How Greg Gutfeld Became the Bill Maher of Fox News

On a Tuesday in February, Hollywood is in the throes of a “Bonfire of the Vanities” moment. Karla Sofía Gascón’s old social media posts, with shocking takes on George Floyd (“a drug addict swindler”) and Islam (“an infection for humanity that urgently needs to be cured”), are roiling awards season and have turned the actress into a pariah. But the “Emilia Pérez” star, the first openly trans person nominated for an acting Oscar, is also a tricky subject to satirize.

Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert have ignored the conflagration that has engulfed this year’s standard-bearing #Resistance film. The task is left to Greg Gutfeld, whose eponymous Fox News show has made him the most-watched man in late night.

During a taping of his top-rated “Gutfeld!,” he scrolls through the offending tweets and booms dramatically, “The more I read of these, the more I’m starting to like this broad.” The actress may have caught a stray here, but the real target of his monologue is Hollywood.

“Gascón’s movie got all those nominations because she ticked the box, and now those who obediently nominated her are boxed in themselves,” he continues with relish. “Her co-stars are distancing themselves from her like Alec Baldwin at a gun range. … And now identity politics has forced them to tear her down. They wanted a trans figurehead, then acted shocked when she turned out to be a complicated person who had some opinions they disagreed with. It must be exhausting to navigate the liberal hierarchy of victimhood.” He deadnames Gascón to boot, which is considered offensive. Hollywood may be ripe for parody, but this is the kind of humor that, were it taking place anywhere on TV other than Fox News, would be a national scandal. The crowd — which skews slightly more female than male — roars with laughter. And I realize that I’ve crossed into an alternate universe.

Gutfeld may be a novel phenomenon to some. But to a sizable and growing portion of the Fox News audience, he’s the man of the moment. Just as Megyn Kelly defined the network in the late Obama era with her disarmingly direct interview style and Bill O’Reilly occupied the throne throughout the Bush-Cheney years, Gutfeld has become the latest breakout star. His status as Fox’s ascendant court jester was cemented when he interviewed Trump before a live studio audience on “Gutfeld!” at the height of the 2024 presidential campaign. His sardonic, blunt takedowns have carried him so far that it’s easy to forget that Fox News, historically, has thrived when playing the role of loyal opposition to those in power. Now, though, Gutfeld flits from late night to daytime (as co-host of current events show “The Five”) with gravity-defying ease.

Days before that live taping, he slides into a booth at Bar Mercer in SoHo and digs into the Gascón affair. To a comic whose self-styled brand is ridiculing liberal hypocrisy, this is an easy target.

“It has every ingredient,” he says. “Do you cancel this person because this person is at the apex of the identity pyramid? But the cannibalism happens. Inevitably, you’re going to eat your own. You put this actress up on a pedestal. And suddenly, Hollywood, which pushed virtue signaling and woke-ism, now finds that it’s turning in on itself.”

Gutfeld has taken frequent aim at transgender women and girls in sports and gender-affirming care for minors. But when it comes to Gascón, he is, suddenly, an unlikely defender; perhaps there’s a pleasure in playing the contrarian. Taking a long drag on his tiny box-shaped vape, Gutfeld calls her sentiments on Floyd “a nuanced take.” 

“She also said you had an idiot police officer who was uncontrolled,” he notes. “Both can be true.”

Existing on cable news, hosting a celebrity-free show devoted to hot-button issues and cracking jokes with a withering sarcasm where his competitors are sunny or loopy, Gutfeld is an unlikely king of late night. With a panel format instead of the one-on-one setup of his peers, “Gutfeld!” features a hodgepodge of regulars who were once ubiquitous until they tilted rightward, such as comedian Rob Schneider and Vincent Gallo. His rivals, he says, are losing audience share because they adhere to “a very narrow, agreed-upon groupthink” and, therefore, can “never be funny.” Despite being 60 years old and a Trump stan, he is attracting a younger and more politically diverse audience than his counterparts. In fact, “Gutfeld!” is beating “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” “Real Time With Bill Maher” and “The Daily Show” by every measure and is uniquely poised to ride the Trump 2.0 wave.

