In early March of 2024, Fox News Channel’s token leftist co-host on “The Five,” Jessica Tarlov, got in a scorcher of a fight with Dana Perino, a much more conservative co-host on the program, over far-left Keith Olbermann’s call to dissolve the Supreme Court. Pirro argued that Olbermann’s call represented the Democratic Party, whereas Tarlov argued that it did not.
As background, following the Supreme Court’s decision that Colorado could not remove Trump from the state ballot, Olbermann wrote, in a hysteric post on X, “The Supreme Court has betrayed democracy. Its members including Jackson, Kagan and Sotomayor have proved themselves inept at reading comprehension. And collectively the “court” has shown itself to be corrupt and illegitimate. It must be dissolved.”
That then led to a war in the comments section. Gunther Eagleman, for example, a conservative X personality, wrote, “Cry more… 9-0.” Olbermann responded by saying, “Those aren’t tears, Fascist. They’re urine. I’m sure you enjoy being bathed in it.” In a follow-up tweet, Olbermann added, “By the way, fathead, if this court now grants Trump this hallucination of “presidential immunity” it applies to Biden too. And he could arrest the justices and cancel the election and you couldn’t do shit about it.”
In any case, the fiery exchange involving Tarlov began, as is usual, with a comment from co-host Jesse Watters, who is excellent at provoking her. He said, commenting to guest host Bill Hemmer on Colorado’s attempt to keep Trump off the ballot, “It doesn’t make any sense to me, Bill. I remember at one point I was upset with the Supreme Court decision when they wouldn’t take Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election. And as a self-appointed constitutional scholar, I thought Trump had standing. But when the decision came down, I accepted it because that was the end of the line.”
Continuing, Watters said, “This apparently isn’t the end of the line. Keith Olbermann wants to dissolve the court like he dissolved his own career. You cannot say you’re going to save democracy over and over and over again, blow up the court, and then, like Raskin, try to create some rule that if Trump wins, he’s not allowed to take the Oval.”
Hemmer let Tarlov enter the discussion and, doing so, she snapped, “Keith Olbermann does not speak for the party!” Interjecting and setting Tarlov off, Dana Perino jumped in to say that Olbermann does, in fact, represent the Democratic Party. “Now he does!” Dana Perino said.
Tarlov, furious, fired back, “Okay, and Michael Moore does too, right? We don’t see him until every four years, and then he comes out and says terrible things about Democrats, and then he disappears and then he comes out again for elections.” Tarlov continued, insisting that she had been consistent in her stance on Trump and the ballot.
The fight then escalated as Tarlov and Pirro fought over Jamie Raskin’s attempt to declare Trump and insurrectionist over January 6. “But what Jamie Raskin is doing is what the justices asked him to do. They said, this is Congress that makes the decision. So that is what’s going to happen. And this argument that Democrats are relying on the courts to win is so bizarre to me, considering what happened in 2020. And I hate to rehash. I don’t really hate to rehash this. I love to rehash this. Donald Trump called for recounts everywhere he got his recounts, and he continued to lose,” Tarlov said.
Judge Jeanine Pirro, firing back, snapped, “So did Raskin, so did Gore.” Tarlov insisted the situations were different, snapping, “Stop it! They are not comparable!” Pirro added, “So did a lot of Democrats.” Tarlov then said, “You’re telling me that what Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and everyone else did.” Cutting her off, Pirro said, “You may hate them.” The two then continued fighting over Raskin’s maneuver.
Eventually, Hemmer let Pirro have the final word. She said, “The court just said that Congress has the power to do this,” to which Tarlov quickly asked, “Is Jamie Raskin not in Congress?” Pirro added, “We know we can’t even get it out of committee. But in addition to that, Section 3 was drafted to ensure an enduring union, not to separate us. And they still need to have the ability to decide whether or not there’s been an insurrection. Donald Trump has never been charged nor convicted of insurrection, so we’re going to do two things, neither of which will happen before this thing can even be an issue.”
Watch them here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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