'The Five' break down what to expect from State of the Union

This is a rush transcript from "The Five," January 28, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

DANA PERINO, CO-HOST: Hello, everyone. I'm Dana Perino, along with Andrea Tantaros, Bob Beckel, Eric Bolling, and a very bored Greg Gutfeld.

It's 5 o'clock in New York City -- and this is "The Five."

(MUSIC)

PERINO: We are about four hours away from President Obama's fifth State of the Union Address. FOX News will have coverage starting at 8:55 and the five of us will be live tweeting. We're going to tell you about that later.

It's going to be a tough sell for the president tonight. The latest FOX News poll says that 62 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country. And a "Wall Street Journal" poll says that 68 percent think the U.S. has been stagnant or worse off since the president took office.

So what can we expect to hear from the president tonight? Ed Henry knows a little bit about that and he joins us from the White House.

Ed, give us the summary.

ED HENRY, FOX NEWS CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, what's interesting, as you'll remember from your final year or two of the Bush administration, dealing with the end of the administration, where we use that dreaded phrase, small ball, where there's not a lot of new ideas, not a lot of major initiatives. You're kind of running out the clock.

For this president, he may be getting there a little sooner. He obviously still has a couple more State of the Union addresses to go, but all the signals we're getting from the administration is there will not be a lot of new ideas.

Instead, what he's going to do is two-fold, say he's still working -- willing to work with Congress, Republicans in the House, et cetera, on big ticket items like immigration reform, but he realizes it's still an uphill battle. But if that doesn't work, he's willing to go at it alone on a whole series of other issues with executive orders, executive actions. And we saw a little bit of that, he made a little movement on that today with the minimum wage, for example. We can get into the details in a minute.

But when you talk about the tough task ahead tonight, I think it was summed up by his former White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who said this morning on MSNBC that last year was a lost year. That between the botched health care rollout, the IRS issue, other crises that popped up, Robert Gibbs, one of the president's top allies, was saying it was a lost year and there's a lot riding on this tonight for the president to try to right the ship and show he's still relevant here, Dana.

PERINO: One of the things, Ed, and I'm going to turn it over to Eric here in a second, is that the White House, for the last several days, has actually been advertising the fact they're going to have a small-ball speech, which is a different strategy.

Eric, you had a question for Ed?

ERIC BOLLING, CO-HOST: Yes.

Ed, how does President Obama -- how does he square this circle?
There's 60 percent of the people who Dana points out who say the economy is not working, not going in the right direction. The president, the country is not even going in the right direction. His approval rating is sliding.

Yet, you know, he's got the unemployment rate down to 6.7 percent and GDP is frankly getting better. So, he's got on one hand, some good economic numbers, but the country is not seeing it.

How does he make the -- how does he make his people, all of us, realize that maybe something he's doing might be right, and is it?

HENRY: I have seen him struggle with this for over five years now, because any time there is positive economic data, if he looks like he's cheerleading it too much, when there are folks across the country who are just not feeling it yet, he looks like he's out of touch. But yet if he doesn't tout the good economic data, he has to deal with the fact that there's other bad economic news out there that he still has to deal with.

Bottom line is, we continue to hear -- this week, we were hearing from Jay Carney and others -- that the reason why the country is still struggling with the economic crisis, the damage from that, is that the president inherited this crisis from President Bush. Republicans don't like to hear that, but this administration continues to say that.

So, what they'll say is, look, the hole was so big when he came to office that yes, progress has been made, but there's still not enough.

Bottom line is, harder and harder case for the president to make to the American people. It might have worked in the first year, the second year, but now, when you're in your sixth year in office, and you're doing yet another State of the Union Address, he's now had over five years in charge of the economy. That's a harder case to make.

BOB BECKEL, CO-HOST: Ed, this is Beckel.

You have been around the president for some time. Can you name me one time, just once, that a Republican has said anything positive about Barack Obama? I could name you a thousand where they have obstructed him. Why he says he's going to work with those fools in the House, I don't know. Let's assume he has to do it.

Name me one time they've said something positive about his economic program.

HENRY: How much time do you have?

BECKEL: That's exactly. He doesn't want to answer my question.
Because --

(CROSSTALK)

PERINO: Bob, can you name one time when anybody in the Democrats commented at the 4 percent unemployment rate during the Bush administration and said it was positive? Can you name me one time? The political opposition isn't there to support the president.

BECKEL: My brain doesn't work that well. I just point this out if the history -- the history of the administration is written, it's going to be the most anti-from the Republicans, everything they could do to scuttle this guy, go right back to what Mitch McConnell said, our job is to defeat the guy.

PERINO: Oh, my goodness, Ed. I'm going to go to Andrea next.

