Greg Gutfeld, co-host of Fox News’ The Five, offered a strange scapegoat for crime in the United States: women.
The show played footage of a “mob of criminals” looting a Los Angeles Nordstrom. But Gutfeld took the incident as an opportunity to go on a tirade, during which he seemed to accuse women of being responsible for the frequency of certain crimes committed in the US nowadays — and how such crimes would vanish if women did too.
“What would happen if all the women took a ladies week off and they went to Venus … How many of these problems would still exist?” Gutfeld mused.
Co-host Dana Perino can be seen looking at him sceptically.
The co-host argued that “smash and grabs”, “no-cash bail” and “rampant recidivism” would “disappear” if women were no longer a factor.
“I know this is offensive to the judge because she thinks like a dude,” Gutfeld joked while pointing at co-host Judge Jeanine Pirro, who laughed at the comment.
Gutfeld concluded by summarising his point, “What I’m saying is that we have gotten so soft and it is because we have decided that discipline and punishment is wrong.”
It’s unclear if Gutfeld was insinuating that he thought women were responsible for the Nordstrom looting. The LAPD estimated the loot to be worth up to $100,000, and the police previously told The Independent that the suspects were both male and female.
The Independent has reached out to the network for comment.
This isn’t Gutfeld’s first instance fueling controversy. Just last month, he came under fire for saying that some Jews were able to survive the Nazi genocide because they were “useful.”
His words reached the White House, a spokesperson for which condemned Mr Gutfled’s assertion. “What Fox News allowed to be said on their air yesterday — and has so far failed to condemn — is an obscenity,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement. “In defending a horrid, dangerous, extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of Americans who suffered from the evil of enslavement, a Fox News host told another horrid, dangerous and extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of people who suffered from the evils of the Holocaust.”
