Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - How the Pandemic Changed Us (ft. Greg Gutfeld)

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Do we still need to process what went on during the pandemic? Jessica sits down with Fox’s Greg Gutfeld, her co-host on The Five, to unpack the dense new film Eddington, written and directed by Ari Aster, which depicts a small town in the spring of 2020 being torn apart by mask mandates, social justice protests, and paranoia. They talk about how this film illustrates the social dangers and political obsessions that are still very present today, five years later. Plus — they also discuss Greg’s recent appearance on The Tonight Show, which has drawn backlash from liberals and conservatives alike. Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov.  Follow Prof G, @profgalloway.Follow Raging Moderates, @RagingModeratesPod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Jessica Tarlev. Today we're doing something totally different. I have the King of Late Night since 2021 and an OG host of the Five since 2011 with me. He's also one of my favorite people at Fox, even when he's antagonizing me from across the table, which is basically all the time. The one and only, Greg Gutfeld. We're going to be discussing what the movie Eddington gets right and completely misses about how the world changed after the pandemic. I am recording this. The movie, written and directed by Ari Aster, takes place in a small fictional town in New Mexico in May of 2020.

In the early days of the pandemic, Joe, six feet. And the outset of the Black Lives Matter protests. No justice. No peace. No racist, police. No justice. No peace. No racist.

This is not legal. Slavery was legal. During slavery was illegal to free a slave. What about the Navajo Longwalk? What we did to them? and the Apache. That's all the same. Okay, you can always tell what somebody is learning something new in social studies. Waukeen Phoenix plays the Sheriff Joe Cross, who hates the fact that stores are closed and everyone's yelling at him to put on a mask. Excuse me, Sheriff. I'm sorry, but you need a mask

if you're going to be in here. That's okay. It's okay. I don't. Pedro Pascal plays the Mayor of Eddington. How are we doing? Okay, mayor, I think. Who's a concerned, liberal with a KN-95 mask on. You know, if a healthy person with a mask... Oh, here we go. Mm-hmm. Gets exposed to a COVID-19 person without a mask. Yeah, yeah. Then they got a 70% chance of catching it.

But he's working with some shady tech finance people to bring a new data center to the desert. Why doesn't he explain about the water and energy these data centers consume when we're in a historic drought? We're always in a drought. Yes, exactly. And we're making up for the energy and water with the solar. and we're bringing in.

The movie really makes it feel like life did back then. Desolate streets, confused and angry people six feet apart, and everyone on their phones checking social media. Replacing your businesses with their server farms. Solid gold magic car. Look it up. This is deep learning. That is deep fake from the deep state.

But then, as everyone's paranoia becomes extreme, the movie goes to wild places. Spoiler warning ahead. It's an important movie that still has a lot to say about our politics today, and I encourage you to watch it. Please, welcome to the show, my good friend, Greg Gutfeld. How are you? I'm doing great. Are you? I gave you some homework last night.

You did. I said you had to watch Eddington because I saw it like a couple of months ago, and I can't talk to anybody about it who's like on another kind of political side. I think it's a fantastic mess. Yeah. But I was curious what your takeaway was from that movie. Because, well, I guess I should explain the movie is really the first COVID movie. Yeah. I think it's the first COVID movie.

And it takes place in a desolate town. It's like a neo-Western. Yeah. And it amplifies the paranoia and the suffocation of the lockdowns and the, and the restrictions by having it there and not in a city. It was, like, the moment the movie starts, did you get the feeling that you were back in 2020 when you're watching it? Totally. Well, I mean, first I want to say that the fact that you gave me homework. So I invited you on my podcast.

And I was like, I came up with all these topics. We're going to talk about this. And then you're like, have you watched Eddington? It's two and a half hours. I know you have little kids. Just make sure that you do this by 11 a.m. tomorrow, which we did. And Brian was excited to watch it. So it was all good.

