Celebrities, pundits walk back attacks on Covington Catholic students

close

Video

Celebrities, pundits walk back attacks on Covington Catholic students

High school students face threats following confrontation with Native American activist at Lincoln Memorial; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," January 22, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

DANA PERINO, HOST:  Hello, everyone.  I'm Dana Perino along with Jedediah Bila, Juan Williams, Jesse Watters, and Greg Gutfeld.  It's 5 o'clock in New York City, and this is “The Five.”

The Kentucky high school whose students are at the center of a video controversy is closed today due to safety concerns.  Local authorities are also now investigating threats made against some of the Covington Catholic high students after video shows an encounter with a Native American man in Washington.  A chaperone, who was on the trip, says students were targeted for wearing MAGA hats and describes what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JILL HAMILL, COVINGTON CATHOLIC CHAPERONE:  I think that was one of the reasons they were targeted, and I think they were also targeted for what they stood for, which is Christianity, the right for life.  We were standing there and we looked, and all of a sudden, they turned their attention to our group and they were screaming horrible, horrible things that I will not repeat to our children, two children, not adults.  They were screaming them at children.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PERINO:  Two Covington students are describing some of the apparent threats.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  There've been many threats against our lives, against our parents.  Some of these threats include that we should all be locked in the school and it should be burned to the ground, the school being bombed, school shooting threats.  It's really scary.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PERINO:  And Nathan Phillips, the Native American activist, saying he is willing to meet with the students.  So we'll see if that happens.  Jesse, I want to take a listen to an exchange on The View today, which kind of encapsulated the whole argument.  Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WHOOPI GOLDBERG, THE VIEW HOST:  Isn't that we just instantly say that's what it is based on what we see in that moment And then have to walk stuff back when it turns out we're wrong?  Why is that -- why is do we keep making the same mistake?

JOY BEHAR, THE VIEW HOST:  Because we're desperate to get Trump out of office.  I think that that's the reason.  I think the press jumps the gun a lot because we've just -- we have so much circumstantial evidence against this guy that we basically are hoping that, you know, Cohen got the goods and what have you.  And so, it's wishful thinking.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PERINO:  There you have it.

JESSE WATTERS, HOST:  I've always said that show is filled with a lot of wisdom.

(LAUGHTER)

WATTERS:  What?

PERINO:  Well, you might have a book one day --

WATTERS:  Perhaps.

PERINO: -- and then you might get invited to be on The View.  But that was
-- she was saying what was on her mind, and maybe that is what happened.

WATTERS:  It's true.  I think the media tried to Kavanaugh these teenagers, and it's really inspired the rest of the country because you see this injustice and they've turn these kids into folk heroes at this point just because of a face crime.

The guy made a face and stood there and did what all adults tell young people to do at this moment, not throw a punch, not yell, not do anything.  
He just stood there like this and that was the crime.  And this is a great lesson.

Now, whenever you see a story in the media and everybody starts to pile on, step back, think about the Covington boys and just wait until the facts comes out.  Some people are learning their lessons and other people aren't.  
I think some left-wing person went to a high school basketball photo and the guys were going like this and they said that's a white power symbol.  
No, that means someone just hit a three-pointer.  Everybody knows that that watches basketball.

So, we learned from Parkland.  Children are off limits.  I thought that's what was supposed to be the lesson.  And now, you have a situation where the hat was offensive, the smirk was offensive, and this is coming from the same people that were yelling and chasing people and their families out of restaurants.

So it doesn't really equate right there.  And you've mentioned the Indian at the top.  He was not a Vietnam veteran and that came out.  The New York Times had to clarify.  He served during the Vietnam era.

PERINO:  It was the Washington Post I think that did that.

WATTERS:  And the Times.  They're all correcting the story.

PERINO:  Because you read all these papers all day long.  And so --

WATTERS:  That's on my desk.

PERINO: -- that's how you know.  Greg, David Brooks wrote a piece today talking about how destroy lives today, and when the story first broke on Twitter everyone was like, oh, OK, so they must be racist.  And then the next day it's like, oh, liberals must all be bad because they thought they were racist, and then it was just -- basically, all of our biases coming out in one story.

GREG GUTFELD, HOST:  Who's David Brooks?

PERINO:  He's a columnist for the New York Times that Jesse read earlier.

WATTERS:  My mother's favorite author --

(CROSSTALK)

GUTFELD:  There are people -- there are people who -- even with the new information are clinging to this like a life preserver.  For example, actor, has-been, Jim Carrey, this is his latest painting in which, obviously, he's demonizing these teenagers.  I have to hand it to him that now his pictures are as bad as his pictures.

Anyway, reality -- right now what you're having is reality is crashing down.  This was a left-wing fantasy.  You have the perfect villains, right?  
With MAGA hats, white kids --

PERINO:  Catholic.

GUTFELD:  Yet, the perfect -- Catholic, a pro-life -- perfect.  Perfect law and order suspects, right?  You know, they just needed to have super rich parents who are architects.  And then you had the perfect victim, Native American, Vietnam vet who is isolated.