 And to Gutfeld, “Emilia Pérez” isn’t just a trending topic; it’s something endemic in our culture. 

“That’s the threat of virtue signaling and cancel culture together. People will just go, ‘I’m good.’ And then they vote for Trump.” He pauses and then returns to a different election, one even more juicy for a host who, politics aside, is intrigued by fame. “Or they vote for Demi Moore or the one in ‘Anora.’”

Perhaps this climate of outrage fatigue explains the rise of Gutfeld, who dances gleefully on the trip wires on his titular show as well as on “The Five.” His fans see a modern-day Tom Wolfe; his critics contend that he is using satire to soften the edges of fascism. What is indisputable is his ratings prowess. The former print journalist — proudly fired from three magazines in the ’90s and early aughts (Men’s Health, Stuff and Maxim) — helms the only late-night program that averages more than 3 million viewers, according to the most recent Nielsen Media Research data. (His rivals on broadcast and cable typically fail to reach even 2 million.) Surprisingly, “Gutfeld!” — launched just four years ago at Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott’s urging — is No. 1 in the adults 25-54 and adults 18-49 demos (not exactly the strong suit of a network known for its aging fan base) and is attracting more Democrats and independents than the competition, according to data from Nielsen. His critics say his numbers should come with an asterisk because he benefits from the earlier start time of 10 p.m., and that it airs even earlier on the West Coast. But in August 2022, he became the first late-night host to overtake Colbert in the ratings since 2017, and he accomplished that feat when “Gutfeld!” aired at 11 p.m. Like it or not, the nasal-voiced shit-stirrer who sees no topic as off-limits is leading the pack — and expanding his audience.

“The chord Greg strikes most vividly is people are tired of taking themselves so seriously. They’re tired of being preached to. They want to make fun of things again like we always did,” says Dr. Drew Pinsky, a “Gutfeld!” regular. “So much of what goes on in late night is sort of Johnny Carson-esque. It’s old. It’s tired. And they have an army of writers, which he does not. He has a few, but it’s mostly him.” (The show has five to seven writers on any given episode, but each member of the lean staff holds multiple roles both on camera and off.) 

Gutfeld differs significantly from the field in tone. After Fallon expressed regret over having Donald Trump on as a guest in 2016 and tousling his hair, he now mostly avoids the polarizing president in his monologues, while Colbert and Meyers have gone all-in on #Resistance humor. Most stick to the Carson format of a celebrity guest promoting a new project. “Gutfeld!” is a closer match to Bill Maher’s old ABC show “Politically Incorrect,” with co-hosts Kat Timpf and Tyrus helping to anchor conversations that frequently rib the obese, the easily triggered and the hosts of “The View.” (Writer Gene Nelson leans into the we’ll-go-there sensibility, telling the crowd ahead of the taping I attend: “I can make fun of fat people because my best friend is” — his voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper — “gay. And Jewish.”) His elaborate, stagy pauses turn the statement into a joke and briefly conceal that what he says makes no sense.

The late-night paychecks diverge too. Gutfeld, who is repped by CAA, might be the best bargain in showbiz, pulling down a salary said to be about $9 million a year, roughly half of what Fallon, Kimmel and Colbert earn. 

“I think that Fallon was a victim of status preservation. I think when I see them all in agreement — not to make jokes about sacred subjects — out of, again, status preservation, [it’s because] they know that they will be cast aside if they do that,” Gutfeld says. “I’m already cast aside. I’m free.” 

The man before me certainly doesn’t seem concerned with how he is received. Wearing a knit pullover sweater, a rumpled pair of khakis and sneakers, Gutfeld looks less like a slick Teleprompter reader and more like the new father that he is. The sole status symbol is a Speake Marin watch (they sell for about $36,000). But even the bling signals schlub — the timepiece’s hands stay frozen throughout our conversation. “I forgot to wind it,” he says, blaming his absentmindedness on baby brain. His wife of 20 years, Russian fashion designer Elena Moussa, is home at their nearby SoHo apartment with their 2-month-old daughter and their French bulldog, Gus.

