Gutfeld on Bernie Sanders' socialist dreams
It's the golden rule of socialism: When asked how it works, focus on the ends and skip the means.
This is a rush transcript from "The Five," February 26, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
GREG GUTFELD, HOST: Hi, I'm Greg Gutfeld with Morgan Ortagus, Juan Williams, Jesse Watters, and an electron is her night-light, Dana Perino. “The Five.”
On CNN, Bernie Sanders was asked if America would ever go socialist.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the president. America will never be a socialist country. Will that hold true if you're elected president?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, I-VT: If I am elected president, we will have a nation in which all people have health care as a right, whether Trump likes it or not. We are going to make public colleges and universities tuition free. We are going to raise the minimum wage to a living wage of at least 15 bucks an hour.
And whether Trump likes it or not, when I talk about human rights, do you know what that also means? It means that our kids and grandchildren have the human right to grow up in a planet that's healthy and habitat.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUTFELD: Clap, clap, clap. All right, it's the golden rule of socialism. When asked about how it works, focus on the ends and skip the means, because in the end, we all want free stuff. Health care, school, cheeseburgers, free anything is awesome especially if you believe that free anything actually exists. It doesn't.
Take the tuition free joke, more than eight million student borrowers have defaulted on their federal loans for higher education. Why is that? Thanks to all that free and easy money from the loans. There's no incentive for colleges to cut admission cost and no reason not to go to college. Education costs triple, debt exploded, now the streets are paved with English majors.
College administrations balloons because the loans inflated the tuition. It looked like it was free but now you're broke. Which means you can't buy cars, goods, or a home because you're busy paying off Uncle Sam. That's how you kill industries. That's socialism. It's a drag on the economy and it's a drag on you.
Still, so many think that if you vote socialist, all your debts are forgiven. If students are debt-free then colleges must be cost-free. Free buildings, free books, free beer, free you, free me. Socialism's talent is getting people like Sanders to lie about free because who doesn't want a free life?
Capitalism, it's such a drag like gravity. It's a downer. But if America's slow death is boring then let's just skip to the finish line, to Venezuela where Maduro detained a reporter for showing video of people eating from a garbage truck. Oh, look, free food. In a socialist paradise, that's what you call a Bernie burger.
Welcome back, Dana. See, I wrote that down there. Welcome back, Dana.
DANA PERINO, HOST: You have to write that down?
GUTFELD: Yes, I'll forgot.
PERINO: You couldn't just speak it from your heart?
GUTFELD: I always think that if somebody is away, that's the first person you should go to.
PERINO: Oh, that's an interesting theory.
GUTFELD: Yes, it is. I want to talk to you about this poll because you like polls.
PERINO: I like polls and charts.
GUTFELD: Let put this poll up here. This poll is very depressing.
PERINO: Yes.
GUTFELD: Fifty six percent of registered voters between 18 to 24 favor mostly socialist economic models.
PERINO: Yep.
GUTFELD: Forty eight percent of voters between 25 to 34 said the same. That's scary and sad. Do you care to comment on that?
PERINO: Well, then 55 and older are like no, we don't want any of that. And I think that's probably -- like we've talked before about having to teach the lesson over and over again about our system and why it works. And the other thing is, is that it shows that you have to take it seriously because one of the things they'll say about that group between 18 and 34 that they saw the financial crisis --
GUTFELD: Yeah.
PERINO: -- that their parents went through. Maybe their parents lost their job or maybe they were graduating around the time of the financial crisis. So the job market was tough. And so, unfortunately, the other thing that you see is that -- I shouldn't say unfortunately, this is just a fact. You know, people who'll say I'm fiscally conservative but socially liberal.
GUTFELD: Right.
PERINO: And you think that there's a lot of those people. If you look on a graph it's actually not true. The most amount of people are in the socially conservative fiscally liberal camp.
GUTFELD: Oh, I don't like those people.
PERINO: Well, a lot of those people are watching.
GUTFELD: I'm kidding. I think.
PERINO: There's a theory that government can do it better. And one thing I'll say about the free college thing, it just shows a real lack of innovation. If you look at somebody like former governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, who's now the president of Purdue University, they knew that they had a problem with school tuition. It's going up. So, how did they figure it out?
They didn't just say give it away for free. They figured out a way to work with employers so that employers that think they want to hire you and your junior -- when you're a junior, they think they want to hire you, they start paying you then. So they helped defray the cost of tuition so that you will then have a job going through, and it's worked really well. But that's an innovative way to do things.
GUTFELD: That's exactly right. That's actually a solution that helps deal with a promise.
PERINO: Right.
GUTFELD: What we see from Bernie and the left, generally, Jesse, it's just the promises.
JESSE WATTERS, HOST: Right. Well, it's typical liberalism. You create a problem and then you swoop in and try to fix it. I'm going to go surface. I'm not going to talk polls or facts. I'm looking at Bernie Sanders here and I'm thinking to myself, this guy lost his fastball.