So what happens with a story like that, it's too good to check.  Between this story and the BuzzFeed story, the media is in worse shape than my liver after spring break.  I don't know how you're going to come back from this.  It's so bad.

Can I make one last point and then I'll shut up?  This is a lot about the nature of social media.  We don't understand how to use social media yet.  
The death threats, for example, are because there's a low barrier of entry for death threats.  It used to be if you wanted to make a death threat, you had to call, take a risk, somebody trace your call.  Now anybody -- you've got 300 -- what, 50 million people -- how many million, 250 million people on the Internet?  At least 1 percent of them are psychopaths, and so they can make -- they can make death threats.

PERINO:  Two billion people on Facebook.

GUTFELD:  Yes.  So it's like -- it's -- I think we do not know how to deal with this massive behemoth.  Is that how you say it?

WATTERS:  Behemoth.

GUTFELD:  Behemoth.  Thank you.  And it also makes people lesser versions of themselves because we don't have -- we don't have eye contact.  We can't read each other.  So I can demonize you and you can demonize me and I can say, hey, I made a mistake.  And you can say that's not good enough.

PERINO:  And if it is something that supports your tribe or whatever your bias is, then it makes you feel better.  But so, here's a question, Jedediah, everyone hates social media, but no one is getting off it.  And is that because we're afraid we're going to miss something or because we're afraid were not going to be able to police the other side or because we think that it's good for our own -- you know, it's where we belong now?

JEDEDIAH BILA, HOST:  I think it's a little bit of everything.  
We're addicted to it.  We're addicted to the rush.

PERINO:  Do not disturb.

BILA:  Hashtag do not disturb.  We're addicted to it.  We're used to being there.  We feel like if we're not there and everybody else is there we're missing something.  We feel like we needed to promote the brand.  We feel -
- and a lot of people out there who don't have a microphone, we're lucky enough to sit here and have a microphone on television to say how we feel.

Many people feel like, well, you know what, I don't work in television.  
This is my way to get my opinion out.  Everyone kind of feels like a TV 
star out there.  They get to say their piece.  They get retweeted.   They 
get it out there.  For all you know, somebody with a big microphone will pick that up.  And now, all of a sudden, they become famous.

In this debate, though, I have to say I appreciate the Joy Behars of the world because they are bluntly honest.  She's willing to say what a lot of people in media won't say, which is that there's a mission to bring down President Trump at all costs and they're willing to do that whether the information is true or not.

And that if they see an opportunity to paint somebody with a Make America Great Again hat or at a pro-life rally, or whatever the circumstance allows, if they have the opportunity to paint them as bigoted or racist or whatever needs to be and tie them to Trump, they're going to do it.  So, I appreciate that.

You need people like that because so many of people in media, like Greg said before, they're sticking to their argument but they're not telling you why.  They're not being honest about this.  This is a mission to take down the president.  They're just saying, oh, no, we're right, these kids really are racist and fishing, they're fishing for something in their past that might indicate that.

You have to be grateful for the people on the left that are telling you exactly why they're doing it and what they're doing.  And you know, you have the facts then.  You know what you're rallying against.

PERINO:  And then it also, Juan, comes to just how we get our news and the way that news outlets sometimes pay their reporters, which is, you know, clicks, you're measured on how many times there's a website click to your story, does that contribute to this?

JUAN WILLIAMS, HOST:  I imagine it does.  I think this is a bigger story about social media.  I think we're all getting played badly by the story because -- I mean, there's more video and more video, but we only see portions of the video.  I mean, there's a new video out that says these two young women said these high school kids --

PERINO:  We have that, actually.  This is a video that says that these women said that they were being harassed by some of these students beforehand.  And we have to pull up?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(PEOPLE SHOUTING)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  MAGA, I'm so tired already.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PERINO:  Yes.  So that --

WILLIAMS:  So this is -- now this casts the kids in a very negative light as having harassed people previously with their MAGA hats and the language.  
But I think, when I say we're being played badly, Dana, I'm talking about -
- Twitter today had to suspend an account, 2020 Fight.

Why did they suspend this account?  Well, listen to this, they published highly polarized political content, left and right, intended to divide people.  Supposedly based in California, turns out based in Brazil, and they don't exactly know who's putting it out.  But they are tweeting 130 times a day --

PERINO:  Yeah.

WILLIAMS: -- 40,000 followers.  The video, which they pushed aggressively, was then bought into by mainstream media in this country.  And again, the initial interpretation proved to be wrong.  But at that point, they had 2.5 million people looking at this video and leaping to some kind of conclusion.

I will say this, Nathan Phillips, the veteran, Native American elder, said the kid has never apologized to him.  He felt stared down and he felt threatened by the kid, and he thought that what the black Israelites were up to was offensive, but he thought the kids and the Israelites were about to clash and he was trying to be a peacemaker.

So now you get people on either side, especially the right, and the fact that, hey, these -- a lot of the initial interpretation was wrong saying, oh, now the kids are to be protected.  They're angels.  I think that, boy, we as Americans we get fragmented, divided intentionally by these people for some reason and we play into it.  We're such dummies.  I don't believe it.

