Federal authorities announce charges in sweeping college admissions bribery scandal
Celebrities and business leaders charged in college scam; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'
This is a rush transcript from "The Five," March 12, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
JESSE WATTERS, HOST: Hello, everybody. I'm Jesse Watters along with Dagen McDowell, Juan Williams, Dana Perino, and Greg Gutfeld. It's 5 o'clock in New York City, and this is The Five.
Fox News alert, an explosive college admissions scandal has landed two Hollywood actresses in big trouble with the law. Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin are among dozens of people charged in a $25 million bribery scheme. Authorities say rich parents bribed, cheated, and defrauded in order to get their kids into some of the country's most elite schools.
The alleged crimes include paying for someone to take their kids SAT's, paying an admissions consultant to bribed coaches into labeling their kids as recruited athletes to boost their chances, and also faking athletic profiles to make students look like strong athletes when they actually weren't. There is no evidence that school admissions were involved in any of the wrongdoing, the U.S. attorney in charge describing the bombshell allegations.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW LELLING, U.S. ATTORNEY: The parents charge today, despite already being able to give their children every legitimate advantage in the college admissions game, instead chose to corrupt and illegally manipulate the system for their benefit. We're not talking about donating a building so that a school is more likely to take your son or daughter. We're talking about deception and fraud, fake test scores, fake athletic credentials, fake photographs, bribed college officials.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: Felicity Huffman is expected in court this hour, while Lori Loughlin is reportedly on a flight back to L.A. where she is expected to surrender to authorities. For more, let's go to Jonathan Hunt who is live at the courthouse in L.A. with the latest. Jonathan.
JONATHAN HUNT, CORRESPONDENT: Jesse, good afternoon to you. Felicity Huffman, the actress, famed for her role in Desperate Housewives, of course, among 13 people due to appear this hour in the federal court behind me. She, as well as the actress Lori Loughlin are both one -- or two of dozens accused of taking part in what was a wide-ranging scheme, essentially to bribe and defraud the college admissions system to get their children into colleges that those parents presumably thought they otherwise would not be able to get into.
Felicity Huffman and her husband William H. Macy accused for instance of paying 15,000 to alter SAT test scores. Lori Loughlin and her husband, who is the designer, Mossimo Giannulli, are accused of paying $500,000 to have their two daughters labeled as recruits to the USC crew team. Neither of those daughters ever took part in that sport. So this was a wide-ranging scheme, one essentially run by a company that was run out of Newport Beach, California, by a man called William Singer. He pleaded guilty earlier today to racketeering.
Now, we assume that he has given the feds much of the evidence on which all of these charges are based. So, we will now have these 13 here in L.A. arraigned. We have not seen Felicity Huffman at this point, although she should, by all logic, be inside the courthouse already. We have seen her husband, William H. Macy. He was asked if he wanted to comment on the case, his answer was no. Jesse.
WATTERS: Great get there, Jonathan. Thank you very much. All right. So, Greg, you're a big fan of Full House --
GREG GUTFELD, HOST: Oh, yes.
WATTERS: -- and Desperate Housewives. Are you taking this especially hard?
GUTFELD: I am damaged by the news. This is -- the great thing about the scandal is that when they make the movie, everyone can play themselves. Because who can play Felicity Huffman better than Felicity Huffman. She's an amazing actress --
DANA PERINO, HOST: And I like William H. Macy.
GUTFELD: There's a couple of things. People are often as sinful -- as sinful as their options allow them to be. So you have to ask yourself if this option were allowed for you to help your kid get a leg up, would you do it? So, it's like, we can dislike what they do but we have to wonder, what if we have that option?
But it does show that a lot of people really enjoy this story because we have a biological revulsion to line cutting. And everybody hates all kinds of line cutting, whether it's actual cutting in line or immigration or college admission. It something that bugs us. We're programmed to be disgusted by people who don't get there the right way.
WATTERS: They're bribing the coyotes --
GUTFELD: Yes.
WATTERS: -- and they were cutting in line in front of the other people.
GUTFELD: By the way, this is why I only have houseplants and not kids, because I don't need to grease a gardener's palm, you know, to get him to trim my box woods. Stupid kids are a problem.
WATTERS: I thought there were other reasons you didn't have kids.
(LAUGHTER)
WATTERS: Dana, this story, obviously, everybody's interested because, like Greg said, there's a line cutting. But it's also the Hollywood angle.
PERINO: Right.
WATTERS: People are fascinated when big shots --
PERINO: One that try to tell us how to live.
WATTERS: Right. And now they're, you know, they're looking at some hard times.