HENRY: I feel like I'm in the middle of an awkward family fight at the Thanksgiving table and --

PERINO: Welcome to "The Five".

HENRY: Yes, welcome to "The Five". OK, interesting.

BECKEL: I still didn't get an answer, but that's all right.

ANDREA TANTAROS, CO-HOST: Well, I'll moderate --

HENRY: Well, let me tell you one quick thing. Speaker Boehner today at a breakfast with reporters, I was there, at one point, he was saying, look, if the president goes too far with these executive orders, he's going to face a brick wall up here from Republicans. I asked Speaker Boehner, I said, well, why would the president think that's different? He thinks you already have a brick wall up against his agenda and frankly, that's why the White House thinks the president is justified to move forward in some executive orders, because he's not getting anywhere on the Hill.

BECKEL: Good question. I'm glad you asked the question.

PERINO: Oh, gosh! OK, Andrea --

TANTAROS: I just want to respond to Bob very quickly, Ed. I did say something positive about the president when he -- in the very early years -
- decided to keep some of Bush's policies in place. We all said that here around this table.

There's your question answered, Bob. Now it's my turn.

BECKEL: No, I said --

TANTAROS: Ed, how does the president draw a balance tonight, right?
So, he has a number of nervous Democratic senators who are up for re- election in purple states that are very nervous about him going into global warming on arguably the coldest day we've seen in a long time, or issues like ObamaCare. They don't want him to talk about this policy failure.

But at the same time, doesn't he have to get his base something to rally them, to get them excited in the fall. How is he going to strike that balance?

HENRY: I think he's going to try to rally them on the minimum wage, you know, the executive order that he did today only involved federal contracts and future ones at that. So, it doesn't impact current workers dealing with, you know, working under federal contracts, only in the future. So, it's a limited number of people who will be impacted.

He's going to push Congress to say, raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for all workers. That's something that does rally the left. It has a very unlikely chance of passage though in the Republican House as we were just talking about a minute ago. I think your point in health care is important and valid, which is that, that's what Robert Gibbs was talking about, this lost year.

The botched rollout on health care really damaged the president's credibility. You see that in the polls. Where I think he'll try to make the case to those purple state or even red state Democrats, from North Carolina and Arkansas, where there's tough re-election battles for Democrats, is look, the Web site is fixed or at least a long way towards being fixed and they, finally, believe at the White House that the health care law is, you know, sort of turning the corner.

But I will tell you, Speaker Boehner at breakfast this morning said very directly he thinks that while repealing the law is very difficult and unlikely to happen, he's finally -- he and other Republicans admit that, they still say, Speaker Boehner does, he thinks this law will fall under its own weight, that the map is not going to add up, not enough young people are going to sign up. We'll see.

But the president tonight will make the case that we need to continue pushing forward on the health care law.

PERINO: Now the moment that I've been waiting for in this block, because it's always my favorite part, is when Greg gets to ask Ed a question.

(CROSSTALK)

GUTFELD: Yes, because it's never really is a question. It's a question disguised as a statement.

In my opinion, State of the Union is a hood ornament for a car on blocks, makes me wonder why we keep doing this. The worse thing about the State of the Union are those star-struck POTUS poodles who line up along the entrance so when the president saunters in like a grad student who just won an award for most improved Marxist, they sit there and they're trying to shake his hand because they're so desperate to be on camera, to be seen shaking the hand of the president. They're grown people who are star- struck.

HENRY: Is there a question?

GUTFELD: I'm getting to the question, Ed.

(LAUGHTER)

GUTFELD: The State of the Union, we all know, is a ritual that everybody hates. Nobody likes it, including the president, including the politicians, including the media. We all know it's a joke, so why do we keep doing it? Why don't we say enough is enough?

It's like an acquaintance you used to meet every year. You decide neither of you like each other, so why do we keep meeting?

HENRY: Well, because there's a little something for everyone -- for the media, we get to have a big night, have a little bit of drama. The Republicans get to sort of speak their piece about what they don't like about the president.

But for the president, sure, I bet you there's probably 100 other things he'd rather do than get in front of the House chamber, Democrats and Republicans, and explain his policies again, et cetera, et cetera, but he's at such a difficult point in his presidency right now. Having a chance to not just go before the chamber, and more importantly, go before the nation and try to reset things, that's something he desperately has to do, because the other thing, you know, undergirding this entire night, is the fact that this president is getting closer and closer to being a lame duck.

So, he's got to try to grab the nation by the lapels and say, look, I'm still relevant and here's what I want to do for the last three years.

BOLLING: Hey, Ed, that was -- that was what exactly I was going to ask you. Isn't he, in fact, after the speech, won't he be, in fact, lame duck? I mean, honestly, look, $10.10 minimum wage --

HENRY: He's got three or four months.