PERINO:  Maybe people have learned a lesson, but imagine what's going to happen when the deep fix (ph) starts getting out there.

GUTFELD:  I think -- just to Juan's point, it is really about the chain of ownership of that video.  It was mainstream media who picked that up and didn't vet it, and they should be held accountable.  And they might.  They might be sued.

WILLIAMS:  And that's why Twitter now suspended that account --

PERINO:  All right, we've got to run.  Allison is gesturing wildly over there behind the camera.  All right, the race for the White House is turning into the 2020 apology tour for big-name Democrats.  That and more ahead on The Five.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WILLIAMS:  It's day 32 of the partial government shutdown.  Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the Senate will vote Thursday on two bills to potentially reopen the government.  One is the president's plan with funding for the border wall; the second, a house bill that does not include money for the wall.

All this comes as the White House is planning to move forward with the president delivering his upcoming State of the Union address in congress.  
Sources saying if the speech doesn't take place at the Capital, it could happen from a location outside of Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, the race for the White House turning into the apology primary for top Democrats pressured from the left, appearing to cause some 2020 contenders to say sorry for their past records or past positions.  
Although, he's yet to declare, Joe Biden is the latest one.  He now regrets supporting tougher drug laws.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT:  I haven't always been right.  I know we haven't always gotten things right.  It was a big mistake when it was made.  We thought we were told by the experts that crack, you never go back.  It was somehow fundamentally -- it's not different.  But it's trapped an entire generation.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, D-VT:  To the women in our campaign who were harassed on the street, I apologize.

REP. TULSI GABBARD, D-HI:  Many years ago, I apologized for my words and more importantly for the negative impact that they had.  I sincerely repeat my apology today.

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, D-N.Y.:  I listened and I realized that things I had said were wrong.  I was not caring about others.  I was not fighting for other people's kids the same way I was fighting for my own, and I was wrong to feel that way.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS, D-CALIF.:  Do I wish that sometimes they would have personally consulted me before they wrote the things that they wrote?  
Yes, I do.  But the bottomline is the buck stops with me and I take full responsibility for what my office did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAMS:  Jedediah, what do you make of the Democrats?  I know a lot of people are saying, well, there's so much pressure from the left on these candidates, and other people are saying, well, maybe they should apologize.  
I mean, in the case of Tulsi Gabbard, we just saw there, the congresswoman from Hawaii, she has been pretty strongly anti-gay.

BILA:  Yeah.  I think what the media, of course, will say this is just evolving.  Oh, they just evolved.  I would love to say that this hard left is just a minority, and that -- this isn't going to work and you need to appeal to independent voters.

But the truth is I think that the moderates on the left are in the minority.  I actually think a lot of Democratic voters now agree with what these people are saying, what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is saying.  There was a recent poll, the Hill Harris poll, that said 59 percent of registered voters support a 70 percent marginal tax rate.

I think that Democrat voters, particularly millennials, are going for what sounds good.  It sounds good to say stuff is going to be free, free education, Medicare for all, green new deal, less fossil fuels.  That all sounds good and no one is paying attention to the fact that none of these people, none of these candidates can explain how that stuff is going to get paid for, how it's not going to bankrupt industries in this country.

And unfortunately, in the social media age, that sound bite works.  So I think that their shift to the left, actually, is probably a smart one.  And I think most of their voters will actually fall in line with them and be more supportive of a hard left candidate, even though I wish that wasn't the case and I want to say moderates still exist in the Democratic Party.  
I think they're the minority.

WILLIAMS:  OK.  But we'll more about Ocasio-Cortez in the next segment.  I have something I wanted to say to you to rebut something.  But let me just turn to Jesse on Joe Biden, because Joe Biden is someone that a lot of Republicans really don't have that much fight with.  And here he is saying
--

WATTERS:  Well.

WILLIAMS: -- he thought -- he thought that when he was in the -- I guess, mostly in the 1990's, imposing additional prison penalties for the use of crack cocaine, he was wrong.  You heard him say everybody at the time was saying crack, there's no coming back from crack.  What do you make of that?

WATTERS:  Yeah, crack is whack.  And --

GUTFELD:  Thanks, Jesse.

WATTERS: -- he's right about that.  Say no to drugs, kids.  Can I speak in generalities, my preferred method?

(LAUGHTER)

WATTERS: When you're a Democrat, it's good to apologize.  When you're a Republican, you should never apologize.  And here's why, when you're a Republican, if you apologize you look weak.  If you're a Democrat and you apologize, you look compassionate and look like you're evolving.

The thing is the Democratic Party has evolved so much just over the last 10 to 15 years.  They've just their position on immigration, criminal justice, social justice, drug policy, gay marriage.  If you look at the positions 10 to 15 years ago, those were held by Democrats.  Now, they don't hold those positions anymore.