He seemed rusty to me. His cadence was plotting. Ta-da-ta-da-ta-da. He seems boring. The audience was not electrified. I caught some of this last night, unfortunately. And I have to say something and it's just brutally honest, he is not good-looking enough to be President of the United States.
GUTFELD: Wait a minute.
WATTERS: In the television age, Bernie Sanders --
GUTFELD: This is great.
WATTERS: -- everybody knows it and I'll say it, he's not good-looking enough to be the president. When you have a president, you invite him into your home for four years. You want to be able to look at them, they have to be telegenic. You have to be comfortable with them. Bernie Sanders is just not handsome enough to be the commander-in-chief.
GUTFELD: All right. I predict within 3 minutes you're going to get a text from your mother, and your mother is going to make you apologize to Bernie Sanders.
WATTERS: That could happen at any moment --
GUTFELD: Any moment.
WATTERS: -- but I will say no. If we want to talk about pie-in-the-sky and the deal -- the green new deal that he's pushing, they just ran the numbers on this thing, unbelievable, nearly $100 trillion over ten years, and guess how you pay for it, Juan? The only way you can pay for the green new deal is if you raise everyone's taxes, making over $30,000 a year to 100 percent.
Everybody in America can't make more than $30,000. That's the only way you can pay for this stuff. And he doesn't have a plan besides taxing everybody. Donald Trump does. He wants to grow the middle class. And you look at the news right now, you have Jeep now announcing a new plant in Detroit, 6300 new jobs created, good paying jobs with billions more invested in that great city. And I think the proof is in the pudding.
GUTFELD: The proof is in the pudding, Juan.
JUAN WILLIAMS, HOST: Yeah, I guess that Harley saw the proof, that's why they left. My thinking on this is most Americans agree with Bernie, I mean --
GUTFELD: That's scary.
WILLIAMS: Well, it is -- no, no, it's not scary.
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: No, but I'm just saying, you know, you guys talk about socialism like it's the end of the world. Like people who are Americans who love capitalism, live our society, don't understand what Bernie is talking about. And this is what he said last night, he said -- talking about Democratic socialism, it doesn't mean that the government takes over the means of production or there's no more private property. What it means is that you have protection so that people can, for example, retire with dignity. So that people have security --
GUTFELD: I'm not retiring with dignity.
WILLIAMS: Right. But here's the thing, you know, when Bernie was asked, well, how do you pay for it, because I think that your question. I think that's the heart of it. He said -- he said Amazon, how much taxes do they pay? It's biggest company. Answer, they're not paying -- they pay state and local but they don't pay federal taxes. And you look back --
(CROSSTALK)
MORGAN ORTAGUS, HOST: They pay federal payroll taxes.
WILLIAMS: Right, they don't say federal taxes like we're talking about on income.
GUTFELD: So the solution is always taxes.
WILLIAMS: So -- and then you think about other big companies like G.E. or some of the airlines --
PERINO: What happens if they fail? What happens if these companies go bankrupt?
WILLIAMS: They don't pay taxes --
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: Yet at this table they say, oh, oh, you know what, this is social. Maybe it's -- how about the Trump tax cut?
WATTERS: Juan --
(CROSSTALK)
WATTERS: Amazon is not paying any taxes in New York because the socialists chased them out of New York.
GUTFELD: Morgan? I want to get Morgan in here. It seems to me the solution for everything is taxation, not creation.
ORTAGUS: Yeah, why didn't you think of this before now, Greg?
GUTFELD: I don't know. It just dawned on me.
ORTAGUS: You know -- listen, we can have a whole debate over the economic philosophy over this. It's still --
GUTFELD: All right, let's do it.
ORTAGUS: -- number on the polls. But I think -- you know, what I see going on in the Democrat Party right now, to me there's more sophistication from a policy perspective, unlike a college president election, than there is in this party. I mean, the sort of free stuff that they're advocating, they might as well be advocating for the cheeseburgers that you brought up earlier.
WATTERS: Hmm, Bernie burger.
ORTAGUS: Actually, a cheeseburger sounds good right now.
GUTFELD: If you created a garbage truck and called them Bernie burgers, it will go great.
ORTAGUS: It probably would.
GUTFELD: Yeah.
ORTAGUS: But listen, Bernie raised $10 million, almost 360,000 donors, 5.9 million in one day. The establishment Democrat Party in 2020 is acting exactly like the establishment Republican Party in 2016 in which they said there's no way it could ever be Trump. This isn't going to happen. When you look at the polls, when you look at the money, when you look at the energy, I think it's completely behind Bernie. And this time they can't rig the primary against him like they did --
WATTERS: Did Bernie have a real job before becoming a politician?
GUTFELD: He wrote erotic fiction.
WATTERS: OK.