BOLLING: -- for -- $10.10 minimum wage for federal employees, that's nothing. Immigration, he's tried that three or four times before. That's going to be an air ball.

He can't talk about ObamaCare. He can't talk about raising taxes.
That's a no-win.

Isn't this his moment of lame duck coming out right here?

HENRY: It's one of his last chances, frankly, because he's got a three to six-month window before you got to summer and the fall when, what's going to happen? All these Democrats and Republicans in the chamber tonight are going to be thinking about the mid-term elections.

And if the Republicans take back the Senate and hold the House, and that's a big if, we don't know how all this is going to play out, but if they do, his final two years in office, yes, lame duck city. But if somehow he can keep control of the Senate and somehow make some gains in the House, maybe his agenda has a fighting chance.

But yes, you're right. The odds are he's closer and closer to lame duck. He has a narrow window here.

BECKEL: This is Beckel again. I was told by my producer not to attack you as if you're a Republican commentary. I know you're a good reporter and I was asking that in a rhetorical sway. Having said that, after listening to Boehner this morning, do you think the Republicans have a sense, as bad shape as Obama is in, their numbers are worse.

And so the question is, what are the Republicans going to do besides what they have been doing, which is no, no, no, no?

HENRY: Well --

BECKEL: Do you think the Republicans have an agenda of their own that they might actually think they could pass?

HENRY: Somewhat. I mean, I think, Bob, you're answering your own question in two things. One, yes, Speaker Boehner directly said, he's said this publicly before, that he believes the Republicans can't be the party of no. That they can't just beat up on every Obama policy. They've got to come up with an agenda of their own.

Now, leave it to the audience to decide are the Republican plans good enough? Are they better than the president? Let the people decide that.

But secondly, I point out, it was only 24 hours ago that three Senate Republicans came forward with a serious health care plan. Again, the White House is going to say it's not good enough, doesn't cover enough people, but there are Republican plans on the table.

And so, look, they're going to fight this out, but yes, to your bottom line point -- the Republicans can't just throw stones at the president.
They've got to have plans on their own on the economy, health care, and they say they do, and on immigration, by the way, we've been talking about, Speaker Boehner is now leading the effort to say let's do something. He's not saying no.

Now, he doesn't want a big, big plan like the president has, the comprehensive plan, but he's saying let's do this in five, six, seven smaller bills, bite-sized pieces people can digest. So, Boehner is actually saying yes on that issue.

BECKEL: I'm just going to say, I'm getting rolled -- eyes rolled by Dana.

PERINO: Well, I haven't said a word.

BECKEL: Go ahead, I'll shut up. All right.

HENRY: About what?

PERINO: OK, I'm going to get the last question, OK?

HENRY: All right. Go.

PERINO: After the State of the Union, then any president goes out on the road and they try to sell through the follow-through. The president, I know, is going to be going to Wisconsin and Tennessee. Already, you have members who are elected, either the governors there or the senators, saying that they are not going to appear with the president. Do they think this is a sign of things to come? It's fairly early in the year for this to be happening, in my opinion.

HENRY: They know it's a reality. It's already happened. He went a few months ago to Louisiana. Mary Landrieu facing a tough re-election there, a moderate Democrat, did not appear with him. They said, well, she's got Senate business, I think in that case, it was business in Louisiana.

A few weeks ago, he went to North Carolina. Kay Hagan, another Democrat endangered, had Senate business back here in Washington.

So look, as you know, Dana, this happened to President Bush in 2006, sometimes where the Republicans who didn't want to appear with him. Others who were very happy to appear with President Bush and have him help raise money for them.

PERINO: Yes.

HENRY: I suspect there will be some Senate Democrats who might not like the president that much, but yet will say, hey, he'll help raise a couple million dollars for my campaign.

So, they know that. It's a political reality because of the health care law and other issues. He's going to be a help in some states, but in other states, he's going to be a real hindrance.

PERINO: Hopefully, the president won't take it personally, because it does happen to all of them.

All right. Coming up, details on "The Five"'s live-tweeting during tonight's State of the Union. That -- Bob, we're going to explain that to him as we go to the show. We want you to join us.

And also, wait for this -- Robert Redford has harsh words for Republicans who disagree with President Obama's agenda. You're going to hear from the Sundance kid when we come back.

GUTFELD: You'll hear some dance.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLLING: On the eve of the State of the Union Address, news leaked that President Obama will deliver on a promise he made recently. The president will announce tonight that he intends to use the executive pen to raise the minimum wage for contractors hired by the U.S. taxpayer. Nicely done, sir.

But weren't you the guy against the executive pen before you were for it?