“Elena won’t let me vape in the apartment, especially with the baby. So I vape when I can,” he says as he exhales the strawberry-flavored nicotine through his nose. “But it’s my only vice.” 

When Gutfeld surveys the broader comedy field, he’s unimpressed. He struggles to name a host he finds funny outside of Maher and Joe Rogan. Then he remembers Tim Dillon, a stand-up comic and podcaster who is a self-proclaimed conservative and openly gay. (To quote Gutfeld, two things can be true.) Dillon, who had a small role in “Joker: Folie à Deux,” broke unwritten Hollywood protocol by trashing the widely panned film during an appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

“Talk about not interested in status preservation. Said it’s the worst movie he ever made and how everybody on set knew it was terrible. That’s somebody who doesn’t care. Then you have Andrew Schulz and Theo Von finding success in being honest and not giving a shit,” he says, referring to the pair of relative-newbie podcasters who both interviewed Trump during the 2024 election cycle. “And then you have these other guys that have toed the line, and they’re like, ‘Are we out? In the zeitgeist, are we no longer relevant?’” 

The election proved that some of those “other guys” no longer are influential. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris opted to sit down with Howard Stern on SiriusXM, thinking his audience of white men could help tip the election in her favor. But for better or for worse, Stern was more relevant when he was a shameless misogynist who fixated on porn stars.

“The more Howard Stern had to lose, the less risk he took,” Gutfeld says. “I think that when you’re in that group — the late-night comedy or humorous world — they start putting their professional status and their personal status in front of what could be really funny and what could be really true. They had four years of an incapacitated president, and they didn’t say shit. And instead, they unravel over posts by Trump, and it’s like, you could do both.” 

Though Gutfeld says he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, he did so reluctantly in 2020 and enthusiastically in 2024. “This time I went in person, like the day the freaking place opened,” he says. “I was there at 9 a.m. down in the Village, and I couldn’t wait.” Still, he will (occasionally) skewer the reality TV star-turned-politician. After the presidential debate in September, Gutfeld mocked the orange-hued candidate as the “pumpkin painted pet protector” over Trump’s “They’re eating the dogs” claim. 

During the 2016 election cycle, Trump sat down with Fallon and Colbert. He even hosted “Saturday Night Live.” This time around, he skipped those shows — likely a mutual decision — but dropped by “Gutfeld!” two months after the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt. The ratings soared, with 4.9 million tuning in to hear Trump boast that even the brother of Harris running mate Tim Walz was voting for him. Gutfeld’s sidekick Tyrus, a former professional wrestler who is Black, retorted: “Well, to be fair, a lot of brothers are supporting President Trump.”

“By distinguishing himself ideologically, Greg has half the country to himself,” says “Up in the Air” author Walter Kirn, a frequent “Gutfeld!” guest. “The rest of them are fighting over the other half.”

A day after our first meeting, the news is relentless; ICE raids are playing out across TV like a macabre reality show. Inside Gutfeld’s corner of Fox News, though, the mood is oddly serene as the host sits in the “Five” green room, watching a video of Joan Jett singing “Territorial Pissings” with reunited Nirvana members at the FireAid concert. 

Among his co-hosts, Gutfeld seems less superstar than slacker. Conservative provocateur Jesse Watters and former Democratic congressman Harold Ford Jr. are sharply dressed in blazers and ties, while former New York judge (and Trump favorite) Jeanine Pirro and George W. Bush press secretary Dana Perino wear pristine suits and stilettos. Gutfeld has shown up in sneakers, a white T-shirt peeking out from a pullover sweater. (It looks like the same one he wore yesterday at Bar Mercer.) While the others appear more prepared for the freewheeling conversation, Gutfeld is writing bits on the spot, scribbling furiously with a black Sharpie, tapping his foot manically to a silent beat. But according to Ford, he only appears to be cramming.

“The quick-wittedness that he has is really second to none,” Ford tells me later. “I don’t think people fully grasp how serious and thoughtful he is about what he does. He can be informative; he can be offensive; he can be hilarious. He’s certainly going to be provocative. But at the base level, it’s based on preparation as much as anything else.” 