PERINO: There's also -- there was -- in one of the recorded conversations at the FBI got somebody says, I'm not so much worried about the moral part of things. I'm just worried about what's going happen if we get caught. And it was like, well, this is what's going to happen, you're going to be embarrassed.
And it's -- I think what really drives is it's the fairness issue, right? So you're like everybody in the world a human being is born. Fairness is like innate in you. And then help -- making money by helping rich people get their already privileged kids even more privileged so that they can make more money, seems like the system is rigged, like the system is working against you. And kudos to President Trump's FBI who went ahead and got these guys instead -- we're not going to put up with this anymore.
I don't have children either, but I do -- I have plenty of friends that do and I know that they start talking about paying for college before the babies are even conceived.
WATTERS: Yeah.
PERINO: You start wondering like how I'm going to make this happen? Getting your child into college now is like a part-time job and kids don't even have part-time jobs because it's their job to try to get into college because they have to have all the requisite things so that they could get in there. And so, I'm glad that they caught them. I don't know if it's more widespread, right? So they found these guys but this has happened elsewhere.
WATTERS: So now, like Dana said, Juan, parents are thinking, wait, did my son or daughter not get into this school because some rich fat cat bribed some coach to scam them in?
JUAN WILLIAMS, HOST: Right. I mean, this is not a victimless crime. There're real people who suffered as a result of lost opportunity getting into the very best schools in the country. But to me, there's a bigger story here. As you know there's a lawsuit right now that's been put forward by conservatives using Asians to challenge affirmative action at Harvard.
And in the course of that debate, here's what we found, Jesse. You know that, in fact, right now, if you look at it at selective schools, if you have a legacy, and that's what these people -- you know, these people we're talking about athletics, but legacies, in other words, if you went to the school and then applied for your kids, that's even bigger than athletics, 34 percent admitted five times higher than people whose parents did not go to school.
So if you went to Harvard, you're already rich entitled and famous, and now your kid applies, tremendous advantage especially if the kid has good enough grades, even a bigger boast. So the most privileged kids in America, they get the biggest boost. Not the black kids, not the Asian kids, not the Hispanic kids.
And the second point to make is athletics, if you have an athletic credential on your resume which is what these fraudsters were doing, they were putting pictures of the kids on the bodies of athletes and pushing it out there. But if you're an athlete, guess what, you have about a 50 percent boost in terms of your likelihood to get into a school.
And just one last point, most of the athletes in America, despite you see the black basketball players, the black football players, it's not the black -- most college athletes are white, like 70 percent. And there are things like lacrosse, crew, ice hockey, I could go on.
WATTERS: Don't forget squash.
GUTFELD: But nobody brought upgrades. I know you did.
PERINO: I know.
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: No, the conservatives are using Asians to challenge affirmative action at Harvard as if, oh --
DAGEN MCDOWELL, HOST: No, let's talk about --
GUTFELD: I know. I don't know how we got into the Asian question.
MCDOWELL: Let's talk about the people named in the complaint. I read the criminal complaint. And you know what? It's not about advancing their kids and making their lives better down the road. They're embarrassed by their dumb kids and they couldn't get into a decent school. If you read the complaint, and I don't know if we have the sound of it, but if you go online, Olivia Jade, one of Lori Loughlin's kids, has a YouTube channel.
GUTFELD: Yeah.
MCDOWELL: She had a career before she ever had to go off to USC, which she got into apparently because of a -- they paid $500,000, her parents, for the two kids to get into USC to be on the crew team.
WATTERS: And I think we have some sound of Lori Loughlin's daughter that we can listen to.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know how much of school I'm going to attend, but I'm going to go in and talk to my deans and everyone and hope that I can try and balance it all. But I do want the experience of like game days partying. I don't really care about school, as you guys all know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCDOWELL: Here's what her mother said in the complaint -- or her father copying her mother. I had some concerns and I want to fully understand the game plan and make sure we have a road map for success as it relates to our daughter, and getting her into a school other than ASU. So he was embarrassed --
WATTERS: Oh, poor ASU.
PERINO: Well, that's the other thing about all of this is that college is really not that important, folks --
GUTFELD: Amen.
PERINO: It is too expensive. And one of the reasons that you have tuition that are so high is because people are willing to do things like this, so there's no incentive to lower it. Like, none of us went to a fancy school, right?
GUTFELD: No, I did.
MCDOWELL: I went to Wake, which is in the --
(CROSSTALK)
WATTERS: Wait, Dana went to Berkeley.
GUTFELD: That's kind of fancy.
WATTERS: That is pretty fancy.
(CROSSTALK)
PERINO: OK, I didn't go to a fancy school.
GUTFELD: No, but to your point, we have elevated the importance of college. We reduced the barrier for loans which has ballooned to size of the administration, and so now you have all these kids saddled with debt. But even more because it used to be -- OK, the virtue signal to get a job was a B.A., right? But now everybody can get a B.A.