But here's their problem, they call Republicans that hold those positions evil.  So when you're asked the question, well, you held the same position
15 years ago, were you evil back then?  They say, oh, well, I wasn't evil, but Republicans that hold the same positions I held 15 years ago, they're evil.  So the whole offensive strategy doesn't work anymore.

WILLIAMS:  OK.  By the way, I thought that what we heard from Gillibrand, she said she was wrong.  She was looking out for her kids, not everybody else.  She wasn't looking -- so I thought she said she was wrong.

WATTERS:  You thought Gillibrand said she was wrong?

WILLIAMS:  Yeah.

WATTERS:  But she said she's not Trump.  She said Trump is evil for having the same positions I held 10 years ago.

BILA:  In other words, she was well-intentioned.

WILLIAMS:  All right.  So, Dana, when we hear about someone like Kirsten Gillibrand, who was an opponent of amnesty for illegal immigrants, wanted to increase funding for ICE and other things, and now says no, what do you make of that?

PERINO:  I think -- well, the apology does two things, one good, one bad.  
One is that you can say I've addressed this.  I'm moving on, OK?  So that you're going to keep pointing back to the one apology that you've made.  
But the second thing, though, is that the bad thing is that makes you look inauthentic.  And what do voters really want?  They want authenticity.  
That's why Bet O'Rourke is on the road typing out some --

WATTERS:  On the road again.

PERINO:  -- some pros as he goes along because people felt like, OK, they want to know that.  President Trump never apologizes for anything.  And I was actually surprised with Joe Biden because, to your point, that maybe there might be some soft Republicans who think, oh, maybe Biden wouldn't be so bad.

The thing is -- but one of the reasons that a soft Republican might like Joe Biden is because he did the right thing at the time which was he was tough on crime.  And if you look at our crime rates they actually had an effect.  So he has to pander to the left which I think will hurt him in a general if you were to get there.

WILLIAMS:  By the way, Greg, this is so interesting to me because I remember when people on the left and, specific, black Democrats were going after Hillary Clinton.  Do you remember this?  Because -- they said Hillary Clinton was tough on drugs and the like.  And Hillary Clinton -- and then they said are you going to make a statement that you're not -- and she said, you know, we could get Yankee Stadium to say this.  It's a matter of policies and here are real prescriptions.

So when I hear this from some of these people, I think, hmm, very interesting, Martin Luther King Day.  They're audiences in Harlem, black churches.  What do you think of this?

GUTFELD:  I don't know.  I just keep thinking about somebody who is like legally separated trying to get back with his wife and saying I've changed.  
I'm changed.  I'm not like that old guy.

I think Biden's apology, to your point, is strange because there was a dramatic decline in crime over the last like -- I don't know how many decades.  And the crime bill probably had something to do with it.  
However, there might be good parts to the crime bill and bad parts to the crime bill.

I don't know enough about the differences between crack and criminality and other types of cocaine and criminality.  The argument here is that people doing crack were treated differently than people doing powdered cocaine.  I don't really know the details of this kind of world.  I've never tried a drug in my life.  Anyway --

(LAUGHTER)

GUTFELD: -- my point is -- my point is there might have been a criminality aspect, a gang mentality, I don't know if that had to do with crack cocaine.  Who knows?  All I know is we saw dramatic reductions in crime.

WILLIAMS:  Can I just speak to that for a second?

GUTFELD:  Sure.

WILLIAMS:  But didn't the president, President Trump and Jared Kushner --

GUTFELD:  Yes.

WILLIAMS: -- didn't they just do a --

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS:  A lot of this is about addition -- high rates of people being incarcerated --

GUTFELD:  Yes.

WILLIAMS: -- especially minorities and poor people.

PERINO:  But both things can be true.

GUTFELD:  All right.  I was just going to get to the point that the problem when people change minds is that they can be very sincere or they can be pandering.  And it's hard to tell.

WATTERS:  We know, though.  We know when it's a pandering.

GUTFELD:  Our current president changed his mind on a lot of major issues.  
I mean, he liked Hillary.  He liked Bill.  I think he voted Democrat.  I believe that it's actually OK to change your mind.  You don't have to be a prison of two sides.  And you can actually hold -- you can actually say the crime bill is good and has some bad parts.

So, I don't think there's anything wrong with it.  But the left -- the problem with what right now is that the hard left makes it so that they keep shifting the morality every year.  So in five years, everything that we say on The Five will prevent us from running for office.

PERINO:  Thank God because I don't want to run.

GUTFELD:  Yes.

WILLIAMS:  That's it.

WATTERS:  Some other things preventing us too.

WILLIAMS:  That's it.  I think you'll be 35 by then.

GUTFELD:  His hair will be.

WILLIAMS:  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stunning some with her comments about billionaires and climate change.  See it next right here on The Five.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WATTERS:  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continues to be the darling of the left.  
A new poll shows 74 percent of Democrats say they would consider voting for the congresswoman if she were old enough to run for president, since she's only 29.  This comes as the self-proclaimed Democratic socialist is under fire for taking this shot at capitalism.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, D-N.Y.:  A system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don't have access to public health is wrong.