Mina, roll it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The issue of executive power and executive privilege is one that is subject to abuse. And in an Obama presidency, what you will see will be a sufficient respect for law and the coequal branches of government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLLING: Oopsie.

But like clockworks, the libs lined up in support. First, there was Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THOMAS PEREZ, SECRETARY OF LABOR: This is actually efficient, making sure you pay someone $10.10. When you're paying someone $7, you're going to lose them because they're going to go to employers who pay better. This executive order, I believe, is going to increase the efficiency of government. I think it's a smart way to run government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLLING: Smart, Dana?

PERINO: You want to know why it will increase efficiency? Because they'll hire fewer people. That's actually productivity. That actually what will happen.

And it's such a small number of people that actually get minimum wage on federal contracts. Perhaps there is a way to, you know, tie the CPI to minimum wage and see if things rise and fall with whatever the market says.

I think the problem with this is that, yes, once again, the president is showing himself to be a hypocrite on this particular issue. Maybe it happens with every president, but his executive order, what he can do from the White House himself is actually probably not that powerful.

Executive action, on the other hand, is very powerful. It's the Labor Department, EPA, Interior Department, energy, transportation, the effect on businesses, small businesses in particular, who don't really have a big voice in Washington, the National Federation of Independent Business put out a video earlier yesterday, which I thought was very good, talking about the strangulation of small business at the expense of unelected bureaucrats, and Congress needs to get something done.

I think the president is making a mistake when he thinks he couldn't do something on the minimum wage. He should have at least tried it in Congress. If that then failed, he could have gone ahead and done this.

BOLLING: So, Robert, it's not that he's using the executive pen more than some of his predecessors. In fact, he is not. There are a lot of presidents who used it quite often. The problem is when President Obama in
2007 said, no, no, I'm not going to use the executive pen in an Obama presidency.

BECKEL: The problem with your little cut there was he said executive privilege, which is an entirely different issue, entirely different issue.

BOLLING: In what way?

BECKEL: Executive privilege -- asserting executive privilege, you don't have to turn over documents generally to the Congress of the United States. That has nothing to do --

BOLLING: But it's also -- it's from the same -- bypassing the Congress.

(CROSSTALK)

BECKEL: Let me see if I --

PERINO: And, Bob, it's exactly what -- if he was talking about executive privilege and not action, it's exactly what President Obama tried to assert in the fast and furious investigation so that people in the White House didn't have to respond.

BECKEL: He did. That's right. That's executive privilege.

PERINO: If we could make him hypocritical on that point, too?

BECKEL: Well, you can, but that's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about this issue of about $10.10. It should be $20.

PERINO: We brought up the executive privilege?

BECKEL: No, no, I said you -- we put the cut up here on the show. We used executive privilege as a cut. Maybe we can get the cuts right.

BOLLING: OK, let's move on.

BECKEL: All right. Let me try to explain here, every Congress passes a bill. There is always room in those bills for president of the executive board to implement what the law says, and it's wide open for regulation.
It's not -- nothing new.

Now, he may go a lot further than a lot of presidents have. He may have to, frankly, but this is not new because Congress always cannot anticipate every regulation, and interpretation of what they write.

BOLLING: All right. Deep breaths --

PERINO: No, I'm fine.

BOLLING: Deep breath.

BECKEL: Why? What's wrong with that?

GUTFELD: May I address this, Bob?

BECKEL: Yes, please?

BOLLING: No, go ahead. Jump in.

GUTFELD: OK. Federal workers which means essentially it's spending.
This is our money. This is not private business. This is the government.

So, essentially, he's proven once again that he's not really the president of the United States. He's the president of government. These are the people that he cares about most.

You can't move up the ladder, Bob, if you aren't on the ladder. This administration shows that you can opt out of the ladder and survive.
Government programs like food stamps, unemployment insurance, and ObamaCare disincentivize working. So, you don't have to get on the ladder anymore.

So, when you're talking about income inequality, he's actually advocating policies that make it worse. You need to work to gain experience. And he's creating a life where you don't have to work.

BOLLING: Greg hits on a point. Income inequality, $10.10 for federal
-- not even federal workers, for future federal contractors. That's not going to do a darn thing for his income inequality problem, is it?

TANTAROS: Well, it's going to help his buddies out. I mean, you're going to hear income inequality all night tonight, right? I thought when Bill Clinton, in one of this last State of the Unions talked about midnight basketball, that was small ball. This is even smaller ball, right?

So, when he stands at the podium and he addresses the nation and he says, this is going to help so many people. This is going to help all of you.

This is for him. This is for his union buddies. We were talking on "The Five" what a couple months ago about how the richest area of the United States is Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia, where all these government contractors work. This is not for the middle wage earners in America.
This is all for people that are connected to him and for him, for his power lust and personal political gain.