What did you think of it? He loved it and is bummed that he isn't able to have this conversation with you. He's like, we ought to meet up with Greg and talk about this. And he had been wanting to watch. So he was glad that I was being pushed into watching a movie because I'm usually like, let's watch a show because it's, you know, it's only an hour and it's long. But it totally took me back to COVID and that it starts with a crazy man, right? Like that's almost the beginning of when we started to fear people on the street.

And I understand this takes place in, you know, rural New Mexico, so it's not the same as, like, where we live. But that feeling of you don't know what's going to happen next that hasn't gone away in the five years since COVID was super jarring to me. And I totally got why you were obsessed with this movie because it's equal opportunity in, I don't want to say making fun of both sides, but the overreaction of both the right and the left. to COVID. And it just showed to me, at least, and I didn't talk to you about the third act because I felt like the first two acts made a lot of sense

and then it went completely bonkers, which I guess is Ari Aster's thing, the guy who directed it. Yes. But it just like painted this portrait of a broken country. And I feel like we're totally still broken. Yeah, and the thing is,

I was thinking about this because the first time I saw it, I was kind of distracted. My wife just had a baby and I was feeling, guilty being in the movie theater watching it and I remember when you went and did that like all the other new dads where you're just like I'm going to go to a movie yeah it was I was invited so I'd never go out so I thought I would go and I was just sitting there going God this this

movie's long and so I thought the movie was going to end before the third act that's and so when the third act started which is absolutely bonkers I was like kind of like sitting there losing my cool. So last night, I watched the thing. My feeling about what he was saying was that the problem before COVID and before BLM, and BLM plays a big role in this. Before those issues, there's an underlying mental issue going on. We can't forget social media. What social media did when COVID came, when BLM came, was it exacerbated. problems that were already there. So you had Joaquin Phoenix's mother, who is kind of a crackpot, whose crack pottery

is kind of energized by the Internet and COVID. Then you have these young teenagers who are looking for some kind of identity who are energized by the BLM movement. So they bring the Derek Chauvin thing into their community of like 200 people. But it's like all of these things kind of preyed upon existing mental problems. And that's why, I mean, it's a pessimistic movie in that sense because it doesn't say, well, this will never happen again. It's saying that until we examine what's underneath and we begin with that insane, that

mentally ill homeless guy, I think for a reason, kind of a saying like, we've got problems. And then, I mean, one of the funnier parts in the movie was when they were, They were having that BLM protest, and the homeless guy shows up again and just drives them crazy. And it was like this conflict between idealism and reality. And I wanted to talk to you about it because the only other people that saw this movie were movie critics. And I don't trust movie critics because they tend to put themselves in front of the movie because they are writing review and they want to be known as a writer. so oftentimes they try to they try to go all in on a movie to out describe something and I

I don't trust them and so when I was reading the reviews of this movie I'm going like I don't know if they're being honest I watched a lot of interviews with Ari Aster to just get inside that that head I want I think everybody should watch it but I also think that it may not I don't know if it helps. Like, I don't know if it helped me going back to that era. The problem with COVID movies, the reason why there aren't any is it's so fresh and it's so shameful. I think, I mean, I feel shame for not being assertive enough. Like, I had a writer on my staff who refused to come in because Fox was doing these mandatory testing things. He's like, fuck that. And it's like, Well, and then I talked to my other friends who are saying, Godfell, you just, nobody wants to do this.

But if you want to do a show, you got it. And I go, I get it. But I like, I think everybody has a feeling going through that period that I can't believe I let people do this to me. I can't believe I stood six feet apart from people. I can't believe I washed my Amazon packages. I can't believe I wore a fucking mask on, you know, I'm watching this movie and I'm remembering being on, American Air, and I was asleep. And I'm jostled awake by a flight attendant to wakes me up to tell me that my mask was below my

nose. Which they talked about a bunch of times in the movie, right? Yeah. And I'm like, you woke me up for that. And she, you know what she said? If you don't comply, you're going down on this list. It was like zero to 100. That was, and true to the movie, it showed the need.