WILLIAMS: You know what I wanted to say, though, I meant, Dana was saying this thing about the young people, the numbers, and how the young people are more apt to say yes to socialism than the seniors, and I think to myself, boy, that's ironic, isn't it? The seniors get social security, Medicare, V.A. benefits --
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: Oh, is that right?
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: Well, I think those people are the older folks and, guess what, they're the ones who say no. But they're the ones that are benefiting from socialistic --
WATTERS: They're the successful people. They know what life is about.
GUTFELD: All right, President Trump predicting a very tremendous summit with Kim Jong-un. We'll see what happens. The latest from Vietnam, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PERINO: The stage is set for the second nuclear summit between President Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un. The two leaders both arriving in Vietnam and are expected to have dinner before high-stakes meetings this week. President Trump stressing the ultimate goal is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. And, Greg, here's the thing about people being impatient about diplomacy, when you look back to the summits that Reagan had with Gorbachev --
GUTFELD: Right.
PERINO: -- like in the history book, that's on one page --
GUTFELD: Right.
PERINO: -- but it took years to get done. So, this is not like seamless where you dial it up and that diplomacy results --
GUTFELD: That is a good analogy.
PERINO: I didn't even ask permission.
GUTFELD: Yeah. You know -- what?
PERINO: I didn't ask permission --
WATTERS: Permission to make an analogy?
GUTFELD: Oh, no, no, no. I'm thinking about what I'm going to say. I'm sorry.
PERINO: No, I've said I didn't ask permission to use an analogy --
GUTFELD: Oh, permission granted.
PERINO: Thank you.
GUTFELD: Permission granted, OK. They keep using the same old argument which is what are -- obviously, conceding something, all the jokes in the media that Trump is going to give away the farm and all that stuff. What are we conceding when you're just having a conversation?
If you believe having a conversation is a concession, then you are by definition the world's most homicidal hawk because if you can't have a dialogue, then all you can have is war and death because they're ugly, rotten people on this planet that you've got to talk to. And if you remove the dialogue, you've got nothing.
The other narrative is that Trump is just out for positive media. So, if the positive outcome is a dramatic reduction in nuclear threat. But you don't like it because it's positive for Trump? You're a loser.
It's got to suck to be in the media and be the bad guy in the movie, like to be the bystander rooting for the guy that supposed to beat the karate kid. You know, you're the person in the movie that it's routing on the bad person. You're rooting against Rocky, essentially. And even if there's good news, it hurts you because that means the person you don't like won. How petty and destructive.
PERINO: Morgan --
WATTERS: I like how you have compared Trump to Rocky, and you compared Trump to Reagan. This segment is off to a great start.
(LAUGHTER)
GUTFELD: Read your montage.
PERINO: Is that what you think I did?
WATTERS: Oh, yes. And my mom actually did text and she said one word, Jesse, evacuate.
PERINO: In all caps.
WATTERS: All caps.
PERINO: It's in all caps. Morgan, let me ask you about this question because Greg brings this up, there's skepticism and you even see the unnamed White House sources are saying that Steve Begin who is the envoy is going to give too much away.
As if President Trump doesn't know what's happening, then they're going to pull the wall over his eyes. I had something on The Daily Briefing that things that's not true and not the case. And I know you're just at the Munich Security Conference and I'm curious if any of this came up.
ORTAGUS: We weren't really talking North Korea. The security conference - - the conversation was on China, which is really for the first time that that had happened because it would have been Russia and everything else.
So, I think what's really fascinating is the pivot to Asia that President Obama talked about that he wanted to do for so many years. We've really now seen that come full force in American foreign policy because we're simultaneously negotiating with one of the world's nuclear powers, North Korea, while we're negotiating with the Chinese.
So, it's just like from my like nerdy geopolitical perspective it's one of the most fascinating times in history. I think what we have -- what we've seen is that the status quo as it relates to North Korea was untenable. What President Trump when he -- inherited when he came into office.
And so, I totally, 1000 percent, concur with your point about diplomacy taking time. I don't think that we're going to get some sort of huge expectations out of this summit, but it's about building trust. It's about building relationship -- a relationship to get some of these key wins. I think that's the path we're headed on.
PERINO: Juan, do you have a historical perspective on that because you're working -- I think at the Washington Post at the time during the end of the Cold War.
WILLIAMS: Sure. But I mean -- so the big difference there is obviously Reagan and Gorbachev, and then George H.W. Bush. But the difference is that you have a sense of what Americans were willing to give and do to get something from Gorbachev. And here we just don't know, and I think that's what opens the door to people saying, oh, so we're going to end the war? You know, are we going to say the Korean War is over? Are we going --
ORTAGUS: I think we may. I think that's possible.
WILLIAMS: Well, that's OK. See, but we don't know, Morgan.
PERINO: But is that OK?
WILLIAMS: We're going to -- no, it wouldn't be OK, because then that has ramifications, Dana. For example, is that mean --
GUTFELD: You are a hawk.