It not only doesn't make economic sense but it doesn't make moral sense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS:  Ocasio-Cortez also making waves with her dire prediction about the impact of climate change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)
  
CORTEZ:  Millennials and people -- you know, Gen-Z, and all these folks that come after us are looking up and we're like the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change. And your biggest issue is -
- your biggest issue is how are we going to pay for it?  And, like, this is the war.  This is our World War II.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS:  And she has this response to critics in her own party.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, CBS'S "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT":  On a scale of zero to some, how many (EXPLETIVE DELETED) do you give?

OCASIO-CORTEZ:  I think it's zero.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATTERS:  Very good.  All right, Greg, she said a lot there.  Take your pick.

GUTFELD:  All right.  Well, she's doing two things right.  She's capitalizing on a fear, which in this case she was talking about climate change.  You could say that Donald Trump did the same thing with immigration.  A legitimate -- some say legitimate fear; some say not legitimate.  Climate change, some say legitimate.  Some say not.  But she's doing the same thing.

And within the climate change argument, she is working on exaggeration, and tertiary sources, secondary sources, but so did Donald Trump.

So -- and she's also doing something that Donald Trump is doing: saying memorable things that are direct -- in her world, directionally true.  They might be completely inaccurate but directionally true.  That's why she gets the applause.  "The world could end in 12 years."  Obviously, that's wrong.  
But in their heads, they're going, "Well, her heart's -- and her mind is going in the right direction."

So while we -- you know, we can mock her for all of this, but we're guilty of what everybody else did with Trump, on "Morning Joe" and CNN, which is laugh, laugh, laugh until you've built her up to a certain stature that you can't laugh at her anymore.

And I think that's why even her peers in the Democratic Party are upset.  
They dislike her, because she's on "60 Minutes."  She's on Colbert, and she just showed up.  That ticks her (ph) off.  What does that sound like?  It sounded like the Republican Party with Trump.  So it -- it's becoming an identical mirror.

WATTERS:  Greg, you're on fire this week.  I have to give you that.

GUTFELD:  Why, thank you.

WATTERS:  Really?

GUTFELD:  What are you doing later?  Cocktail -- cocktails on the veranda?

WATTERS:  Really smart commentary.

GUTFELD:  Mint juleps?

PERINO:  He has to stop at the cobbler first.

GUTFELD:  At the cobbler.

WATTERS:  So, I'm wearing sneakers because --

GUTFELD:  His shoes are at the cobbler!

WATTERS:  Yes, I said my shoes are at the cobbler.  Is cobbler not a current term for a shoe repair man?  Anyway.

Let's get back to AOC.  What do you think?

PERINO:  I think that AOC is the intellectual leader of the left.

WATTERS:  That's sad, Dana.

PERINO:  And the polls are backing that up.  And she -- they're all having to respond to her.  We'll see how they handle their Donald Trump.

GUTFELD:  Yes.

PERINO:  I just said in the break that I would love to sit next to President Obama while he listens to something like that and to hear what he thinks, because it would be interesting to hear.

Some of her ideas, it's not just that they're unaffordable.  It's that they're bad ideas.  And so then how do you counter those bad ideas, even if they are directionally true in her mind?  Then you've got to explain why they're a bad idea.  And we can give you a million examples.

I'm going to tell you why I think Democrats have a good point on -- on the economic argument against President Trump.

The way you hear them frame it -- and I think the Republicans better pay attention to this -- it's that there was -- the tax cut was for the rich.  
It absolutely helped the rich.  Look at the stock market.  Look at what the companies did.  They bought stock back.  They didn't reinvest.  You have billionaires that are wealthier.  You have wages that have only gone up 2 percent.

GUTFELD:  Knock it off, Dana!

PERINO:  I'm just telling you.  If you read Mary Anne Marsh, she is often seen seen on FOX News.  She writes at FOXNews.com.  She writes a piece this week that I think they have a way to make an economic argument against President Trump, and the Republicans better pay attention.

WATTERS:  We love when you give advice to Democrats, Dana.  Don't we?

Juan.

PERINO:  They don't take it.

WATTERS:  Juan never listens.  He never listens.

WILLIAMS:  Are you kidding?  I think she's terrific.

I just -- I mean, to me, the interesting part here is the attacks on people who make more than $10 million.  Because that was so widely condemned as inviting us to be the next Venezuela and a toilet short -- you know, toilet-paper shortage and all the rest.

And then I look at the numbers, and the numbers say 59 percent of Americans agree with the 70 percent marginal tax rate, including, Jedediah, 45 percent of Republicans, 60 percent of independents, 70 percent of Democrats.

And here's the thing.  We're talking about her -- The Washington Post says that she is now the zeitgeist of American politics, because she rivals Donald Trump.  She's second only to Trump in terms of politicians and their Twitter handles.

And of course, you know that when people are asked if they would vote for her versus Trump, Trump gets 43 percent.  She gets 40 percent.  Seventeen percent undecided.  So if she was 35, your age, right?

WATTERS:  Thank you, Juan.

WILLIAMS:  And eligible to run for president --

WATTERS:  Yes.