for people with no authority to suddenly exercise authority. So you had those kids shouting at their parents, like the kid at that great scene in the dinner table where the kids lecturing his dad about white privilege. And it's like, now I have agency or somebody yelling at somebody about pulling their mask up. People who have no authority suddenly could tell the sheriff what to do. And that feeds into something that it could happen again. I keep thinking this could never.

happen again? It could never happen again. But I don't know. I mean, what else could come down the pike where we exercise pressure on people all the time to accept your opinion. I was thinking about this too. You probably might agree or disagree. The mask pressure is very similar to the pronoun pressure that you could just leave me alone. I'm not going to, I don't need to acknowledge these pronouns that's a speech thing but there were people that were compelling you to do it and that creates this thing inside you where you go

fuck that you're not telling me what to say and I feel like that is kind of a parallel thing to the mask where you know if I'm in a hospital yeah I'll put on a mask but you're I'm outside in New Mexico on a desolate street you know I'm not going to

do that but it was the when somebody wants to compel you to do something you instinctively resist. And so you end up with everything becomes, you know, A versus B. Mask, no mask, pronouns, no pronouns. When really it should be just leave me the fuck alone. That should be that, that is the American creed, you know, I, you know, let me do me, you do you. And if you're doing terrible, we'll try to help you. But don't tell me what to say. Don't tell me what to do. Don't tell me what to put in my body.

You know, so many fights about COVID, the COVID vaccines. And, you know, where was I, I don't know, I'm going off topic, but. No, it's, well, it's all on topic. And I definitely know how angry you get when people try to compel your speech because we have had fights about pronouns where I said, well, what does it really bother you, right? If it makes someone feel better. And I feel it should bother. Anytime somebody compels you to do something and you can feel in your heart that it's wrong,

it's wrong and it may be a small thing but it's a little window open to a bigger room where they're going to have you do other things where they're going to have you you know uh don't cross the street because we have a mural painted on there you have to walk around it all of a sudden you have these silly fucking performative bullshit virtue signaling symbolic rap that is meant as an avenue for power from people who just want to fuck with you. I think that's a little catastrophic for some of the things that are trying. No, no, no, but that's, isn't that what it's about? That is where the movie went.

But one thing that I was acutely aware of, because I figured that you were going to say things like they made me mask, right, or whatever about the vaccines. Like, everyone's COVID experience was so different. And what was interesting is that there were no cases of COVID in Eddington. Yes. Which was like the underlying problem there and why Joaquin Phoenix's character who played the sheriff, was so upset by all of it. He's like, you don't even have sick people here. Yeah. Yeah. But my COVID experience was my dad was sick. He was in an ICU with sepsis. His

cancer had come back. And then he was moved to a nursing home where he was one of the first people that was able to get the vaccine. But we were scared out of our minds that he was going to end up with COVID and it wouldn't be the cancer that killed him. It would be this. And, you know, it's so easy now for people to poo-poo what went on. We had mobile morgue trucks. And I get it about the masking outside. And I had, you know, people come. Yeah.

Okay. Because I went through a similar situation with my brother-in-law who passed away during COVID. Yeah. It wasn't just the hospitals, the experimental vaccine, whatever you want to call it. It was that they separated you from your loved ones. Did that happen with you at all? because it happened in my family.

He died, you know, with basically just holding, finally being able to hold the hand of his wife. Yeah. You know, my sister, they were kept apart all the time and they were treated like shit and he died. But don't you think that there's something that deserves a bit of credence or respect in all of this that like the information was changing so quickly and the movie captured that, right? Because everyone was getting their social media updates, and I think social media and isolation and the tech overlords, because this is about a data center, right? That's moving to this random nothing town. Right. And for me, that's the plot line of all of this, right?

That Peter Thiel and those guys are the puppeteers behind everything that's going on. Peter Thiel. What? No, George Soros. Sure. No, no. George Soros is in it, too. But he's not a tech overlord, Greg.