“The Five,” which plays like the upside-down version of “The View,” is a ratings powerhouse. The show became the first non-primetime cable program to rank No. 1 for four consecutive years. Its viewership is nearly triple the cable news competition combined in the 5 p.m. slot. Back in 2011, the late Fox News chief Roger Ailes felt that “The Five” needed comic relief and designated Gutfeld to deliver the laughs. 

“I think he uses this label of ‘comedian’ as armor to be able to get away with things that Bret Baier or Sean Hannity wouldn’t say,” says Andrew Lawrence, deputy research director of advocacy organization Media Matters for America. “I know humor is subjective. I know people do find him funny, but I don’t really see where the humor is in there. He just really strikes me as mean.” 

That’s precisely the point. 

Back at Bar Mercer, Gutfeld happily riffs on a trio of TV anchors who are now without a network. “Chuck Todd, Jim Acosta and Norah O’Donnell are thinking in their mind they’re just going to do what Megyn Kelly or Tucker Carlson did and just get a pod. No, people actually have to like you and trust you to create a following like that. There’s not going to be a wildly successful Chuck Todd podcast.” (In the current media paradigm, the mainstream guard is losing sway to independent voices like Fox News alums Kelly and Carlson.)

The trash talking continues, this time with Meghan Markle in the crosshairs. “Nobody likes a person less than the person who’s obvious about their thirst for status. She decided that she was going to just walk into Oprah’s world like, ‘I’m going to be a lifestyle guru.’ I don’t care who you are. You hate people who cut in line. She cut in line.” Here, Gutfeld demonstrates that he relishes pop culture as much as the culture wars, and sometimes makes them one and the same.

Even the Trump inner circle isn’t immune from his disdain. “I hated RFK Jr. 20 years ago when I was writing for The Huffington Post. All of this autism-link stuff really bugged me. Autism and the MMR. Whatever.”

Gutfeld’s path to this perch doesn’t exactly scream MAGA. He grew up just outside San Francisco, a liberal bastion to be sure (or a war zone, if you watch enough Fox News). His classmates at Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo included future Giants slugger Barry Bonds. 

“Did he tell you about how Barry Bonds used to make him show his homework to him and would copy off of his paper?” Perino asks with a laugh. In 1987, Gutfeld graduated from Berkeley, ground zero for the Marxist opposition to the Ronald Reagan regime. 

“It was definitely true to its stereotype,” he says of his Berkeley days. “It was so easy to game an A. Because if you know the formula, the deconstructionist formula, you can do it with anything. If your thesis is on ‘Moby-Dick,’ you can write about the homoeroticism of ‘Moby-Dick.’ It’s like the easiest shit you can do.” 

While the future members of Fox Nation might have been writing fan letters to Oliver North, Gutfeld was interning on “Blue Velvet,” David Lynch’s twisted classic, as part of the film’s promotions and publicity team. 

But there’s another side to the Gutfeld origin story: He was an altar boy. “My mom was Catholic,” he says as explanation. 

“But wait — aren’t you Jewish?” I ask. 

This might be the only time during our hours together in which he seems uncomfortable answering a question. “My dad was an atheist. I think after the Holocaust he had no religious beliefs at all. I don’t remember the stories, except that my dad didn’t want to talk about it. My parents were older when they had me. So he was born in 1924, ’25, so he had a lot of relatives, blah, blah, blah.” 

“In the Holocaust?” I press. 

“Either escaping or in. I never really talk about it because I don’t know.” 

The say-anything comedian has finally hit a topic he wants to avoid.

Back in the green room, he’s lighthearted, zigzagging between subjects that have only a thread of commonality. He’s talking about Pinsky, which leads to “Celebrity Rehab,” which leads to a rapper who recently died of an overdose. The rapper, Shifty Shellshock, had one big hit, the 2020 song “Butterfly.” He thinks the song was featured in the cult film “Donnie Darko,” which spins the conversation in an entirely unexpected direction as Gutfeld reminisces about getting high with Patrick Swayze at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, when the late actor was promoting “Donnie Darko.” “You were a little bit high?” I ask. The ears of a nearby Fox publicist perk up as she begins typing intently on her phone. “Well, it was high altitude, so it’s hard to say.”