WILLIAMS:  -- she would be a really strong candidate.

WATTERS:  Jed, you think so?

BILA:  I disagree.  I disagree.  I don't think she's an intellectual leader.  I think she's a populist leader.  I think she says a lot of the right things.  But I think -- it's not smart, is the problem.  And it's easily -- she's probably the easiest person to debate on the left --

GUTFELD:  Yes.

BILA:  -- because none of the stuff -- all you have to do --

WATTERS:  She doesn't debate anybody.

BILA:  Right, and she doesn't go on shows where she's challenged either.  
You look at capitalism and you look at socialism and you look at those countries, look at countries that have -- that have rich capitalism and watch what it's done to the economy.  Look at socialist countries.

Unfortunately, in this country, we're getting to be where we have to walk through the mud in order to experience -- it's like, why do we have to suffer through socialism to understand that socialism is bad?

Other countries have paved the way for us --

PERINO:  Yes.

BILA:  -- to get that message.  And I agree.  I agree with Dana that she is a leader.  I just think that if she -- if you watched her in an interview where she actually got challenged, it would be done in five seconds.

PERINO:  Well, I think she was challenged by Anderson Cooper on "60 Minutes."

BILA:  That's true.  With the cost.

PERINO:  I mean, "60 Minutes" is not an -- easy interview for anybody.

GUTFELD:  Easy questions stumble her, too.  Easy -- like, it seemed challenging, but there were some basic questions.

BILA:  Like "How are you going to pay for that?"

GUTFELD:  Yes.

WILLIAMS:  By the way, you description of her and, you know, no -- not debating, simplistic statements, boy, it sounded just like Donald Trump.

PERINO:  And a populist leader.  I mean --

BILA:  That's true.

WATTERS:  All right.  Ahead, how would "The Five" handle being stuck in a grounded plane for more than 16 hours?  I think we know.  We're going to talk about this travel nightmare ahead.

But first, Gladys Knight defends her decision to sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl after facing backlash.  Find out why.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GUTFELD:  Gladys Knight will be singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl, which is a great choice.  I would have sung it myself, but why steal Tom Brady's thunder?

Of course, thanks to a media whose business model is conflict, the anthem controversy still lingers like a bad odor.  It's one of those stories where you can always begin a sentence with "Yet there are some who are criticizing Knight for accepting the honor."

Whenever I hear "some," I wonder who are "they"?  "Some."  Like, multiple unknown forces.  It seems like "some" is everywhere.  Some say this; some say that.  Some say reporters without sources use "some."

Sadly, we are now at the mercy of "some" when there aren't even any.  It's a make-believe democracy.

How does Knight respond to such criticism?  Quote, "I pray that this national anthem will bring us all together in a way never before witnessed, and we can move forward and untangle these truths" -- untangle these truths
-- "which mean so much to all of us."

She's saying what we feel.  Enough already.  Let's move on.  I'm with her.

She looks great, by the way.

PERINO:  Amazing.

GUTFELD:  The fact is, every issue, be it immigration, climate or crime, the media desires only two positions.

In the anthem case, you're either for standing during the anthem or against police brutality.  When in fact, 100 percent of the general population can hold both positions.

Gladys holds both: advocating for justice and the anthem.  So I'm sure she will do a great job, probably even better than me, even though I'm sure some will disagree.

OK.  I look at her.  She has not aged in, like, 40 years.

PERINO:  Its reverse aging.

GUTFELD:  It's incredible.

PERINO:  I know.  We've got to ask her what her secret is.

WATTERS:  Probably facials, you know.  I recommend them.

PERINO:  Did you get one?

WATTERS:  Not today.

GUTFELD:  I think, Juan, the good news is she's doing the national anthem.  
The bad news, Maroon 5 is still playing at halftime.

WILLIAMS:  Well, I know you don't like them.  I love Gladys Knight, you know.

GUTFELD:  Yes.

WILLIAMS:  "Midnight Train."  But I must say it's so interesting this controversy.  Someone said if she wears a Colin Kaepernick shirt, they'll applaud her.

But she's having to apologize, because there's so many people -- I think especially in black communities, say, "Hey, what about Colin Kaepernick?"  
That's why other artists refused to participate, because they don't want to endorse the idea that NFL, everything is normal.  Meanwhile, you're keeping this guy out --

GUTFELD:  Peer pressure.  Aren't you against peer pressure?  I'm tired of peer pressure.

PERINO:  Also, like, if Colin -- if Colin Kaepernick were given a job, they're going to find another reason to go after her for singing the national anthem.  Maybe they should just give him a job for the rest of the season?

GUTFELD:  There you go.

PERINO:  Get it?  There's no season left.  Ha-ha.  I know.

GUTFELD:  You could have tricked me.  I have no idea.

Jed, isn't it time -- her message is can't we unite?  And her idea is that the anthem is separate from the social justice issues --

PERINO:  Right.

GUTFELD:  -- which makes total sense.

BILA:  And she has a long history of fighting for social justice issues.  
For racial injustice.