You can't do this. It's my show. You introduced Peter Thiel when in the movie, the people that came down in the private jet had protest signs and weaponry. That's not Peter Thiel. That was the Antifa that was flown in, 100%. Yeah, who paid for that. But the data center is Silicon Valley. Oh, wait, wait, wait, okay.

I see what you mean. Okay, thank you. So you're saying that the other storyline is that it was Silicon Valley. Valley that sent these guys in to wreak havoc? No, I think that the Antifa overlords who I don't associate with Silicon Valley were responsible for that. And that's part of the messy third act aspect of this where I feel like Ariaster just wanted to actually have a horror movie.

Yeah. I'm saying that the fact that this is a dilapidated town that is going to get a shiny data center that is being sent in by tech overlords is the major plot line, all of these regular Americans that had a life, right? And this is, you know, happens in mill towns, seal towns. We talk about this with coal miners, right? Like, everybody who's essentially being put out of work or has no meaning in their lives anymore, at least professionally, is up against the idea that they are going to ribbon cut something like a data center, which can run on its own, right? And the robots are coming. And they're not going to have a place in modern America.

And that was the underlying story on the villain side, at least to me. Social media is what is getting you on a daily basis. And you can't stop updating and you get like the lunatic that Austin Butler played. I thought he was great. Wasn't he mapped after Russell Brand, just the mannerisms? I think so, even with like also the vibes of his tattoos. Yeah. The way he moved his hands and the kind of the free-flowing nature, he was really good.

but a very brief, I thought that was an interesting side thing, but what was interesting about that thing. So this, this kind of evangelical cult-like figure comes down was that it was telling you how social media can enter your home and take a person. Literally take them out of your home. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It could be any issue with like I always talk about trans. Trans was not spread by person to person. It was spread through social media amplified by activists. In this case, We're talking about conspiracy ideas about child. Massive pedophile rings, which is very big on the right. There's these pedophile rings everywhere.

You don't know the half of it. And he said that he was like in a weird area. It was like he was describing, I can't remember that camp in Northern California where rich people go. But he was basically saying a bunch of men hunt kids. And it's very unbelievable. And he's probably lying. But it's pervasive. Yeah.

And that's, I mean, I did think that it was equal opportunity, which I appreciated and going after the left and the right for this. And I thought, just from a casting perspective, I understand that it's a director that people are excited to work with. But it is meaningful that folks like Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone, who are, to some degree, avatars of the left, wanted to be in this movie that is going after the left and the mismanagement of COVID. Good coin. Because they have a choice, right? they can do whatever movies or TV they want. And they wanted to tell this story. And they wanted to center social media and online addiction and the isolation that it creates and the way that it destroys your mind. And it frees all of your friendships and your relationships romantic and otherwise.

What did you, what was your favorite scene? Because I have one. Oh, really? Yeah. It's the use of the song, Firework. When he, uh, Joaquin Phoenix goes to the fund. for the mayor and they keep turning up and turning down the Katie pair the way that was done was one of those I think it's one of the great moments and just just the way he used that song but that is

also that's a moment he really snaps right you mean you see this progression that he's losing it but there's something about going to an event which I think was supposed to mirror Gavin Newsom going to the French laundry yes right yeah I think so Yeah. And they used Newsome as an avatar the whole time. You know, New Mexico would be following California's lead, et cetera. That's where the director grew up. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. Yeah. By the way, I don't want to give away the ending, but the way Joaquin Phoenix ends up is a parallel to Joe Biden. Greg. Do you feel? Yeah. No. I do not feel that. And we're not going to give away the ending, though there are spoiler alert.

and all of this. But I'm just going to, of all of the absurd things that you have said, it is not that he ended up like Joe Biden. I want that on the record that you have now gone too far. I know. I wanted to put that in there because you're obsessed with that plot line. What a weird moment for frontal nudity. I was horrified by it.

But that's also about the period. Like, that's actually what. But what you think about the ending then, the home health care worker? Yeah, the home health aid. Right. Yeah. That is great. But I love that line when she's coming in.