BOLLING: Hang in there, Bobby. I know, I've got to get this. We teased this.

Next up is dissent a disease? Robert Redford seems to think so.
Here's the Hollywood hotshot on President Obama's Republican critics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT REDFORD, ACTOR & DIRECTOR: When you have a system that's supposed to serve the public good by being bipartisan, that's the point of it all. Bipartisanship was meant to serve the public good. When you have one half whose only motive is to destroy the motives of the president of the United States, then you have a diseased system.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLLING: Bring it around very quickly.

Bob, you're agreeing with Bob Redford.

BECKEL: Of course, I am, but I want to say I don't know of a union person who makes less than $10. But leaving that aside --

TANTAROS: Are you joking?

BECKEL: Name a union person --

TANTAROS: Are you kidding me?

BECKEL: Name me one.

TANTAROS: Construction workers are making $10 an hour --

BECKEL: I say they make a lot more than that.

TANTAROS: Oh, yes, they make a ton of money.

GUTFELD: I know, supermarkets.

PERINO: Which is why this is -- it doesn't affect anybody. It won't have an impact.

TANTAROS: It's a joke.

BECKEL: I thought you said it was unions, he was paying off his union buddies. But I'm not going to talk much here.

So, I'll say this, I think Redford is exactly right. I have never seen a Republican Party that used to be a great party, become such an obstructionist party and a right-wing party, period.

GUTFELD: Can I just point out that Robert Redford crafted a valentine in the form of a film to the Weather Underground. So, perhaps if the Republicans decided to go bomb Ft. Dix and kill members of the military, maybe Redford would embrace them?

BOLLING: Quick thoughts?

TANTAROS: Democrats are not proposing anything that will reverse this three-decade trend of income inequality.

And another thing, if they really want to stop income inequality, besides throwing money at things, they could talk about the cultural issues
-- work your ass off, get married, stop promoting single motherhood. That is a real issue.

But they don't want to talk about that. They just want to throw money at a problem.

BOLLING: Dana, last thought?

PERINO: There are presidents, and I worked for one, who can work across the aisle, even when there's complete opposition to him and to his policies, especially after the recount, which was very divisive for the nation.

Tax cuts, No Child Left Behind, and free trade agreements and FISA off the top of my head, were four that he had to deal with, with a very difficult Congress, but he was able to get them done.

BECKEL: And he got a lot of Democratic votes --

BOLLING: And we're going to have to leave --

PERINO: He did because he worked with them.

BOLLING: We're going to leave it right there.

Next, Hillary Clinton's biggest regret as secretary of state -- wait for it -- Benghazi. More about the -- more on the about-face by the two- faced presidential wannabe, coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GUTFELD: It was pain in a pantsuit. I refer to Hillary Clinton, claiming her biggest regret was the Benghazi terror attack.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: My biggest, you know, regret is what happened in Benghazi. It was a terrible tragedy, losing four Americans, two diplomats and now it's public so I can say two CIA workers. Losing an ambassador like Chris Stevens, who was one of our very best.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUTFELD: The regret is apt. Not only did four Americans die, but the fallout and lack of follow-up makes the White House and especially Hillary look bad.

So, is this regret really about the attack or about how it reflects on her?

I don't know. But cynicism is the only correct response after living among political animals like the Clintons for so long. People who stay married for political purposes, people who appoint pals for political purposes, people who breathe for political purposes. The regret for Benghazi is laudable, but also safe, for it occurs after 2012, an election in which the administration and the media colluded to avoid such unseemly topics, like a poorly defended embassy, or pretending a video is to blame.

Like the IRS story and DOJ, Benghazi was swept under a rug so Obama could win. By the time the election was over, that rug looked like Mt.
Everest.

So, regretting it now is like regretting you lied on your resume after getting that great job. It means little now. And maybe the regret comes from the fact that the story lingers, as a reminder not of incompetence, but injustice, that no matter how Hillary supporters and the media try to Febreze the failures, the faces of the dead still look at you, eyes wide open.

They saw it all, even if the media chose not to.

All right, Dana -- was this admission all about 2016? Is this the start of somehow kind of cauterizing that wound?

PERINO: I don't know her personal motivations. Maybe she does feel that way, but from a political standpoint, what it does for Democrats is for them to be able to say, look, "The New York Times" said it wasn't a problem. She's apologized for it. And we need to move on.

Republicans will be strongly against her, partly because of Benghazi.
Then you'll have independents who will have to look at her comments both at the hearings afterwards and then at this paid speaking event she was attending, and they'll have to decide if it's enough of a character issue for them to vote against her or not.

GUTFELD: Yes. Andrea, do you think there will be any Democratic challenger who will bring it up or will they agree that should not be common --

TANTAROS: If I were running against her, I would most certainly bring it up. I think it would be foolish not to.