GUTFELD:  Much like Jesse.

BILA:  AIDS research.  For diabetes.

WILLIAMS:  I think her record's better than Jesse's.

BILA:  Slightly.

WATTERS:  Thanks for clarifying, Juan.

WILLIAMS:  You're welcome.

BILA:  It's kind of sad that, though, that it's -- people are stunned that she would say that the national anthem could be used as a unifying force.  
The country is so removed from that now and has made the national anthem so divisive that for her to come out and just say, "Look, you can be a social justice warrior and sing the national anthem and have this be a unifying moment," almost sounds foreign to people.  That's kind of sad to me.

GUTFELD:  I think it -- Jesse, it's almost every segment or issue that we talk about these days has to do, in its core, in identity -- identity politics.

WATTERS:  It does.

GUTFELD:  And it never ends well.

WATTERS:  It does.

GUTFELD:  Maybe this will finally be -- be a healing moment.  I hate to say "healing moment."

WATTERS:  Well, I was going to use another analogy.  I think Gladys basically put the last shovel of dirt on Kaepernick's grave.

Here's why.

GUTFELD:  That's a strange analogy.

WATTERS:  Kaepernick is over.  No one cares about Kaepernick anymore.  None of the players even knelt barely at all this year.  I mean, it hasn't really been a controversy much this year at all.

GUTFELD:  Was it because they didn't show.

WATTERS:  Except for the Eagles didn't go to the White House.  But on the field, players are not kneeling anymore.

Kaepernick is now -- how many years has he been out of the league?  He's never coming back to the NFL.  And like you said, the only people making a big fuss about this are a few people on Twitter.

Gladys Knight is a well-respected, social media warrior like myself.  And hot down all of these people and repeated the talking point that I've been using the entire year.  Gladys, thanks for watching and listening.  Is that the anthem is a moment of national unity.  And that's where everybody should come together, and you can talk about social justice afterwards.

GUTFELD:  I think there were three moments in what you said that have upset, like, half of America.

BILA:  That's -- I counted two of them.

GUTFELD:  I don't know which -- I counted at least three.

WATTERS:  We have one more segment left on the show.

PERINO:  I can't imagine anybody wants to punch you.

GUTFELD:  I do.   

WATTERS:  This is workplace violence.

GUTFELD:  All right.  Hundreds of passengers stranded on a frozen tarmac for hours, next on "The Five."

WATTERS:  Dana!

PERINO:  I don't want to punch you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BILA:  Talk about a tribal nightmare.  United passengers headed from New York to Hong Kong got stuck in Canada for 16 hours this weekend after a medical emergency and mechanical issues forced them to be grounded.

The situation got even worse when they had to remain on board, because the airport didn't have customs officers working overnight.  United is now reviewing the incident.  But how does this keep happening?

All right, Greg.  The way I see it, there's two types of people in this world when the situation happens.

GUTFELD:  Right.

BILA:  There's people that you see on the 11 p.m. news and go crazy.  
That's me.  And then there's people who handle this calmly.  Which one are you?

GUTFELD:  You know what I am.  The real nightmare here is that they returned to Newark.

BILA:  That is true.

WATTERS:  That's so mean.

BILA:  I like Newark Airport.

GUTFELD:  Anyway.

BILA:  I do.

GUTFELD:  I thought that would get a better laugh.

WATTERS:  I laughed.  I thought it was good.

GUTFELD:  All right, all right, OK.  Here's the lesson.  OK, I would freak out.  I would freak out.  I would be on the news.  I'd be -- I would probably be doing something so insane.

This is why I rely on the 3 "M's" when I'm traveling.  Music, medicine, and meat.  So if you have beef jerky on you, you've got your -- you've got your music, and you've got your, you know, whatever.  Xanax, Valium, prescription meds.  You can sit through and be, like, the calm voice of reason and -- and get through it.

But I don't understand this.  How nobody could go there on a bus and help these people out is beyond me?

BILA:  They said they brought another plane in, but it took, like, 12 hours for it to get there.

GUTFELD:  Yes.

BILA:  And that is the key: the food.  I always come prepared with snacks on a plane just in case of an emergency.

GUTFELD:  Snakes -- snacks on a plane.

PERINO:  They say you should have more than, like, a breath mint in your bag when you're going on a plane.

I've never experienced something like this.  It's absolutely horrendous.  
My husband actually had something like this, but it was -- they got grounded in the Middle East, I believe, and it was like 110 degrees outside, and they couldn't run the engine for the air conditioning.  And people got very --

GUTFELD:  You mean like Iowa?

PERINO:  No.

BILA:  What do you think, Juan, about this story?

WILLIAMS:  You know, so I've been trapped on planes for several hours, you know, like six hours.  It just makes me crazy.  I mean, literally.  I go bananas.  And it's not that I act out, but I am freaking out inside.

And the thing about this is it's always that the airlines say, "We do this for passenger safety."  Either they say, "We don't want to go back to the gate, because if we go back to the gate, then we have to get permission to go back to the runway so it's going to cost us time."  Or they say, you know, it's not safe.  In this case that you're talking about, Jedediah, because we can't just let you out.