And she goes, how are you? And he says, I may have drank too much. And he's the home health care worker. I thought that was like, again, in COVID, just little things like that. Everybody drank too much, including the home health care worker. We're going to take one quick break. Stay with us. Welcome back.

Like, it's obviously interesting. It's spurring a lot of conversation. I, because I did my homework and then I did more homework reading reviews and the fifth column guys were talking about it. They were also talking about you on Fallon, very complimentary, by the way, which I want to talk about a little bit. But, Camille Foster and Michael Moynihan and Matt well. Yeah, they're great. But what do you think for today? So like the conversation that we've just had for the last 20 minutes, I feel like is a pretty good summation of the opposing sides right now, politically speaking. In a friendly sense, but, you know, there's one side, and this is you, that I feel like wants to rewrite COVID and just basically be like, everyone got a cold, but over a million people died in the United States. That's still, but do you totally mischaracterization of how I feel about it, but I don't want to relitigate that.

I don't, I never said it was like a cold. In fact, I took it. I took it seriously before anybody. Like, when it happened. But I don't want to. But people are in the movie as well. the dismissiveness of the vaccine begins, right? The questioning of MRNA vaccines. And now we have, you know, Bobby Kennedy out there, our HHS secretary, saying we shouldn't be funding them anymore

when they saved millions of lives. And you've even said this, that Operation Warpsweet was a massive accomplishment of the Trump administration. And you should lean more into that. Well, the thing is, it was a massive accomplishment that none of the Democrats wanted. And then all of a sudden, they got in power and they flipped. So it always became a political question. He was able to cut through the red tape. The interesting thing about vaccines that a lot of people don't realize is they generally don't do placebo-controlled trials because they think that's not humane.

It's not like, I'm going to come up with a drug that helps with erectile dysfunction or balding. We're going to do placebo-controlled trials because life doesn't depend on it. Generally, with vaccines, they have a. belief that there's a track record that the principal works of introducing something to build your immune system to fight it works. So if you talk to your doctor when they, this is something I didn't know until like pre-COVID. I was talking to my doctor and I go, hey, I haven't got the flu shot. And he goes, it's not that important. This one sucks. And he says, this one sucks. He says, it's probably got a 30% chance. I wouldn't do it. And I never thought, wow, I mean, like,

They don't know until they're used, whether they're effective or not. What Trump did was he removed the red tape to get something out there. I hope that it saved lives on the upper echelon risk factor, like people like your dad. But they were unnecessarily forced upon young people. And that's a crime because we all knew that young people were fine. The number of deaths. But anyway, see, we're going to go in that direction. No, no, no.

I just want to add on the vaccine part because, yeah, my doctor says the same thing. about the flu vaccine, but there are seasonal vaccines, and then there are core vaccines, which, like, we should not be going after the polio vaccine. Um, okay, so I think you're getting, are you getting at the point of, like, where does this leave us? Well, it obviously wanted to say something about where we are as a society. And I feel, and I know you do, too, just from, you know, being friends and obviously working together as well, that, like, we're in pretty dire straits in terms of,

how we interact with each other, how we understand how other Americans live, and social media is the major source of that level of isolation and anxiety for people and how the depressed they are. And there was not a character in there that you thought was going to have a decent and good life, like from the kids that were performatively part of these BLM protests to the oldest character, you know, what happened to Joaquin Phoenix and his mother-in-law. So this is maybe the only, well, I mean, not only, but major criticism of the film. And I think you might even alluded to it at the beginning is that it exaggerates the conflict. For example, we are in the media, maybe it's not as bad in the rest of the country than it was because we were covering it.

So we think it's that way. And Ariaster is in entertainment. and by extension media. So he sees it as far worse and he's very pessimistic. But maybe, maybe it's not as bad. However, it was pretty bad. I think the thing that we have to grapple with is how do we, God, I'm going to sound like such an old father.