(CROSSTALK)
GUTFELD: So now it's masters. So now you've got to spend more money to get a masters. And now masters isn't enough, now you go to PHD. So now what we're doing --
PERINO: No one hires people with PHD's.
GUTFELD: Really?
MCDOWELL: Google at one time wouldn't even interview you unless you went to an I.V. You couldn't even get a job interview even if you went --
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: Well, that's my point.
MCDOWELL: -- Virginia Tech. You couldn't get in. And I just want to add this, you know it make sense to go to Wake Forest. It was $7500 a year when I started schooling. I could major in art history and blow it off and not get -- you know, not care about the education.
WILLIAMS: Well, I think --
MCDOWELL: Not anymore.
WILLIAMS: Unlike Dana, I think college is very important because, guess what --
PERINO: I didn't say it's not -- I said it's not this important.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, I think it is very important.
GUTFELD: It's where you learn about identity politics, Juan.
(LAUGHTER)
WILLIAMS: Thanks, Jesse. Credentialing, especially for low income kids, minority kids, to have the college degree makes a huge difference. And you can quantify in terms of lifetime income.
PERINO: I agree with that.
WILLIAMS: No question.
PERINO: I agree with that, but -- maybe my point is this. Going to an elite college is way overblown, that -- the importance of that -- I get it -- I didn't have anything. I didn't have any connections, I have family, I have legacy (INAUDIBLE). I went to the University of Southern Colorado on a speech team scholarship.
WILLIAMS: Right.
PERINO: It was like --
WATTERS: Are you sure your mom didn't put your face on a speech team body to get --
(LAUGHTER)
PERINO: Oh, this is a speech team body.
(LAUGHTER)
WATTERS: All right, over a dozen countries grounding Boeing planes after another deadly crash. Should you be worried? We'll break it all down next on The Five.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WILLIAMS: Pressure growing on the United States to ground Boeing 737 Max 8 airplanes after Sunday's deadly crash, dozens of countries now banning the jets. They're waiting until investigators can figure out what caused the Ethiopian air disaster, 157 people were killed in that crash. But here in the USA, the federal aviation administration says it will continue to let the aircraft fly despite mounting concerns. Boeing releasing a statement earlier saying in part that it has full confidence in the safety of the planes. Dana, would you get on board?
PERINO: Yes, because -- I think that you have to -- well, sometimes you don't have a choice, right? You have to get to where you're going. And as a passenger, sometimes you can say no. Like take a train or drive. But if you have to get somewhere, you've got to get somewhere. And I had a NTSB - - a former NTSB investigator on The Daily Briefing today and he reminds us to be fact-based in our thinking. The flight recorder has been recovered. Boeing is -- has a team there on the way.
The problem for people that are anxious about this is that we probably will not get conclusive reasons for this plane going down until Friday or Saturday. So you've got a whole week of people to be worried. But I think that because of the training that we have here in the United States, the pilots that we have, this has not happened here yet. There are a lot of these planes flying in America. Of course, people should be cautious. But, as of right now, I don't think there's any reason to ground them.
WILLIAMS: All right, Jesse, Southwest and American are the -- but they're only -- they don't have that many of them because it's relatively new aircraft, but they're the ones with the most. And so, one customer said, you know, I don't feel comfortable getting on this plane. Can I get a refund? And they told him, no. We totally trust our aircraft.
WATTERS: Yeah, I trust Boeing. It's a great company. I think a lot of the people in the E.U., specifically, that are wanting to ground these fleet. I mean, a lot from fear and safety but also competition. Now you have Airbus, you have Rolls-Royce over there, and they're competing for market share. And if they could knock the stock price down a little bit and stick it to Boeing, they will.
Now politicians are getting involved. Elizabeth Warren who is obviously running for president is calling for them to ground the fleet. Like Dana said, we need to get the facts first. They haven't completed the Ethiopian or the Indonesian study and to find out what's going on. I think we all have learned that we want to bring in the facts before we make a judgment. I don't think the FAA here in this country is going to ground an entire fleet if we don't have concrete evidence there's a manufacturing or design flaw.
The New York Times is saying maybe some new computer software and some of these foreign pilots they don't have regulations where they need to have a specific amount of flight hours on this new system. The American pilots have to log a lot more hours on new systems and that could explain the discrepancy. But there hasn't been a fatal commercial airline crash for ten years in this country. I was on a jet ski this weekend, Juan, seems much more dangerous.
PERINO: Oh, is that what you were doing.
WATTERS: Among other things.