WILLIAMS: -- pull back military. Do we pull back our military? We have like 28,000 people right there. So what does it mean? What does it mean if we say, oh, we're going to put a diplomatic liaison office in North Korea? Again, we don't know. And Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State and others are saying, well, we're not sure. We just want to have a conversation.
Wait a second, why are we giving this guy, Kim Jong-un who is a global threat such an amazing platform, time with the President of the United States, at a time when the president is hungry for a victory. The question is what is -- doing?
GUTFELD: You are so rooting for failure. How can we talk to this man? That's the only way you can do is talking to them. And number two, hungry for a victory? So what? Be happy, get the victory.
WILLIAMS: So, Gina Haspel at CIA, Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence whose job apparently --
GUTFELD: They're the bad cops.
WILLIAMS: -- were saying something -- oh, if being honest now means you're being a nattering nabob of negativism. Oh, my God.
(CROSSTALK)
WATTERS: I just think he's hungry for a victory for the American people and that's peace. That's what he's hungry for, peace. So, you know, you can talk all the trash you want. I found very interesting --
PERINO: Yes.
WATTERS: -- that the biggest news so far out of this summit, which hasn't even happened yet, is that Kim booted all the press out of the hotel, and the press is angry, Dana.
PERINO: I would be, too.
WATTERS: The press has never been more angry. Now they finally realized that Kim is worse than Trump. Trump would never kick these people out of the hotel. He'll let them stay.
PERINO: That's true. That's like a benefit to it. It would be a bummer to be kicked out of your hotel because he was unhappy --
GUTFELD: Oh, it happened to me many times.
WATTERS: Oh, you have to re-pack your bags?
PERINO: Oh, that's a lot of packing, by the way. All right, we've got a go. Democrats trying to --
WILLIAMS: Wait a second, Dana. Don't you think the funniest sight, though, but the press --
PERINO: Megan is going to yell at me.
WILLIAMS: -- was Hannity -- Hannity on a motorcycle going through Hanoi.
PERINO: We've got to go. OK, Democrats trying to block President Trump's emergency declaration. The latest battle over the border wall next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WATTERS: A live look at Capitol Hill where House Democrats are trying to stop President Trump from building his border wall. Lawmakers would be voting soon on a resolution to block Trump's national emergency declaration. The president says he will veto it if it clears both chambers of Congress. Nancy Pelosi claiming the move to resist Trump is all about patriotism.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF., HOUSE SPEAKER: This isn't about the border. This is about the Constitution of the United States. This is not about politics. It's not about partisanship. It's about patriotism. We would be delinquent in our duties if we did not resist, if we did not fight back, and to overturn the president's declaration.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Well, in my opinion, protecting the sovereignty of the country is patriotic, Nancy, but it's neither here nor there. We're in a first name basis. So Nancy Pelosi actually supported President Obama's executive authority to do DACA, which was people are making a similar comparison. Does she -- she should -- we charge her with hypocrisy.
PERINO: You could a little bit, though I think there's a distinction here and that is the money.
WILLIAMS: Thank you.
PERINO: You're welcome, Juan.
(LAUGHTER)
PERINO: I think that you -- I think as Republicans, I don't think there's any disagreement that the president is absolutely right on needing strong border security.
But I do think that the way the constitution is written is that congress does the money and you can't just go around and say, well, I need a national emergency. And I can see why there are some Republicans like Thom Tillis who have said just based on principle I'm going to have to vote against the president on this, not because he doesn't think border security is critical, and because he didn't actually come on shows and talked about how important it was.
It's just not the same type of national security emergency because on DACA, for as wrong that that was, I think, for going around the congress, it wasn't actually asking for money. It was just changing the policy.
WATTERS: True. I think a lot of people say, Juan, fairly, you know President Bush explored his executive authority when it came to surveillance and things like that after 9/11. Obama explored his executive powers on immigration. This is just President Trump trying to expand or explore the limits of his executive authority.
WILLIAMS: No --
WATTERS: And he'll be checked by courts or Congress.
WILLIAMS: Well, in fact, I think that Mitch McConnell, the senate majority leader, will make that argument to fellow Republicans to try to hold Republicans in line. To say, listen, this doesn't matter. It's going to be decided in the courts.
So why would we, you know, antagonize either the president or divide our ranks here on Capitol Hill. But what you see is that Republicans are saying on the Capitol Hill, not the Trumpian popular because the popular support is there for Trump in terms of his base. But in terms of Republicans on Capitol Hill, they're saying, you know what?
So you get a Democrat and the Democrats declare a national emergency over guns, or over climate change, etcetera, and we don't want this president, including Mitch McConnell, you know. So you get people who are saying there's real consequences to his behavior. It's extraconstitutional. Dana was saying, you are literally saying to Congress who has budget authority, I'm going around you.
WATTERS: That would be scary if the Democratic president declared a national emergency on guns, Morgan, and starting taking peoples weapons. That would be a revolution.
PERINO: That would be an emergency.
