The left wanted a moment of contrition from Fox News. They did not get one.
Greg Gutfeld had a few things to say about the outrage machine spinning up over a UFC fighter’s post-fight comments at the White House.
And what he said next left Jessica Tarlov without a good answer.
What Happened at UFC Freedom 250
The controversy came out of the UFC Freedom 250 event held on the White House South Lawn, the same evening as President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. Heavyweight fighter Josh Hokit had just won via TKO, leaving his undefeated UFC career intact, and sat down for a post-fight interview with podcaster Joe Rogan.
Hokit closed out the interview with: “And lastly, Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?” as a grinning Rogan held the microphone and the crowd offered a mixture of cheers and boos.
The UFC staged seven fights under the Freedom 250 banner to mark Trump’s birthday and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence’s signing. Hokit also headed over to Trump and placed a chain around the president’s neck.
UFC CEO Dana White described Hokit’s words as “nasty and false,” telling Time, “Everyone knows my position on free speech but I hate that kind of nonsense.”
Former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino seemingly sided with Hokit, telling TMZ, “It was probably the most unexpected and unintentionally hilarious moment of the night.”
Gutfeld Shuts Down Tarlov’s Demand for Condemnation
The left immediately wanted Fox News talent to get in line and denounce the comment. Tarlov showed up to The Five ready to make that happen.
Tarlov told the panel: “You gotta mention and I know we don’t want to….Josh Hokit, steps up there and says Michelle Obama is a man….Joe Rogan, maybe he was paralyzed in the moment and didn’t think, oh I should emphasize that Michelle Obama, a former first lady, since we’re talking patriotism and paying our respects to the White House, and those who come before us, is not a man.”
Gutfeld cut right through it: “He’s not running for Senate,” a reference to the Democrat Senate nominee in Maine who carried a Nazi tattoo on his chest for twenty years.
Tarlov apparently did not catch the reference and pressed on: “Why can’t you just say that the guy should never have said that Michelle Obama was a man?”
Gutfeld declined, responding: “Because I’m merely pointing out, there’s nobody on the left that has any credibility to ask us that question.”
And then Gutfeld went further.
He added, “Hell, I seem to remember, not too long ago, how often I heard that Melania Trump was an ****** — and from a lot of people who are now ‘oh, oh, oh!’ huffing and huffing.”
Gutfeld kept going, pointing to “people faking Charlie Kirk getting shot in the neck, thinking it’s funny,” and “people hoping for another Luigi Mangione to take out Elon Musk. Or perhaps Trump. Or maybe both.”
Gutfeld then landed the line that summed up his entire argument: “See, we don’t have — in fact, we enjoy it when you’re upset. That guy is a troll. He showed up at the weigh-in pretending he was drunk. It was throwing up applesauce as a fake pretense, ’cause he was pretending he was scared. That’s called a troll. We get it. Not our fault if you don’t.”
The Platner Problem the Left Doesn’t Want to Talk About
Gutfeld’s reference to “Platner” is worth spelling out for anyone who missed it.
Graham Platner, the Maine oyster farmer who faced scrutiny over a “Nazi tattoo” on his chest, won the Democrat primary election for Senate in Maine earlier this month.
The final tally suggested that not all Mainers had embraced the political neophyte whose campaign was dogged by controversies, including the revelation that Platner had a Nazi Totenkopf tattoo on his chest for nearly two decades until he drew criticism for it on the campaign trail.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Senator Kirsten Gillibrand focused on defeating Republican Senator Susan Collins and taking back the Senate in their statement reiterating their endorsement of Platner after his victory.
So the same party demanding that Greg Gutfeld condemn a UFC fighter’s crude post-fight remark rallied around a Senate candidate who wore a Nazi skull tattoo on his chest for the better part of two decades. Gutfeld noticed. The audience noticed. Tarlov did not have a good answer for it.
The Credibility Problem Nobody on the Left Wants to Acknowledge
The left’s outrage over Hokit’s comment is real enough. But outrage without consistent standards is just noise, and Gutfeld knows it.
For years, the same media figures now demanding condemnation of a UFC heavyweight said genuinely vile things about Melania Trump with zero institutional pushback. No White House statements were issued. No Democrat senators held press conferences. The same crowd that treated crude attacks on a sitting First Lady as acceptable political commentary now wants everyone on the right to perform public acts of contrition over a post-fight troll from a guy who fake-vomited at his weigh-in the day before.
And Gutfeld’s point about the left openly celebrating violence fantasies directed at conservatives is not abstract. People at organized protests literally called for someone to murder Elon Musk the way Luigi Mangione allegedly murdered a healthcare CEO. That happened. It was documented. Nobody on the left demanded that Democrat politicians denounce it.
But a UFC fighter yells something obnoxious after a TKO, and suddenly the standards of civil discourse are back on the table.
Gutfeld put it plainly: “He knows it’s gonna upset you. He’s a troll.”
That is not a defense of the comment. It is a refusal to play a game with rigged rules. The left gets to be outraged on a selective basis, directing it where it is politically useful and ignoring it everywhere else. Gutfeld’s answer — “we enjoy it when you’re upset” — is a blunt rejection of the premise that the right owes the left any deference on questions of decorum after years of one-sided enforcement.
Whether you find Hokit’s remark funny or distasteful, Gutfeld’s larger argument holds. You do not get to spend years trashing Melania Trump, cheering on violence fantasies against conservatives, and nominating a man with a Nazi tattoo for the U.S. Senate — and then show up on national television demanding that the other side apologize for a troll.
Tarlov did not land a clean answer. She rarely does when Gutfeld is in this mode.
Sources: Mediaite, AOL/HuffPost, Newsweek, PJ Media, NewsBusters, The JC, Times of Israel, Fox News, NBC Washington