WILLIAMS: In fact, I think it's much more dangerous to get in a car. But, you know, the human kind of response is it's dangerous to get in an airplane and be up in the air. So --
MCDOWELL: So there's two crashes in five months. It's not just this one.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
MCDOWELL: The one in Indonesia. And investigators did find -- the plane in that crash suffered an unreliable sensor information before it went down, a problem that Boeing has promised to fix with the software upgrade. So it's not clear whether it was some sort of pilot error or lack of training or the actual sensor. That software upgrade is coming next month. And I want to point out President Trump did tweet on this that --
WATTERS: You're kidding me.
MCDOWELL: Not helpful. Can I read this? Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed but rather computer scientist from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further when often and old and simpler is far better.
Split-second decisions are needed and the complexity creates danger. All of this for great cost yet very little gain. I don't know about you, but I don't want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of the plane, exclamation point.
He's had a call that was arranged yesterday with the CEO of Boeing, and it says it was only a coincidence that it took place after the tweet. We'll see what comes out of that. But again, China was first on board with this, I must point out, maybe because they're developing a competitor to Boeing, number one. And number two, we're in a trade war. Sorry, Greg.
GUTFELD: OK. Well, panic is always -- often worse than whatever event leads to panic. And it's true of everything from foods to energy to drugs. We have a panic over opioids now and who's getting damaged most, cancer patients and pain patients who get their drugs from prescriptions, who follow the law, but somehow they're getting caught in the opioid panic.
We've seen people panic over nuclear power which is basically prevented us from embracing probably the cleanest technology in terms of energy for at least 40 to 50 years. We haven't been able to do anything with nuclear power because we freaked out, overblown freaking out over a few accidents. The argument in Trump's tweet is based on kind of like the whole Sully idea that, like, could Sully have landed the plane if he wasn't in control? Or was it human fault?
Most people believe that a lot of these flights are human error. This is a debate that going to be raised when we get autonomous cars because whenever there's an accident people are going to freak out because the accidents are rare. These accidents to your point, Indonesia, Ethiopia, I would believe it's more about the training and experience of their pilots than anything else.
(CROSSTALK)
WILLIAMS: Hang on, hang on, hang on, we've got to go. But I just want to make this quick point that in both cases the nose was aim down. The pilot apparently tried to straighten it up, so that's why there were so much attention to the software. And one other thing, you even have people like Feinstein, Romney, Blumenthal, they're not running for president but they're saying how about a moratorium for just now?
MCDOWELL: They're not pilots either, are they? Other than -- just like President Trump. So maybe we ought to just nip it.
WILLIAMS: OK. Another politician waging war on meat, this time banning it in public schools to help fight, hmm, climate change? Stay with us on The Five.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GUTFELD: Here's a fun fact about NYC, murder is up 55 percent this year. Sorry, that's not a fun fact. That's a terrifying fact, especially if you live in New York or are a tourist in which we get 60 million yearly. From the start of 2019, there's been 48 killings, almost one per day. Last year at this time there were 31. Thankfully, Mayor Bill de Blasio, aka, Captain Lerch is here, announcing all public schools will be going meatless on Mondays. I bet this is important on so many levels.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO, D-NEW YORK CITY. This is important on so many levels, but is -- I've got to say, if you're thinking about our kids individually, we want them to be as healthy as they can be and we want them to learn as well as they can learn. And meatless Mondays will help. It'll create more balance in their lives. We're talking about a climate, the existential threat of global warming. This is something we do that's another contribution to addressing global warming to striking more of a balance in our whole society.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUTFELD: Society. So cutting back on meat will help save the planet. So would eliminating the cross-country tour he plans to take, pumping his far- left tripe, but when things aren't going too well at home, best to run away.
Between the crime and his scandals, I'd leave too. In case you miss it, the mayor shoveled nearly 900 million bucks into his wife's mental health initiative. That's nuts. Since we still yet to figure out where the money went. You take the subway, you know it's not mental health and that's criminal.
The fact is, the city we actually love needs help but it's run by left-wing Democrat, so the mentally ill are left to languish because the left has made it acceptable to languish. Meanwhile, crime creeps back up, while Amazon and 25,000 jobs flee. Only New York is a cool to embrace ideologies that kill jobs if not people. The good news, Lerch is only mayor of New York. The bad news, he's headed your way bearing tofu.
You know, I'm going to go to the vegetarian first, Jesse.
(LAUGHTER)
GUTFELD: You know, I don't understand. I always thought that cafeterias were always meatless because that wasn't meat.
WATTERS: That was mystery meat.
GUTFELD: It's mystery meat.
WATTERS: Yeah.
GUTFELD: It was like weird stuff. I don't think animals exist to create that meat.
WATTERS: No.
PERINO: Oh, come on. They have good food at schools.