WATTERS: That would be an emergency. That's a real emergency.
GUTFELD: It would be a war.
ORTAGUS: Yeah. I can sort of -- I can understand where the administration gets frustrated with congressional Republicans here because they seem to be more worried about the constitutionality of his actions and actually giving him the wall in the first place, similar to repealing and replacing Obamacare.
You know, Lindsey Graham just tweeted right before we came on the show that Vice President Pence said today that in 2014, Obama declared a national emergency for 120,000 miners that were interdicted at the border. We had 120,000 or over that already in just this fiscal year.
So you can argue whether it's humanitarian crisis, whether it's a national emergency, but Democrats, as the senator pointed out, has spent billions of dollars working on the crisis at the border. But what's happened here is anything that Trump is for that they're against.
Trump is for capitalism. We're for socialism. Trump is for a free democracy in Venezuela. We're for a dictator. We're for Maduro. You know, we've just heard earlier, you know, as it relates to North Korea, Trump is trying to peace -- potentially peace deal in North Korea, we're suddenly become war hawks and support a more aggressive stance on North Korea. So it's just opposite day.
WILLIAMS: No, I think people just don't want us to get run over, Morgan. People don't want it just because Trump's ego says I need a win --
ORTAGUS: Are you talking about North Korea?
WILLIAMS: But here's the thing, here's the thing, Morgan, you have 58 former national security officials -
ORTAGUS: Juan, who were all for President Obama, never Trump.
WILLIAMS: No, but they're saying -- they're saying there is no emergency - - I mean, at this moment do we see a caravan running over?
GUTFELD: That's a great point because just three months ago all those Democrats were screaming about a humanitarian crisis because there were caravans running over. Then like a few months later, two dead children and they're like, oh, don't worry about the two dead kids. We don't care about the caravans because we don't have the visual anymore.
We don't have the visuals so once Trump is talking about a humanitarian crisis, it doesn't matter to them, they don't even - these are the people that were screaming about a process who then don't give a damn about two dead kids because they no longer -
WILLIAMS: I got to say this, you know what? There was supposed to be a caravan filled with people who were diseased, filled with terrorists, MS- 13.
GUTFELD: Two died, but two died Juan.
WILLIAMS: When it doesn't happen--
GUTFELD: You just proved my point. Two people died and you don't care now.
WILLIAMS: Shouting and rhetoric is not going to - that's why you get sick--
GUTFELD: You ran out of your crisis.
WILLIAMS: No, because - it's not me, Greg.
GUTFELD: Yes, it is. You're the one that shouted crisis and then you stopped shouting when it wasn't politically viable.
WILLIAMS: I think there's only one person shouting at the table but six--
WATTERS: You want to declare National emergency on the lives. We are shutting Juan down. All right, pull Juan's funding. Sore loser Democrats are trying to change the rules to beat Trump in 2020. Find out what they're up to next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WILLIAMS: It's an issue Democrats have been talking about since the 2016 election.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN, D-MASS.: Nearly 3 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton than for Donald Trump. That is not exactly the sign of a healthy democracy. Democracy hangs on the idea that whoever gets the most votes, wins.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, I-VT: We might want to take a look at the whole electoral college in which case is seating a man for President who did not get the most votes.
HILLARY CLINTON, D-FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So I think it needs to be eliminated. I'd like to see us move beyond it, yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAMS: Colorado now set to join 11 other states and Washington DC to by- pass the electoral college, the plan calls for the popular vote to determine the winner of national elections. The idea still needs more support to become fully you know, affective but it's gaining momentum.
So you get a situation Jesse where people look at it and they say, gosh you know, it's no longer one man, one vote, if in fact the electoral college is carrying the day. What do you think?
WATTERS: If I ran into the electoral college at a bar, I'd buy the electoral college a drink and then I would grab the electoral college by the face and I would plant a big fat kiss on the electoral college's mouth because without the electoral college, we would have President Gore and President Hillary Clinton.
So it's probably my favorite part of this Republic. Republic actually we are, we are not a Democracy, not a mob rule, a Republic. I think the primers had it right and you know, for people in Wyoming, I think it's also very important.
WILLIAMS: By the way, didn't Trump though say, he'd rather have a popular vote.
WATTERS: He could have campaigned in California.
WILLIAMS: Oh I see so Morgan, you get a situation where people say, Hey, you know what, the electoral college was set up to appease the slave holding states in the South. And so what we have now is a moderate situation where you have the concentration of populations on the coast and you get a state like Wyoming, gets two senators for half a million people.
California, 33 million people, they also get just two senators.
ORTAGUS: Are you saying the electoral college is racist?
GUTFELD: I knew it.
WILLIAMS: I didn't say it was racist.
GUTFELD: Standing ovation to Juan. He made it into a race argument.
PERINO: No, there is - there are people who believe that and Jarret Stepman of the Heritage Foundation, I had him on Monday to talk about this because I am from Wyoming and Colorado.