Hey, you're treating people like they're captives or pets.

BILA:  It's scary.

WILLIAMS:  Instead of human beings who don't like to be confined and not know about their own destiny.  This is a total lack of control.  It's a total insult to human nature, and yet the airlines do it repeatedly.

BILA:  And I think Jesse, if you were CEO, I think you could fix this problem.

WATTERS:  I don't think I could.  I don't think I'd be CEO.

BILA:  I'm trying to help you out.

WATTERS:  When I'm stuck on a plane and it's delayed, I always think to myself, "I am the most important person on this plane, and I'm getting railroaded and that's not fair.  And I demand special treatment."

But it's good to sit back and think, "You know what?  I'm probably not the most important person.  There's probably pregnant people or people that are going to see, you know, like a dying relative," and that's what calms me down.

GUTFELD:  You are so -- you are -- like --

BILA:  "One More Thing" is coming up next.

WILLIAMS:  Oh, my God.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PERINO:  It's time now for "One More Thing."  I'm going to go first.

So on "The Daily Briefing" show, we end every day with some sort of good news.  And today, it was not about dogs.  It was about horses.  Check these three horses out.

Quarter horses in Florida lent the police a helping hand, or hoof, I guess you could say.  They chased down the suspect, who was running away from the cops.  And they were -- he was trying to avoid arrest.

And the police helicopter captured the moment when these horses -- that's Shiloh right there -- basically, ran him into the fence.  And the guy fell over, and the cops were able to arrest him.  So you never know what sort of
-- how animals --- how great they are, Greg.  The animals are so great.

GUTFELD:  I don't -- I don't buy this story at all.  I don't think horses were chasing down a criminal.  But that's just me.

PERINO:  It was on the tape.

BILA:  It's on tape.

PERINO:  From the cops.

GUTFELD:  Hey, haven't we learned anything this week?

PERINO:  True.  OK, you go next.

GRAPHIC:  Greg's Nutrition Tips

GUTFELD:  "Greg's Nutrition Tips."  You know, it's very important to get your omega-3s, which this little guy decided to do, and he showed up at some fisherman's little swimming ice hole there, and decided to nab his fish.

And it's like I always say, Dana.  Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, but teach him to steal, and he can eat forever.  Right, Mr. Bald Eagle?  "You're right, Greg."

PERINO:  Didn't he just pick that up off of there, and it was, like, "I'm going to take this home."

GUTFELD:  It's a klepto-eagle.

BILA:  It's nice.

PERINO:  Juan, you're next.

WILLIAMS:  All right.  So frigid temperatures have sent parts of the country into a deep, deep freeze, and we've got some incredible pictures to show just how cold it is outside.

Take a look right here in New York City.  Check out this video of the fountain in Bryant Park, frozen over this morning.  Yesterday, it dropped all the way into single digits here in midtown Manhattan.

Now over to Missouri.  Take a look at this.  That's a tow boat on the upper Mississippi, struggling to move a barge through a thick sheet of ice near Clarksville, Missouri.  Thankfully, it's supposed to warm up over the next few days before another cold wave over the weekend.

But our neighbors in the north, boy, they already have it bad.  Check out this video from Canada.  A man shooting water out of a super soaker water gun, and it instantly freezes.  The temperature there: negative 38.

WATTERS:  I wonder if AOC is watching that.  Are we really all going to die from global warming?

PERINO:  Maybe it's 14 years.

WATTERS:  Yes, maybe 14.

PERINO:  You go next.

WATTERS:  I don't know if you guys have noticed, but last week, I played all Black Sabbath, and Greg's got his -- he's got the pulse of the music scene.  He told me people liked it, so we did a double week.  And in honor of Black Sabbath, Sunday was the 37th anniversary of Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off of a live bat in concert.  And he's commemorating that occasion.  He's selling stuffed bats that you can bite off their heads, as well.  So go online and buy a stuffed bat and bite it off, for Ozzy.

PERINO:  That sounds great, Jesse.  Way to bring it.

Jedediah.

BILA:  If you are anything like me, you love parents who embarrass their kids.  Take a look at Wendy Gossett.

So this mom got stuck in traffic on the highway, standstill for over four hours.  And she decided she was going to get out, and she was going to break it down to the Backstreet Boys.  Her son not nearly as excited.

But I love moms like this.  I mean, this is the kind of person I want to be.  I'm not that's kind of person.  I'm the type that freaks out and gets mad and has road rage.  But in another life I'm going to be that person.

PERINO:  You're going to be that person.

BILA:  I could be that person.

PERINO:  Very good.

WILLIAMS:  And your son would be embarrassed.

BILA:  That's right.

PERINO:  All right, everyone, set your DVRs.  Never miss an episode of "The Five."  A very "Special Report" is coming up, a sight for sore eyes.  Bret, it's good to see you.

Content and Programming Copyright 2019 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2019 ASC Services II Media, LLC.  All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of ASC Services II Media, LLC. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.