Bulwark Takes - Fox Host Decides To Take Back WHAT WORD?!

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell discuss Greg Gutfeld’s bizarre on-air attempt to joke about fascism as the trend of far-right figures hiding behind bad comedy grows, and why it’s not just a joke.

Hey everybody, Tim Miller from the Bulwark here with our publisher and my bestie, Sarah Longwell. We promised you this during the next level. It was a great next level, by the way, if you haven't watched it, go check it out on YouTube. A little bonus segment. Anytime a Fox News host decides they want to start calling themselves a Nazi and self-identifies as a Nazi, we feel like that's an important thing for us to peruse.

I can't believe you didn't start this show with, what up my Nazi? Oh, sorry my Nazi. What up my Nazi? Come on. Sorry my Nazi. Yeah. For anybody who missed this, God bless you. So why don't we all watch it together? And this is the kind of material you're getting in the 5pm hour over on Fox. You will be stupider after watching it. Yeah, with George W Bush's former press secretary sitting there. You know, that's what's happened

with everybody. Why don't we give it a watch together right now? This is why the criticism doesn't matter to us when you call us Nazis, Nazi this, Nazi that, you know, I'm beginning to think they don't like us. You know what? I've said this before, we need to learn from the blacks, the way they were able to remove the power from the N wordword by using it. So from now on, it's what up, my Nazi? Hey, what up, my Nazi? Hey, what's hanging, my Nazi? Nazi, please.

Thank God you did a hard eye there. I did not see that coming. Nazi, please. It was kind of like an awkward silence there for a while, and then she does that and then a little forced laughter. I don't know if the metaphor really works for me, but Sarah, what are your initial thoughts? Well, so here's the thing. When you say the metaphor doesn't work for you. All right. So reclaiming words. He's right. There are people who do it. We, our community has taken

the queer back and now everything's queer. We can't even be gays and lesbians anymore, right? It's all queer. Yeah, we've taken it back too hard, actually. There's too much queer happening. In Oakland, if you're a straight person that likes anime, you call yourself queer. It's like we got to dial it back a little bit. Yeah. Greg, but here's the thing. The N-word and words like queer were used as, they were hurled as invective, right? At people who had done nothing as a way to be cruel to those people. Nazis were a very specific thing, part of the German military, and they did quite a

bad thing, as you may recall. And so what does he reclaim? It also wasn't a slur. It wasn't a slur. The Nazis called themselves Nazis. It was a badge of honor, actually. They had a salute. They had a leader. They had a coherent ideology. It was a group. It was a political party. Yeah. It wasn't a group with a worldview. So these N words are very different. They do both start with the letter N, I guess that would be the one similarity that I would

have. But yeah, I think it makes it creates a little bit of a weakness in this idea that I'm reclaiming Nazi. When Nazi has like a very definable ideology that is on the rise again, among people who are at least quasi-allied with Greg Gutfeld at times. That's right. And also, when you reclaim something, it means that there was a period of time... I can't believe we're breaking this down like it's a very serious thing. It's like, we're going to diagram the sentences. Nazi, please.

We're gonna diagram the sentences, Nazi please. There's a reason that we're doing this. One, because the stupidity hurts and you just, you feel you wanna make fun of them for being this. When you reclaim a word, what you're saying to us, Greg, here's the thing, they're telling on themselves. It's an accidental admission, which is why I just think we should point out to Greg Gutfeld that he is making a logical mistake

unless the point he's trying to make is they were Nazis. He himself and his friends were Nazis, and they decided, you know, we're being maligned for being Nazis. So we are being treated poorly as Nazis. And so we must take that word back and make it great again. Make it an easy thing. And I just think, I know Greg Gutfeld thinks he's a comedian, but this bit doesn't land. Also, I do wonder how, because Watts's name is there on the panel.

He used to be on Morning Joe all the time, Ford. Harold Ford Jr. Harold Ford Jr. Does he, how does he feel about Guttfeld's, we got to learn this from the blacks. It's not. And Guttfeld looks right at him when he says the blacks. You notice that? I've said this before.

We need to learn from the blacks. He's like, you know, we got to learn a little something from awkward pause, the blacks. Yeah. And the thing is, I'm not particularly sensitive. Like I think that, you know, we can all just say what we are racially and we can talk about this and it's not, but when he's talking about, thank God you use the hard I, uh, you know, I, I see where he was going with that joke, but actually like the weirdest part was the hard, the blacks in his delivery. Like that was the part where you're like, you're not, this doesn't, you're, you're not landing this bro.

You're not. Yeah. A couple other thoughts when you're thinking about Greg's comp, you know, his struggle as a white man who does gets maligned as a Nazi. Uh, it's that, uh, you know, if it really, if the issue really was like it's not that big of a deal and you're being treated unfairly and it's a cancel culture that you have to say, then it's notable that he didn't just say the N-word, right? Like he could have just done that. Like he said the N-word, right? But he could have just

said it if it wasn't really that big of a deal, you know, and he wants to take something back from the blacks. That would be just something to consider. It leads you to believe that there, again, it shows you about the difference between the two words. The fact that you are able to actually say one of them and not say the other one. It shows that they have, you know, a little bit of a different weight to them. But the serious part of it, it's fun to point and laugh, but there's the serious part of this and it's a trend I've seen over like really the Trump era. And it's not, I don't think this is like one thing that isn't really Trump's faults, like Trump just kind of like rose simultaneously to this kind of like

backlash to cancel culture, you know, sort of thing. And they played off each other and like one create, you know, how to make the other stronger, I think various ways. But like, I see this in my life of I remember being a all boys school, privileged 17 year old white boy, who would occasionally make racist jokes. And then when people would say to me, like, Oh, that's not cool. It's just like, oh, it's just a joke. Like, why are you taking this stuff so seriously? Right? Like, it's just a joke, just a gag.