GUTFELD: Racist.
PERINO: I think that this is terrible. If you go to Jarret Stepman's page, he'll explain that whole thing to you. The founding fathers said okay, that these states are going to have the rights that others have, that's how it was set up and the thing is just because as our country grew, more people decided to move to California than to Wyoming, doesn't mean that people should just get to choose to change the constitution without actually having to go through a process in a constitutional convention.
And why would Colorado, I'm just asking you guys honestly, I know they got a new governor. He's going to sign this bill. Why would you give away your power as a state, why would you do that? What about - what if what if there is like major election fraud in North Carolina, for example? Are you going to tie your vote to North Carolina if there's major election fraud?
Like why would you do this? I think it's a terrible idea.
WILLIAMS: Well, as a counter argument would be that it distorts and gives disproportionate power to a very small group of people.
PERINO: Well, I should let somebody else comment.
GUTFELD: Why don't you go ahead.
ORTAGUS: This is nothing more than just people being unable to accept the outcome of the upcoming election, full stop, that's what it is. It's about red states versus blue states and it's also about small states versus big states. States that aren't as populated so if you can't win the electoral college, the next thing to do is to try to change the laws or change the constitution so you can win the next time.
I have a better idea how about just win an election by campaigning via the electoral college, go to Wisconsin, go to Michigan, go to places that you didn't want to show up to because you took them for advantage and win an election the old fashioned way.
I think if we want to change the constitution, the process as Dana just laid out, is a constitutional amendment, not these silly state laws because bitter liberals can't accept it.
PERINO: And I hope someone challenges them and takes them to court because I think they will lose and this will be the end of it.
ORTAGUS: They will.
WILLIAMS: But I think it's an anachronistic law and you certainly have seen changes like allowing women to vote, that's the change.
GUTFELD: No, but it's essentially big states versus - it's bullying. You want to bully the small states but I'm for it. You know what else we should do, we should look at football, change it so that the team with the most yards, not points and no, don't even score the game at all.
Just see how many people show up at the game and those who have the most people at the game win and then you don't even have to have the game or you could have the game but don't score but it has nothing to do with excellence or competence, just who shows up.
That is, it is, it's because they lost.
WILLIAMS: Oh yes and so for governors and in states now, we should change the law so it's no longer who gets the most votes.
GUTFELD: I just think it's great that you're for voter suppression.
WILLIAMS: I'm not - I'm for sense and logic and I can see you're opposed to it.
GUTFELD: Yes.
WILLIAMS: All right, we're going to be right back and we're going to have a look at those 200 passengers who were stranded on a train since Sunday. What the heck happened? The details next right here on THE FIVE.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ORTAGUS: Talk about a travel nightmare. Nearly 200 passengers stuck on an Amtrak train for almost two days, this is my nightmare. It all happened when their train headed from Seattle to Los Angeles hit a fallen tree on the tracks, stranding everyone on board for over 36 hours. Rescuers weren't able to reach them because of the deep snow.
Video shows people sleeping, playing games and even playing musical instruments to pass the time. The train is now back at the station in Eugene, Oregon but it took hours because they could only move at two miles per hour. Thankfully no one was injured.
Juan, you and I are Amtrak warriors. We're on multiple times a week. This really freaks me out. I think I'm going to have a nightmare about it. What would you do if this happened to you?
WILLIAMS: Well, I think it would be you know, you eat, you hopefully the cell phone can - you brought a charger with you so you can talk to people and tell them how miserable you are but I just think, you know, the reality here is to me, why don't they let people off?
ORTAGUS: Because of the snow.
WILLIAMS: Well, it's not really the snow. They said it was dangerous, they didn't know what wires might be exposed, trees were down but I just want some personal freedom, Morgan. I just like to move about and they don't seem to care, airplanes are the worst.
I'm telling you, you get stuck on a tarmac, they will not take you back to the gate, they will not give your personal freedom. At least, Amtrak gave these folks, free food. The airlines don't do that.
ORTAGUS: So Greg, it sat for hours and then after it finally started moving, it was only like two miles per hour. I feel like you might have actually gone insane if that happened.
GUTFELD: Yes you know, I'm not one of the - you know in movies where there are guys that are heroes and then there are guys that have to be slapped by the hero. I'm the guy that they slap like come to your senses man. You got to help your wife here. It's like - so I'm that person.
This is why you always bring snacks, some booze and some medication. The question is do you share? And this is a bad time. I maintain to be a noisy eater, all right? Because you don't want people to know you've got a bag of Doritos or you're traveling with a something--
WATTERS: That's crinkling and all the eyes go to you.
GUTFELD: Yes, immediately you're like a wanted man, all right. So you've got to make sure you get soft foods, tasty food, you don't want to have any food with a recognizable odor. Dana, like fish. You don't want to bring sardines, you don't want to have crunchy food like lobster.
PERINO: Got it. Let me make a list.