And even a step further, Dana, than what you mentioned. I think she's doing this, too, because she knows Republicans will bring it up, so that when they do, she can not just say, like Obama did with his book, oh, I addressed that in the book. She can say -- you're bullying me. I said I regret this. Stop bringing it up, you're unreasonable for bringing it up.

She's very good at crafting things. If you look at the statements, the Clintons -- they have regretted everything, right?

GUTFELD: Yes.

TANTAROS: So many regrets. They've learned so much through the years, so why do they keep making the same mistakes. She said that about Hillary-care.

I don't think she's going to be able to message her way out of this one by simply saying I regret it, only because the manner in which they died, she said, was not relevant. And if she was supposedly friends with Ambassador Stevens, close friends, don't you think she would have been a little less sterile when asked that question? Don't you think she would have at least faked it like she did when she cried in New Hampshire?

She couldn't even muster that. It was just box checking to me.

GUTFELD: Yes. Eric, she also did -- she really didn't admit any faults or mistakes in this. That's the great thing about regret.

BOLLING: Let's deconstruct what happened. So, Hillary Clinton goes out there and says, I regret, my biggest regret was Benghazi over the last two years.

The plan is to make us forget when she said at this point, what difference does it make? Hopefully, she's thinking this is going to, like Andrea points out, she learned this is where they are, stop bullying her.

But the problem is she said something. She said something that's going to haunt her even with that comment. She said it's a terrible tragedy.

Benghazi wasn't a tragedy. A tragedy is when a plane crashes or an earthquake happens and people die.

Benghazi was a terror attack. It was human beings saying we're going to kill you. That's murder. It's not a tragedy.

And if you want to use that, Secretary, Madam Secretary, Senator, knock yourself out, because you calling Benghazi is a tragedy is just as bad as you're saying "what difference does it make" in my book.

GUTFELD: Bob, what's going to have a bigger impact in 2016 -- Benghazi or Christie's bridge-gate?

BECKEL: Neither one of them. She said she regretted it. It's time to move on. I said what I'm going to say.

GUTFELD: That's it?

PERINO: Why do you think she does not say that she regrets blaming the video? Because I actually think that's actually -- if that's what irritated people the most.

GUTFELD: Yes, that's true, because she can't, because --

TANTAROS: And that would actually mean admitting wrongdoing, which is something the Clintons don't do.

PERINO: So weird.

GUTFELD: All right, then.

Next, a feminist mocks motherhood and marriage in a blog post that's outraging a lot of readers on the Internet. Why she says women with husbands and kids are inferior to ones without, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TANTAROS: Well, attention, moms out there.

Feminist blogger Amy Glass doesn't like you. She's got a new post called "I look down on young women with husbands and kids, and I'm not sorry." Quote, "Do people really think a stay at home mom is really on equal footing with a woman who works and takes care of herself? Women secretly like to talk about how hard managing a household is, so they don't have to explain their lack of real accomplishments." She also doesn't think women can be exceptional with a husband and children.

Dana, the blog post that follow her post of people, especially women, are just outraged. So she says, look, she goes, I don't understand why I have to have a shower for someone who had a baby. It's not exactly hard to have a baby or to get married or find a good partner.

I think it's pretty hard to find a good partner, and I think partners are pretty beneficial, don't you?

PERINO: It's becoming harder every day, I think, if you talk to some of the young women that I know, or worked around here, that are trying desperately to find somebody and men, too, who really are looking to find a committed relationship.

I'm not in to judging others for their lifestyle choices. I don't have children. I chose not to. I have a dog, in case anybody hadn't heard.

I don't know how she would feel about me with a husband and a dog, if there's an exception in her world for somebody like me. It does bother me that she has so much time on her hands to judge other people. I mean, if she really wants to channel all this energy to channel this, and you will never have the time, energy, freedom or mobility to be exceptional if you have a husband or kids.

My guess is that she's probably looking for a lot of attention and she likes those blog posts.

TANTAROS: Yes, she does have a history, Greg, of posting pretty controversial things. She says that if you have a man, you can't backpack through Asia by yourself, which I guess she considers more exceptional than giving birth or other things.

GUTFELD: You know who backpacked through Asia alone? Lonely people.
People who just got dumped.

She's a troll, and trolls create outrage on the Internet. By the way, a feminist blogger will never create anything nearly as valuable as what a mother creates, which is -- I mean, think about it. What is -- what would you love more? A blog post about abortion or homemade potato salad?

You can never be hugged by patriarchal metaphors. I think that's what
-- I think this is basically therapy on her part.

TANTAROS: It sounds like it.