Like, I'm not actually racist. Like, there are racist people over there. We're just doing jokes. And you're the problem because you're too sensitive, right? And that's a childish way of thinking. And it's something that I grew out of pretty quickly in my teen years. But like, what you see now is the opposite, where people start to make those jokes and say, oh, it's just a joke. But then slowly over

time, it starts to be like, not really, actually. Like you see this in Nick Fuentes world, which is pretty close to just again, Greg Gotthold is not Nick Fuentes, but like, the idea is the same where Nick Fuentes like starts by making Nazi jokes and racist jokes. And then over time, his little group called the Groypers, they started to grow up. And then eventually we should point where you're kind of like, you know, the Nazis did have some points, you know, like they were really, they were right about like that. It's like a trajectory we've seen a lot, which is like, we make these jokes where we're, they're going to call it, they're going to say we're Nazis. We're going to call ourselves Nazis, but they become self-fulfilling. And I think that is why we should point and laugh at Greg, but also say this is like a serious thing

you shouldn't do. Yeah, it's also, I think it also is happening simultaneously where anti-Semitism is on the rise. Like we are seeing a new, and honestly, this is a sort of a separate conversation about social media, but Twitter, when Elon Musk came in, whether that was a Nazi salute he gave, or he really awkward way to throw his heart out, I will tell you the one thing I'm very certain of, is he let all the Nazis back on Twitter. And like the amount of antisemitic stuff that is like in my feet. Like if I- I can't call the antisemitic slurs all the time. I'm a Catholic. You know, I imagine what the actual Jews are getting in their feeds. Well, a lot. Like if you see, if you follow it, it is like wild, all the crazy anti-Semitic stuff that is in there. And I think that back in the sort of the campus pro-Palestinian protests, there was a real like, what is happening with the left

and the anti-Semitism on the left? That was a big part of the conversation. And I think Republicans leaned into it especially hard as a way to deflect from the fact that Donald Trump was dining at Mar-a-Lago with Nick Fuentes, with Kanye West, who has long left his music endeavors behind to become a full-time Nazi sympathizer. And so Donald Trump...

I don't think we need sympathizer there. I think he literally said like, I'll Hitler or something. I think you're right. And like made a maybe made a song about it. Yeah. I mean, I want to say so far away from these guys. I was never a pre-Nazi Kanye fan. So I'm not as familiar with this as some of the other cultural totems, but I'm pretty sure he's just like, I'm a Nazi now.

Yeah, that's right. And then like, you know, the Mark Robinson, who by the way, made a video about Epstein, he was the guy who ran for governor, now in North Carolina, but he was the one who was like the porn pizza guy, who they unearthed all of these things where he called himself a black Nazi online. And he is like a big Trump guy. Like the antisemitism on the right is actually also a very big problem.

And it would be, and I think that- It's not really a thing to joke about, I guess. Well, I think this idea of, I'm gonna, people call us Nazis because there are genuine fascist tendencies happening with Trump and his supporters. And also we have a real issue right now with right-wing antisemitism.

It was, I mean, Tucker, Tucker is like out of control. Like there were a lot of, like the split in MAGA world over and even like the Epstein, Mossad, like there's so much of this anti-Semitic stuff happening on the right that like, I don't know, Greg, you might have to grapple with this. Like, I'm not sure that being able to just act like people are calling you guys Nazis for no reason

or making comparisons to Hitler for no reason. And I don't like Hitler comparisons. I always think they are, I think it's, it's what is that principle of like the first person to Godwin's law. I think it's Godwin's law. Yeah. It mentions Hitler loses the argument. And so it, it always feels a little hyperbolic and yet there's no doubt that we have moved closer to early 1930s. I mean, we've got a vice president that is supporting the far-right political parties in Germany right now that are like white nationalists.

We do have a real problem going on. And so, I don't know. But more importantly, just as like straight comedy, like he's not good. Not funny. It didn't work. Your joke's bad. Not funny. Yeah, not funny. You know, not maybe of the moment. And I don't know, you know, Seek Hyles are putting out there. I don't know if Seek Hyles humor is right. So Greg Gutfeld, I guess on the one hand, it's good to know. We're self-identifying as Nazis now. It's nice for people to know that. But just as a general, just piece of advice, if you're going to make Nazi jokes, they better be really funny.

They better be really funny. Really funny. Yay. And you didn't nail it on this one. Okay. Thank you, Sarah. I'm glad I could analyze this with you. And we live up to our promise to people. We said that there was going to be Greg Gutfeld Nazi content at the end of Next Level. And so here it is.