How do we protect our kids from social media? That's like I got an eight and a half month old baby. and I feel like it's the one area where a parent is super vulnerable. You used to worry, you know, my kid shouldn't go out and play in traffic or my, you know, at the playground, there's a strange man in a panel van, you know, blah, blah, blah. Now it's like what faucet is on that is spraying this shit into my child's bedroom that I don't know about and what is it doing to her and can I stop it when I know that if you provide resistance to a child or a teenager they will often then the rebellion yeah if you don't like your

daughter's boyfriend she's going to like him even more you know and so i think maybe i mean maybe we're going to naturally evolve to understand um what this is what social media is the use of bones in that movie made me so i don't know like it made me seasick there were times when like phoenix when something didn't work out, he just roll over and look at his phone. And everybody was on the phone. It's like, we are different animals now. We're not, we can't go back. We can't go back. You can't, you have these articles like limit your kids on screen presence to so, so, so, you know, stuff like that. But it's like, we're like dealing with something that is, I mean, I would get phones out of the schools as soon as possible. Well, they're doing that. Yeah. And I mean, a lot of what you're expressing is, you know, Jonathan Hayes. in the anxious generation, which you should definitely take a look at. But I think a core component of the problem, it's not just what the kids are consuming, it's that we're turning to the phone to answer every question. Absolutely. You know, parenting used to be, to some degree, at least, this is what I think, right, or I'm feeling something, or this is what my mom did

or my dad did. Yeah. And now we're checking every single decision that we're making, even up against, like, chat GPT. I mean, the amount of people that are parenting off of chatbots. I do it. I know. I have an injured hand from a pressure injury, and I like just go there. And I'm like 90% of the way there. And the doctor says, yeah, that's what it is.

Or that, you know what I mean? And it's like, it does kind of work. That's the scary part. But then you're never happy, like having a baby, having an infant, you know, it can be totally reassuring. What if my baby makes a wheezing noise when she laughs? you know, you'll get this beautifully concise thing is that this is normal because oftentimes their throat is forced from crying. But then it's like, but it could be, it could be group.

Which, you know, I just had, right, and I spent the night in the hospital. So, I mean, the thin line between this is totally tolerable and fine to, you have to get yourself to a pediatric ER right now is very slim. And also, you're going to have to deal with the litigating possibilities that you should say go to the ER because if you don't and the baby dies at home, do you sue AI? Do you sue the company? Do you sue Google? Do you sue Grock? What do you do when they said, you know, take two aspirin and call me in the morning and then you die? Can you sue them for malpractice? I'm going to sue somebody for malpractice for my hand. Anyway, you wanted to ask me about Fallon. Yes, I would like to. I mean, more so the reaction to it, which I

I found to be so fascinating that, like, everybody talks a big game about, like, the way we were, right? And that we should be able to talk to people that we disagree with. And, like, you know, we're hanging and hang at work. And I was really disappointed to hear that you got criticism, you know, from the right. Like, you were going to show up at someone else's show and be an asshole to them or that you should have been anything but charming and nice and, you know, talk about what you were there to talk about. I would say that was minimal.

I mean, it was a few people on Twitter, but like the left was really harder on Fallon again. For platforming you? Yeah. It was like almost every article from the Daily Beast Media Matters, if that exists, but the idea that softballs. Yeah. He, what was it? I can't remember somebody says, he got on one knee and kissed the ring, you know, and it was, It was like, you can't win.