GUTFELD: Oh, somebody is sponsored by big meat.
PERINO: That's right.
WATTERS: Big cattle.
GUTFELD: Big cattle.
WATTERS: The Wyoming lady over here.
PERINO: Absolutely.
WATTERS: I just want -- I want him to be the mayor, not our lunch lady. This city is a mess. You can't drive anywhere. They've lost 25,000 jobs with Amazon. He can't even handle a snowstorm. People are leaving for lower taxes. Stay out of our food choices, Mr. Mayor. This is a publicity stunt. If kids have pasta on Monday, it's not going to reduce the earth temperature. You pointed out --
GUTFELD: Or their body weight.
WATTERS: Right. If he cuts back on the private jet flights that would reduce more emissions. The only thing he's worried about is cows getting murdered, not people getting murdered. The whole thing is a joke. Kids need protein. They're going to have cereal for breakfast. They're going to have lentils for lunch and then the student athletes are supposed to go out and perform, go to the weight room, hit the court. These kids are going to pass out. I mean even the speech team is going to pass out, Dana.
GUTFELD: They'll be speechless without - they're be meatless and speechless. All right, Dagen, you're the actual vegan here. I will say this that like you could get fat as a vegetarian, because it's carbohydrates, not protein. But I know that he's making an environmental claim.
MCDOWELL: Yes, Tater tots and French fries.
GUTFELD: Yes.
MCDOWELL: What they're going to get.
GUTFELD: Yes.
MCDOWELL: One thing, he would never do this, but make your meatless Fridays and then that would help Catholics who don't eat any meat on Friday. But you know what, that steaming sack of cooked cabbage would never ever do that, because again it would be religious in some way, shape or form.
And number two, if he's worried about saving Mother Earth, make the subways run, let people avoid getting in their cars and get all the subways and not get their faces cut or pushed and thrown in front of a moving train and it shouldn't take two and a half hours to get 60 miles from Connecticut into New York City. He's got his priorities misplaced. He's worrying about people. Well, haven't a damned--
GUTFELD: You know Dana, I actually want all my tax money to go to mental health. I think that's like I can't think of anything more important.
PERINO: But if it actually went there.
GUTFELD: That's what I'm saying, that's what bugs me about this is that, I tried to look and find out where all this money went, so that means that money, that's almost a double crime. PERINO: These announcements and the announcement about the 900 million into the mental health was on the same week that they announced that the mayor had $773 million for a renewal project for schools also deemed a failure. That's that money down the drain. And also, well lentils is protein, but kids need protein.
WATTERS: I know but--
PERINO: In order to think.
WATTERS: Is lentil - that's not going to fill you up.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
WATTERS: Lentils.
PERINO: It's not going to fill up.
WATTERS: Let's see some varsity football players eat lentil soup for lunch and get out in the field.
WILLIAMS: There are now a bunch of NFL and NBA players who don't eat meat. And so, I don't think that's--
WATTERS: They don't win championships.
WILLIAMS: Oh! Yes. They have. But you know just apart from the bashing of Bill de Blasio which I think is unfair. Crime in this town you should know is down 8 percent this year. And most of these murders are talking about gang related in one section North Brooklyn, but--
GUTFELD: So, they don't matter? That's kind of racist, Juan.
WILLIAMS: I love playing along when The Five bashes people unnecessary. I guess they think--
GUTFELD: We don't bash anybody.
WILLIAMS: Liberal, so are going after de Blasio. But I will say this--
MCDOWELL: There is a pothole as big as a refrigerator in front of my apartment building. I have every right to pay out about that.
WILLIAMS: You should go to Detroit and Baltimore and check out some other cities. This city has--
WATTERS: Yes, we're better than Detroit. Is that your argument?
WILLIAMS: No.
GUTFELD: They're all run by liberals.
WILLIAMS: My argument is this. This town is attracting more young people, more people--
WATTERS: Not from Amazon.
WILLIAMS: Ratings going up and jobs are going up.
PERINO: Everything is great.
WILLIAMS: This town is a boomtown. But anyway, my key point is the health of these kids. I think what de Blasio saying about climate change ridiculous. But I think when it comes to saying to kids, hey, you're being pushed hamburgers on your hot dogs, take a day break from eating meat. That's a good idea.
MCDOWELL: He's not anybody's - any of these students Daddy. That's the problem.
WILLIAMS: He's the mayor. He can make this call. That's why you're against of.
GUTFELD: It's the mayor mac cheese. The Hentai Mayor mac cheese. All right, breaking new details on the college admissions cheating scandal involving two high profile Hollywood actresses. An update next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're here today to announce charges in the largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice.