GUTFELD: Yes, you got to have something, you got to have maybe some baby food jar and you could scoop it up. Peanut butter is good but you don't - because the thing is--
PERINO: I travel with peanut butter.
GUTFELD: - every summer when my parents, we would drive to Lake Tahoe, my dad would tell me the story of the Donner party because you know, let's go to Donner pass, right? It's very interesting you know, when they eat each other, they like cut each other up and put each other in packages and then mix the packages up so you didn't know who you were eating.
WILLIAMS: You mean like if I covered Jesse with ketchup.
GUTFELD: Yes but you would never know it's Jesse because - let's say Jesse is the one we eat. You cut him all up--
WATTERS: Tastes good.
GUTFELD: - and you put him in packaging with let's say one of the cameramen so you don't know if you're eating Jesse or the camera man.
WILLIAMS: No, no, I would know because Jesse would be crunchy.
GUTFELD: No, you would just find a lot of red meat.
WILLIAMS: There we go.
GUTFELD: Talk about eating our co-hosts.
PERINO: Could I quote Scott Adams?
GUTFELD: Yes.
PERINO: I would like to quote Scott Adams. So there was a tweet that he did the other day that just caught my eye and made me laugh so hard. At Donner pass, there was a huge snowstorm and all of these cars were stuck and they couldn't go anywhere and he tweeted, I hope they brought a lot of sandwiches.
I thought that was so funny.
GUTFELD: You know Donner party was the story that every kid grew up with and if you lived - if you went to Lake Tahoe. They told you that story every time you had to go to Donner pass because it was is - if you have never heard the story you've got to.
PERINO: What's the book?
WILLIAMS: I don't remember the title but it was a great book. I read the book and I didn't grow up in the west coast.
GUTFELD: They didn't anticipate how long it was going to take to get from A to B across the country and then a snow storm hit and then they end up - they all kept journals and they ate other.
PERINO: They didn't eat - it took them a while to get to eating each other.
GUTFELD: Yes. But then one of the survivors opened a restaurant.
ORTAGUS: So Jesse, I thought this segment could have gone a lot of places but I didn't think we'd be eating each other by the end of it. The Amtrak VP said that refunds and other compensation will be provided. What do you think should be in that compensation package?
WATTERS: Just a lot of cash, straight cash, that's all they need. It's the difference between the east coast and the west coast. On the west coast when a train get stranded, they play guitar and they give each other massages. If this happens in New Jersey or New York, knives get stuck in other passengers.
Also what I would do, I would buy the bar car, I'd buy the whole bar car out and then I'd wait a few days when people got really hungry and then I price gouge. Also you make friends with the conductor, okay? Because you want to establish the rapport with the authority.
So if there is ever a struggle, he's going to let you out first. Also you steal the toilet paper, that's the first thing you do.
PERINO: Absolutely.
WATTERS: And then you also want to identify an enemy because people will rally around each other when you can identify a crazy person so you'll feel less stressed out when you can point to someone like that's the bad guy, that's the lunatic, probably you.
That's the guy that's hoarding, that's screaming, that's yelling and it's us against him.
PERINO: And you kick him out of the train.
WATTERS: Yes, you kick him out and that's you know, distracts people.
ORTAGUS: This is why I travel with so much crap like I've got a purse, this big. I've got peanut butter in my purse, a hand sanitizer. Literally--
GUTFELD: That's got alcohol in it.
PERINO: You eat hand sanitizer?
ORTAGUS: No.
GUTFELD: Yes when it comes down to it, you can barter with hand sanitizer.
PERINO: That's the only food you take?
ORTAGUS: I take like protein bars and I always have peanut butter in there and I have like I have everything. I have those like hand wipes.
WATTERS: You know what people are going to start eating after a while, the Bernie burgers.
GUTFELD: Yes exactly. Some of the things that get thrown away become like delicacy.
WATTERS: That's your entr,e.
WILLIAMS: The one thing you said in your terrible vision of America there that we're all each other's throats, is the toilet paper.
ORTAGUS: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Because I think bathrooms -
GUTFELD: You talking Venezuela.
WILLIAMS: - bathrooms are going to go out of control pretty quick.
WATTERS: This train is a microcosm under Bernie Sanders.
GUTFELD: No, it is. This is - we're talking about Venezuela. Everything's fine at resources.
WATTERS: Yes, train still works, the snow is causing everybody to--
ORTAGUS: You're eating out of the garbage.
WILLIAMS: I thought when you opened the restaurant afterwards though, it would be a vegan restaurant.
WATTERS: Me?
WILLIAMS: Yes, that's what I thought.
WATTERS: I'm not Cory Booker.
WILLIAMS: That's what I thought you know that you and Cory and the gang would be--
WATTERS: Like you said, red meat.
WILLIAMS: You're a hipster millennial dude.
WATTERS: I am? I am younger than you are.
ORTAGUS: Well, on this enlightening conversation one more thing is up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GUTFELD: One more thing, Dana.