I think most people saw it as fun. It was interesting. Fallon did a really nice thing. He understood that maybe the audience there, present audience, didn't really know who I was. And just basically said, it was almost like get acquainted with Greg. And he was incredibly generous. And I wanted to tell that drinking story because it shows that like we have a way, way more in common than we do differences. And I don't even think he's.

political. I think he got drafted into the culture wars. He didn't enlist. You know, I thought that we were both surprised before the interview what a big deal it was. It's like the producer comes to this. Why is this a big deal? And I go, dude, it's like, I don't know either. I said yes to this months ago. And I forgot about it. And then it's all of these articles. And I love this. There's this douchebag. He wrote the late shift. Bill Carter said something. He wrote a piece going like, oh, Gutfeld's going to go in and he's going to be an act. And then, of course, that doesn't happen. And then he writes an article about what a bummer it was that I wasn't. It's like you can't take these people seriously. I mean, they're the same ones, Jessica, behind the fine people hoax, Russian collusion, all your little fantasies. Isn't that a great way to just jab you for no reason at all? It is. It's a beautiful end to this. But I want to ask you, I do have a question that I ask at the end. What's one thing that's currently making you rage and one thing you think we should all calm down about?

out. Ooh, those are good. Thank you. Okay. What's a thing that makes, well, you know, it's amazing. I don't really rage much anymore. I'm always going to be. No, you are a lot calmer. Oh, I think I will always, until hospitals stop performing gender mutilation, that's always going to be the number one thing on my list. And I think it's fairly obvious. One would be outraged about this. I'd like to see people go to jail over that. I think it's one of the worst profit driving monstrosities in medical science. Okay, now,

things that I think people should calm down about do, do, do, do, do, think I would maybe say kind of the remaining vestiges of wokeism. I think that it's been kind of slaughtered and the idea that

we have to still kind of like expose each little woke thing, I mean, they're good summer stories because you can just, hey, this guy, this professor says this. And that's a nice little D block for the show. But generally, it's like Shark Week. Yeah, it's like Shark Week. Oh, woke week. Perfect for your show.

Yeah, but it's like there's no woke any. I mean, there is still wokeness, but it will probably come back under a new name. But maybe it's kind of like, I think they get the message. I think they realized it didn't work. Oh. And speaking of work, I do have to go to work, Jessica. And so do you. Are you on today?

No, I'm not. Yes. Now I can finally watch the five because Jessica's not on. And then when you're not on, they still tweet about you. Well, they say I turned it off. And I'm like, you obviously did not turn it off. I'm not even on. Yeah.

But you know what kills me about that whole mentality? These are people, if they went to a James Bond movie and there was no Bond villain, they'd be like, why am I in this movie? And they don't understand. They don't understand that the only way you get your arguments better, It's like going to the gym to lift weights. You need resistance. Imagine going to the gym and there's no weights.

That's every show without somebody with a different opinion. I'm going in to see if my ideas can lift weights. And when you're in there, you force me to work out. So I've said this to you before offline, that you're kind of my muse when I'm coming up with my perspective. I'm going, okay, I'm going to be facing Jessica. She's very feisty. She is, it's like, if we were playing basketball, you throw elbows. And that's just the way you play.

It's just my style. You know, Harold doesn't throw elbows. He's more of a finesse player, but you throw elbows. I have to realize, okay, how do I deal with that? Now, if I didn't have that to aim for, I would be intellectually lazy. My arguments would be weaker. The show would be boring. And I don't think viewers that get so crazy about.

you don't understand that. They don't understand that you're helping them think about their ideas. You're helping them see the holes in their ideas, even if the holes aren't really there, Jessica. But we like you prodding. So I think I try to tell people, when people come up to me, I go, look, if the villain is weak, the movie is weak. You know, you go to a gym to work out. The five is a place where your ideas work out. And they don't get strong without resistance. And generally they kind of get it. But the only thing I think they get ticked off about you is it's a liberal problem, which is the superiority face that people put on when they're going,

whereas Jesse does that to you. It's like, oh, you Republicans, well, you know, I think they will always see liberals as thinking they're better than Republicans are conservatives and that pisses them off. Anyway, I got to go. But I thought that would be helpful to just point that out. It was, and it was very nice of you. Inclusive of the liberal resting bitch face that I tend to sport. No, resting's the priority face.

Okay. We're going to leave it there, Craig. Have a great show. I'll see you tomorrow. You got it. I'm going to be throwing elbows. Thanks a lot.