“I didn’t partake,” he says more loudly. He adds, sotto voce, “We had a very long, broken conversation … in a bedroom.” 

“I have so many stories from those days,” he says about his two decades in magazine publishing. Gutfeld believes there’s connective tissue between his writing career and his turn as the cable news star who has zero fucks to give (or a carefully curated rebel persona). “I was always doing something different underneath it, subverting it. I made Maxim U.K. homoerotic because I was like, ‘I’m making fun of men’s magazines while I do this.’ And with Stuff magazine, we became thoroughly deranged. It was supposed to be about gadgets, but we made it thoroughly morbid — and crazy! And Men’s Health, we just made it interesting and funny, which health isn’t.” 

It’s an unconventional skill set that paved his path to Fox News. When Gutfeld blogged for The Huffington Post, beginning in 2005, he frequently bashed Arianna Huffington herself. That brazen attitude made him a perfect fit for one particular job at Fox News as the channel cast its net for a late-night host in 2007. The show was to be called “Red Eye” and would air at 3 a.m.

“I got ‘Red Eye’ because of the weird shit I was doing,” he says of his blogging stint. “‘Red Eye’ was on so late at night, and the adults weren’t watching. I got to do a thousand episodes. So that meant I went from sucking to being just awful to being not bad all the time to being 50/50. But it was the best training ground.” 

Thinking outside the box proved beneficial at “Red Eye.” Timpf was manning the cash register at a Boston Market when she set her sights on working with Gutfeld on the show. They’ve been collaborating ever since. Given that she is a sexually fluid libertarian who didn’t vote for Trump or Harris, Timpf and Gutfeld don’t always see eye to eye.

“We tease each other a lot on the show, but I know that he respects me as a friend and as a person,” she says.

Though he’s not in bed with Hollywood, Gutfeld is a movie buff. Among his 2024 favorites is “Challengers,” the tennis love-triangle movie directed by Luca Guadagnino. “She’s great,” Gutfeld says of Zendaya. “It was the best soundtrack this year. How do you make tennis interesting? They just used heavy techno. It was like, you’d think it was out of place, but it worked.” His other pick likely didn’t make Hannity’s top 10 list. “‘Anora’ is super provocative,” he says of Sean Baker’s drama about a sex worker.

And he’s not shy about defending celebrities who find themselves under the microscope. Consider the internet push to cancel Sydney Sweeney because a relative was photographed wearing a “Blue Lives Matter” shirt at her mother’s birthday party. The outrage was loud enough that Sweeney was forced to release a statement telling those who were outraged to “stop making assumptions.”

“See, this is what happens when you run out of targets and how addictive it is to cancel people. It’s not enough just to go after famous people. You have to go after people who are tangential to fame, and then you get a dopamine hit every time it works,” he says, fully exasperated. “‘Did you take down Sydney Sweeney’s relative?’ ‘Yes, I did.’ It should be ‘Well, you’re a fucking loser!’ That should be the answer.” 

Though he follows celebrity culture, he’s loath to bring A-listers on as “Gutfeld!” guests. 

“Celebrities have too much to lose to let their guard down on a show like mine,” he says. “If I had Ryan Reynolds or somebody sitting there and we’re doing a segment on trans and sports, do you think he’s going to tell me what he thinks? Fuck no. He’s going to be looking for his publicist: ‘You said we were promoting a movie. You didn’t tell me they were going to ask me about this.’” 

Taking a swing he can’t resist, he boasts: “I don’t need it. Kimmel could have Kevin Costner on, I’d still beat him. I’d still double his ratings.” Suddenly, he’s sounding a lot like a certain president, riding high on his ratings. Gutfeld doesn’t adhere to the norms of TV. He is a star of his own making. He laughs, and shrugs: “What do I care?”