PERINO: We're awaiting a court appearance from actress Felicity Huffman. The star along with Full House actress Lori Loughlin are among dozens caught up in a bombshell college admissions scheme where they allegedly paid up to millions of dollars to get their children into elite universities. Prosecutors in Massachusetts laid out the charges earlier.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Singer used that money to bribe college officials, Division 1 coaches, college exam administrators, all to secure admission for the children of his clients, not on their merits, but through fraud. Singer worked with the parents to fabricate impressive athletic profiles for their kids including fake athletic credentials or honors or fake participation in elite club teams. There can be no separate college admissions system for the wealthy and I'll add that there will not be a separate criminal justice system either.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PERINO: All right. A good line there indeed. Juan, one thing that some colleges have thought about doing is eliminating taking any SAT or ACT scores like forget that and just go on grades, essays, merits, interviews, things like that. Do you think that would be a good idea? WILLIAMS: I'm not sure about that because the idea was that it would be a matter of achievement that if you qualify then you're really that smart. Now, we know that that has a history. I mean that was intended to keep out the Jews and the immigrants and the like way back, which is by the way the same basis for legacies which is the number one reason along with athletics.
PERINO: Right.
WILLIAMS: But to me given you know the discrimination that I see in terms of elementary and secondary education, I prefer something like what Texas was doing with the top 10 percent, from the top 10 percent of your class in high school, you can get into at least the University of Texas and those schools, so that you can get in the people who are trying their best, who have demonstrated some capacity wherever they go to school or else with this. This Dana, this is absolutely the rich and the privilege.
PERINO: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Taking advantage and rigging the system. This is not about which is what you see every day in the papers, somebody saying, it was affirmative action for those minority kids. This is not you. This reveals the real disadvantage, the real discrimination in the system. PERINO: One thing, it was amazing Jesse, as you look at the list of all the coaches that are implicated, Stanford for sailing (ph), Yale, the women's soccer coach, there's like $500,000, Georgetown tennis, UCLA. You have soccer, water polo, USC water polo coach.
WATTERS: Yes. They didn't bribe the administration, they bribed the coaches, I guess--
PERINO: Right.
WATTERS: Because they're paid less. They were more susceptible to bribes. But Dana now I know I didn't get into Yale. I have been wondering for so long who took my spot. And now I know it was all rigged.
PERINO: Because your parents would never do that.
WATTERS: No.
PERINO: They never do anything like that.
WATTERS: And they couldn't afford it. Also, I've been noticing the - I think lack of intellectual depth on college campuses. When I was doing Watersworld and now it makes perfect sense. You do not have to go to an elite school to be successful. My sister went to Oxford and I make 10 times more money than she does. And I've been wanting to say that for such a long time and think about this also too, this is a corruption situation that involves two liberal institutions in this country, Hollywood and higher education. That's the real collusion. That is what the witch hunt did not found.
PERINO: The FBI has found collusion.
WATTERS: Yes, they finally found collusion in that.
PERINO: Before we end this segment, I'd like to check your phone for a mom text. You think Hollywood, maybe the people are a little nervous, because this happens more.
GUTFELD: There are a lot of parents who are going to be awake tonight wondering when the door is going to be knocked on. You know we talk about the problems of college. It's the way college is. The Internet has either changed or destroyed industries. I mean I worked in magazines and magazines have forever been destroyed. Nobody's reading them anymore.
With the combination of the Internet and robotics. There is no need for brick and mortar colleges anymore, you can lower that overhead and make college extremely cheap. I've spent more time on like reading. I've learned more from four years of watching podcasts than I had in a four-year education. You can get anything and everything you want. You know unless you know you want to work on cadavers and stuff like that, you can't do that online. Although maybe, who knows. We can have a body sent to you, but it's time to kill the university as we know it and start thinking about ways to make it like as - Bernie talks about a free university. Start with that point and go, how do you get there. How do you work backwards?
PERINO: Right.
GUTFELD: Because it's going to be about innovation. It's going to be about online.
WATTERS: And I thought we wanted our kids to move out of the house.
GUTFELD: That's the problem.
WATTERS: Let's stay in the house.
PERINO: Dagen, the last word from you.
MCDOWELL: Make him start working at 18. What is Holly weird come to that some power couple on the left coast can't get their kids into a decent liberal school that they've got to pay somebody for that, I kind of love that.
PERINO: I love that. All right.
MCDOWELL: Come out of the woodwork.