Eric, she says, can a woman who stays at home really consider themselves on equal footing as a woman who goes to work. Basically saying that women who stay at home and manage a family aren't really working.
That it's pretty easy.

BOLLING: I'll tell you something that's the hardest job -- by far harder than blogging, Ms. Glass.

On the other side of the coin, so men who have a wife and a child, they have no shot -- they can't compete with single men? Or men who are married without kids? This is so -- I don't know, what's --

GUTFELD: Familiest.

BOLLING: Familiest, it's ridiculous.

My question is, there's no evidence of it. I mean, some of the most successful women in the world are at the top of the corporate ladders are married with children. There's no basis for this other than some blogger's opinion, I guess.

TANTAROS: And she doesn't really, Bob, get into women who do both.
You know, she sort of leaves out these women who -- I don't know, are managing careers and managing their husbands and their families and they are super women. She just seems to think, just have a career. That's the most fulfilling.

BECKEL: It's dumb.

(LAUGHTER)

TANTAROS: You're very concise this evening.

BOLLING: A man of few words.

BECKEL: It's dumb. Go ahead.

TANTAROS: All righty.

BOLLING: All right. Awkward.

TANTAROS: So, how about this? Do you think this is dumb? It's men -
- you can't think this is dumb. This is good.

If men want a healthy wife, according to a new poll, Bob, women are saying men should go out into the work place and work more. That way they're not at home. They argue the more money they bring in makes the woman at home happy, and I guess they get out of their hair.

What do you think about that?

BECKEL: I think they're right.

(LAUGHTER)

TANTAROS: OK.

BECKEL: I think -- yes. I mean, I know the longer I work to stay away from my wife, the happier she was.

TANTAROS: Is there some truth to that, Eric? You work a lot of long hours. You're not able to fight as much if you're not home. You're bringing home the bacon, helping out?

BOLLING: There may be something to that. There's something about, you know, you miss her more. You want to hurry up and get home.

(LAUGHTER)

BOLLING: How am I doing?

PERINO: Bob, are you not buying that?

BECKEL: Oh, man. Come on.

PERINO: I think that it does point to something that Greg brought up earlier, which is the joy you get from working and the feeling of accomplishing something and being productive, that makes the husband happy.
It makes the wife happy, and actually work is something that helps make a marriage successful.

GUTFELD: I said that?

PERINO: Well, not as well.

GUTFELD: I don't remember saying anything that sensible.

No, I think -- from my experience, women who shack up with moody loafers who pretend to be artists always end up being really miserable.
Men like to produce things and women respect men who produce things.
That's why the world works.

PERINO: True.

TANTAROS: Yes, as much as they want men to be men and women to be women, they are.

(CROSSTALK)

TANTAROS: Ahead, a big announcement from "The Five" and what we'll be doing during the State of the Union tonight. We want you to be a part of it. Details when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECKEL: So, State of the Union is tonight. Wide awake on the edge of your seat, and the five of us and Kimberly and Juan will be tweeting during the event. There's only possibly one problem, and that is that I don't know how to tweet, so they've actually got somebody doing it for me.

Dana is asleep by 9 or 9:30, so that means that Jasper is doing it.
Eric doesn't help to elect the president, but he's going to watch so he can dump on him. And Greg will probably dunk on him anyway. And Andrea is going to be just getting back from the wine shop and she'll actually watch it and take some notes.

So what are you all going to do for the tweets tonight? Keep it to a minimum number of words...

PERINO: Well, we are -- it's called FOX News chat. That's the hash tag that everybody can follow. You'll see our very brilliant and insightful insights into this...

BECKEL: The FOX News what?

PERINO: Chat.

BOLLING: Hash tag Foxnewschat.

PERINO: So if you want to follow it -- and if you're not on Twitter, tonight would be a great night to get on Twitter. It's really easy to sign up.

TANTAROS: It's not what you think a hashtag is. You think it's something from, like, the '60s, '70s, or '80s.

BOLLING: You see right there at the top of the screen? So every time you tweet tonight, you put hash tag, which is the pound sign, Foxnewschat, put that at the end of the tweet, and every time someone wants to see what we're talking about or what's going on with FOX News chat...

BECKEL: Well, let me tell you something. We're going to get lots of people coming back. Once I say, you're all going to say, "F" you, Bob, and that will be the end of it.

GUTFELD: Can you put that thing up again? You know what is great when they have the group shots of people? They have us do the group shots.
They never work out. So they take us all separately and put us together.
That is -- those are seven different pictures.

By the way, for my FOX News chat, I'm going to do -- I'm going to tweet nothing but interesting facts about Matthew Fox, the star of "Lost"
and "Party of Five."

TANTAROS: Now will you, to honor Matthew Fox, a notorious nudist, be nude?

PERINO: Good question!