PERINO: So on New year's eve, a tradition on “The Five” is we make predictions and I've had a very good track record but already I'm down too because I said Brady was going to retire, not happening and I said the rams are going to win it all, not happening.
But I did make this other prediction, watch this. ‘Free Solo' is going to win the documentary of the year at the Oscars.
Guess what? It did, ‘Free Solo' is a great movie if you haven't seen, it is about Alex Honnold, his quest of free climb of El Capitan which is in Yosemite National park. It's 3000 feet tall and it was amazing.
I got to go into the premier and I just knew when I saw it, it was going to win so congratulations to all of them. I know the producer and director and a lovely couple.
WILLIAMS: So I went to talk to a guy at National Geographic, Garry Neal who is the President and he said, I was watching “The Five” when Dana mentioned ‘Free Sole' and Juan, you said you didn't know what it was about. You got to go see it.
So I went to the air and space museum where they have the big screen. It was impressive, awesome.
PERINO: Yes, good movie, good movie, everybody should see it.
GUTFELD: ‘Free Solo' describes my Saturday nights. All right, Juan.
WILLIAMS: So you're turning 100 years old, everyone's asking you, what do you want for your big birthday.
Well, Joe Cuba in Wichita Falls, Texas has the answer. He wants birthday cards, 100, yes. One for each year of his century long life and guess what happened, folks?
Since he made his appeal, people across the USA have sent him thousands of cards.
PERINO: That's great.
WILLIAMS: His birthday is March 2nd, see the mail service people with those large bundles, those are all cards for the World War II veteran. If you want to send him one, please do. I think it to be a wonderful act of kindness. The address is 918, Midwestern Parkway in Wichita Falls, Texas 76302 and from all of us here at ‘The Five,' Happy Birthday Joe.
PERINO: Happy Birthday.
GUTFELD: All those cards, what does that do to climate change?
PERINO: I don't know.
WATTERS: I don't know.
GUTFELD: AOC, tell us what to do. All right, it's time for this. Greg's parenting tips. You know when you got a crying baby and we all have had crying babies in the past. I like put on a costume that makes me look like a dog.
And then when the baby cries, I just wait for the right moment and I get up there and I stop the baby from crying. Of course, you need a good dog costume that costs me a lot of money or actually artificial dog. I don't use real dog in my costumes.
PERINO: I thought that you would say that you thought that dog was going to eat the baby.
GUTFELD: Well, in my dreams.
PERINO: Yes.
GUTFELD: We've got enough human eating. You know, Dana, saying things like that does not help me. Doesn't help my brand. Jesse.
WATTERS: Oh your brand, don't get me started. All right, Milwaukee Bucks game, I think it was a halftime show. You think, you can dance check this guy out. Look at this guy go.
PERINO: Wow.
WILLIAMS: Look at that.
WATTERS: I mean, look at him, you don't think you can move like this and wow, look at that. Doing the backwords worm and all.
PERINO: Wow.
WATTERS: You did not see this coming.
PERINO: Did he get a prize. Oh, he's a fan of Bucks? Oh my gosh, we're a fan of you.
WATTERS: We love this guy.
GUTFELD: You know why we like him?
PERINO: Why?
GUTFELD: Because of that size, him moving that quickly, let's be honest here okay?
PERINO: Oh, he's awesome.
WATTERS: I don't see size, Greg.
GUTFELD: Oh, I do all the time.
WATTERS: I see rhythm.
PERINO: Thanks for watching dance man.
GUTFELD: Morgan.
ORTAGUS: All right, so some say if you've been to one engagement party, you've been to them all but something tells me, this one would be hard to forget. Listen to this.
WATTERS: What's going on? What happened. Taylor Swift?
ORTAGUS: Yes.
WATTERS: Who's that.
ORTAGUS: So that--
GUTFELD: Explain it Morgan.
ORTAGUS: It's Taylor Swift, she traveled to LA to surprise one of her super fans at an engagement party. He had emailed and asked for her to come sing and she showed up. She performed her 2017 ballad, ‘King of my heart.' The surprise was organized by Alex for his fiancé Ross Girard and he said, I'll never be over this, nothing in life feels real.
WATTERS: By the way, I'd like to issue a correction on my ‘One more thing.' The big guy dancing in the video that I just showed from the Milwaukee bucks, not a fan.
PERINO: He was a fan at the game.
WATTERS: He was just a fan.
PERINO: But maybe he could also be a fan of “The Five,” I hope he's a fan.
WILLIAMS: Now he's a fan of “The Five.”
PERINO: Yes.
ORTAGUS: That's true.
WILLIAMS: There you go.
GUTFELD: All right. Well, who was that lady? Taylor what?
ORTAGUS: Swift.
WILLIAMS: I thought that was terrific.
GUTFELD: Set your DVRs. Never miss an episode of “The Five.”
"Special Report" up next. Hey, Bret.
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