PERINO: We have all been victim of those insanely annoying robo calls and sadly, it's only getting worse. We have details ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MCDOWELL: There are enough to make your blood boil. I'm talking about those super annoying robo calls where you make the mistake of picking up an unfamiliar number. You think it's your great aunt and are instantly bombarded with an unwanted call. I've been the victim of one myself. Listen to this voicemail scam. Somebody left me
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Social Security number is being suspended due to criminal activity. My name is Officer Dan Morgan, calling you from Social Security Administration. Don't disregard this message and do return the call before we take any legal action against you. Goodbye. Take care.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCDOWELL: I like the take care part. I've got some bad news The FCC says that nearly half of the calls that you received this year will be spam. Dana.
PERINO: Well, I think that that if you are looking for a silver lining that the FCC is not waiting to do something. So, one of the things they're asking these companies to do is to create a digital fingerprint basically, so that it will be clear to them, very clear and if they are doing any funny business that they will get in trouble. But also, these scammers are hurting actually legitimate companies. So, they have every reason to want to do that.
The other thing is that the FCC has done the largest fines in the 85-year history of the FCC. So, at least there's something somebody trying to do something about it.
MCDOWELL: It's quick to get roped into these scams though, if you pick up the phone and a moment of weakness, I've got your bank account number, I've heard so many stories about this.
GUTFELD: Sometimes when you see, it's kind of weird in this day and age when you see an unfamiliar number, it's kind of excites you. Who could that be, it could be anybody and you pick it up and it's somebody speaking another language, it's mostly the ones that I get are Asian and I believe it's because of robotic repetitive action, there is a computer that's just putting in numbers and then yours comes up and--
WATTERS: I thought I was the only one that got that one.
GUTFELD: I get two a day and they're just - and at some point, this will be directed at your password. And this is the small example of like non- conscious thinking of machines and you can't stop it, once it starts it's going to override all consequences. That's what scares me, it's just not going to be your phone--
MCDOWELL: Don't answer the phone
WATTERS: Yes, I don't answer the phone because media relations scared me. I am not answering the phone. They said Jesse, don't answer the phone if it's an unidentified number because it could be a reporter. So, if I answer the phone and it's a reporter and they ask me Watters, what do you think about this and then I hang up. They write the story reached by phone Watters hung up on me, and I look like a jerk which was probably the point of their story.
PERINO: That was--
WATTERS: Right. Now, I screen everything, I even screen my mother.
GUTFELD: Yes.
WATTERS: Because I don't know what the number is.
PERINO: Text me.
WATTERS: Right. Text me.
MCDOWELL: You don't screen calls?
WILLIAMS: No, I don't. But I mean I don't - here's the problem. And I have a D.C. area code, so I get a ton of these. Apparently, they focus on places like D.C. where the government, you have people like if the White House calls, it doesn't come up as a number. It just comes up as blank or even calls from colleagues here at Fox come on my phone is unknown. So, I pick up, but it's less to me. You know I occasionally get the calls that you guys get in foreign languages, I don't know what. It's more often it's just people like the hotels, the airline--
GUTFELD: Yes, Marriott. WILLIAMS: Yes.
GUTFELD: Marriott is the worst.
WILLIAMS: Absolutely. And so, and then I get things like do you need. There is nothing wrong with your credit card, but you can get a lower rate. And I'm like click. Come on. Get me out of here. I got things to do.
MCDOWELL: What's Marriott?
GUTFELD: Marriott, you stay in Marriott and all of a sudden, they want you to fill out a survey thing. But they do it every day, they call you every single day. So finally, I returned, and they hung up on me, I go why do you keep doing this. They hung up on me.
WILLIAMS: No, but it's them and it's everywhere that you leave your phone number.
GUTFELD: Exactly.
WATTERS: Oh! Yes. So, I get a call the other day from the maitre d at The Palm in Los Angeles. And they go Mr. Watters, we have a reservation for you, for 15 people tonight at 8 PM. And I said I didn't make the reservation--
GUTFELD: Wow.
WATTERS: All the way across the country. And then I said you know that some guy said he was going to bring a bunch of people at 8 o'clock 15 and they're all going to be wearing MAGA hats and MAGA shirts. Is that okay with the dress code?
GUTFELD: That's hilarious.
WATTERS: I don't know what that was.
GUTFELD: Do you think that was a Fox affiliate? That is the funniest story.
WILLIAMS: You know who placed that call? Jussie Smollett.
GUTFELD: The other Jesse.
WATTERS: It's Jesse.
MCDOWELL: One More thing.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WATTERS: It's time now for One More Thing. Dana.
PERINO: Well, there was a birthday today, it was here, it was down in D.C. It was Mitt Romney's birthday. He's of course the Senator from Utah. He got a Twinkie cake and so they brought it in there. The only thing is everybody was a little interested in something they felt like they've never seen before, the very way that he blew out the candles.
GUTFELD: What?
PERINO: He picked the candles up out of the Twinkie cake and blew them out individually.