GUTFELD: Well, I have no curtains in my apartment, so yes.

TANTAROS: I'm glad I don't live in your neighborhood.

You know what? I think this is going to be the worst State of the Union ever, but the best tweet chat. And it's going to be hard for me to not go back and watch episodes of "The Following" on DVR with Kevin Bacon.
However, I will use restraint and say that the chat is always better than watching it live...

BECKEL: Yes.

TANTAROS: ... because people have the best comments.

BECKEL: Everybody -- everybody's going to watch it tonight.
Everybody who doesn't like Obama is going to watch it, I'll guarantee it, so they can come back and do it.

But I want to put a challenge out to you tonight. This is a challenge. Send more tweets to "The Five" than have ever been sent to anyplace else, that you possibly can imagine. And if you want to make a few to me, it's fine with me.

"One More Thing" is up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PERINO: Time now for "One More Thing," and Andrea is kicking us off.

TANTAROS: OK. This is what Greg Gutfeld would call the perfect FOX News "One More Thing." Hot girls, football, and the military. Yes, check out this woman. Her name's Alicia Quaco. She's a member of the Seahawks cheerleading squad, so you'll see her on the side lines on Sunday, but she also works full-time for the U.S. Air Force.

BECKEL: Mother of God.

TANTAROS: OK. Bob's mood just exponentially improved. If I knew showing this picture was going to get Bob's mood to improve, I would have shown it a long time ago, about 30 minutes into the show when it took a turn.

Anyway, so she's a hero and she's a cheerleader, and she had to ask the Air Force for permission to audition, and they said yes.

PERINO: I'm so glad she's going to be there, and I'm so sorry that her team is going to lose.

TANTAROS: That's not what the odds say.

PERINO: I know. Computers know nothing.

TANTAROS: Your turn.

GUTFELD: All right. Time for...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUTFELD: I hate these people!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUTFELD: ... that. All right, I don't know if you're aware of this.
There's a new documentary out, a very compelling documentary about Mitt Romney. It's making the rounds. Everybody says it's fantastic.

The people that are talking the most about it are the media, that are so surprised that Mitt Romney is so charming, and that they suddenly love him and think, you know, he might have been a great president. He might have been a great leader, and gosh, he's so funny.

Well, screw you. Where were you? You wouldn't have lifted your finger for this guy, because he was running against your guy. So now that the election is over and it's a year past, now you can sit there and go, "Oh, Mitt, he was so great." Oh, shut up.

PERINO: Well said. I hate those people, too.

GUTFELD: I hate them, too.

PERINO: All right. Eric, you're next.

BOLLING: OK. So while you're watching the State of the Union and tweeting with us tonight, think about this guy's State of the Union, one of them. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RONALD REAGAN, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Four years ago, we said we would invigorate our economy by giving people greater freedom and incentives to take risks and letting them keep more of what they earned. We did what we promised, and a great industrial giant is reborn.

Tonight, we can take pride in 25 straight months of economic growth, the strongest in 34 years. A three-year inflation average of 3.9 percent, the lowest in 17 years. And 7.3 million new jobs in two years, with more of our citizens working than ever before.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TANTAROS: There goes Bob's mood.

BOLLING: That man -- that man reached across the aisle and brought America back to prominence and power. That man was a real leader.

TANTAROS: Think of the Seahawks cheerleader. Think of...

BECKEL: I have nothing to say.

PERINO: You're next. You're next, though. You get to go next.

BECKEL: OK. A real loss. One of the great humanitarians, environmentalists, anti-war people. Somebody I knew and met three or four times, Pete Seeger, has died.

Pete probably single-handedly saved the Hudson River. He brought people to consciousness. He was a great folk singer. He will be missed enormously by anybody with a conscience. And particularly, I hope that the people of West Virginia who polluted that water would remember Pete Seeger and the people who are dying because of him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC: PETE SEEGER'S "THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND")

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUTFELD: I hated that song.

BECKEL: That was Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen singing together before Barack Obama's inauguration. He will be missed.

PERINO: That song will get in your head and never leave. So we'll be singing it tonight when we do the FOX News chat.

All right. Who do you think has the toughest job this week? Anybody in football? Maybe the owners, the coaches, the referees?

TANTAROS: The people who clean up the stadium.

PERINO: It's a guy named Jason -- John Bateman. He's hired by the NFL as the meteorologist, and he has to report every morning about the weather forecast for the game. And you know, it's going to be great. It's going to be about 20 degrees warmer than today, and I think it will be just fine.

OK. That's it for us. FOX's special coverage of the State of the Union begins at 8:55 Eastern tonight. And don't forget, we'll be live tweeting throughout the speech, so join us using hashtag #foxnewschat. We'll be back here tomorrow.

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