabato.
“There’s nothing we can do about social media,” he said.
“The one thing I’ve been waiting for that I was promised as a young person was a time machine, I gave up on flying cars,” Sabato continued. “We still don’t have one, ’cause I’d love to go back and make it impossible to create social media.”
“I don’t know how I’d do it,” the political analyst added, according to the Daily Mail. “But I would try to do that.”
Tarlov was already under fire for comments made on Friday’s episode of “The Five” where she chided President Donald Trump for hosting a lavish dinner of cryptocurrency speculators who placed big stakes in his own personal crypto coin.
“Greg mentioned a ‘staggering level of corruption’ and I just got to note, though that the staggering level of corruption from last night’s meme coin dinner,” Tarlov said on Friday’s broadcast.
She doubled down when several of her co-hosts called her out for changing the subject.
“I’m talking about who is corrupt and who is profiting off the American office,” she added.
Greg Gutfeld, perhaps the brashest of the bunch, snidely responded, “You’re defending an administration that covered up a dying leader and you’re sitting here going ‘but meme coin, meme coin.’”
Online, listeners who heard Tarlov’s latest remarks were even less forgiving, with some calling on Fox News to finally dump their “dumb” contributor.
“Why does Fox News even employ her?” one person asked asked. “She brings nothing to the table and Jessie [Watters] and Greg [Guttfeld] call her out on all her lies, dumb liberal!!!”
Another suggested she is actually a “paid actress” incentivized to stir the post.
“Trump is the only president to lose money in office and the only one to donate his salary,” the user wrote.