GUTFELD: All right. That's why he could never be President, right there.
PERINO: Do you think it's because he didn't want to get germs all over the cake?
GUTFELD: No. He's just a strange man.
PERINO: I mean he's really, really nice.
WATTERS: That is correct.
MCDOWELL: That's really true.
PERINO: Conservatism, but I don't know I think it's pretty nice.
WATTERS: I don't know.
PERINO: Happy birthday, Senator.
WATTERS: Happy birthday.
GUTFELD: That's amazing.
MCDOWELL: Him at the Daytona 500 was the weirdest thing you'd ever seen.
WATTERS: What did he do?
MCDOWELL: That's why they lost. He was just being weird.
WATTERS: Okay. Juan Williams?
WILLIAMS: By the way, I'm all for sanitary behavior.
PERINO: Yes.
WILLIAMS: All right. Last week, we told you. Thank you. Last week, we showed you a man who lost his lottery ticket then found it and realized he won hundreds of millions of dollars. Well, the fickle finger of fate showed its face again this week. Take a look at this video.
That guy was seconds away from being crushed by falling bricks. This happened in North London. Luckily, the London Fire Brigade said, no one was hurt, but it took two hours to clean up the rubble. Well, I bet it took longer for that guy's heart to recover once he saw that video.
MCDOWELL: Yes. Geez.
WATTERS: Timing is everything. Mr. Gutfeld.
GUTFELD: All right. Let's do this. Animals Are Great. Yes. You know what, this is the greatest feeding time video I've seen, because it involves a bearded dragon, a slippery hardwood floor and a blueberry. Look happy he is, but you've got to listen to his feet. Look at that. Look how happy he is. You see the bearded dragon. It's fun being a bearded dragon. But when you throw blueberries, he's got blueberry mouth. If you notice, his mouth is blue.
MCDOWELL: Stinking.
GUTFELD: He said, I love blueberries.
WATTERS: Where's his beard.
GUTFELD: Out for a walk.
WATTERS: Okay.
PERINO: Yes. he's pretty cute, Greg.
GUTFELD: Thank you. And that's why, Animals Are Great. Yes, you know what, animals are great, Jesse. They are great.
WATTERS: Are you sure that was the best feeding video you've ever seen.
GUTFELD: The best one involving a bearded dragon and a blueberry.
WATTERS: I will give you that then. All right. You ever want to go to a game, but you have the kids with you, what do you do. Can they last until like the third inning or to the first quarter? Here is a dad hack. Watch this guy, right here watching the game. Just has a beer in his hand, other hand he's got the iPhone playing a movie, so the girl can watch and eat and not bother him and want to leave immediately. It's called a dad hack.
GUTFELD: That is fantastic.
MCDOWELL: That's great.
WATTERS: All right. Dagen McDowell.
MCDOWELL: Okay. Kids rock. This is a billboard, a way to wish my dad a Happy Birthday. Watch this. A Jersey dad getting birthday wishes from around the world thanks to, well maybe a prank by his two sons, Chris Farris birthday isn't until this weekend, the 16th. But his face and phone number on this giant billboard along roadway leading out to Hotlantic City. It reads, wish my dad a Happy Birthday. He's gotten over 15,000 messages and calls from the Philippines and--
PERINO: He has not complained.
MCDOWELL: Luxemburg, Nepal and Australia. He did have to change his voicemail though saying, thank you for calling to wish me Happy Birthday. I really appreciate it. There you go.
PERINO: You know the economy is doing well, when you can afford a billboard.
WATTERS: How much is a billboard.
PERINO: I don't know.
GUTFELD: I don't know. I've thought about it though. I thought about getting one.
WATTERS: What would you put on the billboard.
GUTFELD: I would - you know what, because I care about my community, it would be something very caring like feed the poor. Something like that. I wouldn't waste it on a birthday. How selfish is that.
WATTERS: What about no meatless Monday.
GUTFELD: Yes.
WATTERS: Here in Manhattan.
GUTFELD: Eat a cheeseburger, you freak.
WATTERS: Eat a burger.
GUTFELD: That's what I'd say. Or I give my love to all the bearded dragons.
WATTERS: That's right.
GUTFELD: Yes.
WATTERS: I thought the bearded dragon was something that you see it like a zoo - not a zoo. Like a frail, or a carnival or something--
GUTFELD: That's not--
WATTERS: A bearded lady. That's a bearded lady, that's right.
GUTFELD: Yes. So, we're stretching.
WILLIAMS: Not as bad as that lady who stretched into the jaguar.
WATTERS: That's right. That animal was not great.
PERINO: That animal is totally fine.
WATTERS: Set your DVRs. Never miss an episode of The Five. This Special Report is up next. Hey, Bret.
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