'The Five' reacts to Biden's claims that GOP is 'lying' about Dems' support of 'defunding police'
Jesse Watters, Jessica Tarlov, Greg Gutfeld, Dagen McDowell and Katie Pavlich discuss the rise in anti-police rhetoric in Democrat politics
This is a rush transcript of "The Five" on July 22, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
KATIE PAVLICH, FOX NEWS HOST: Hello everyone. I'm Katie Pavlich along with Dagen McDowell, Jessica Tarlov, Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld. It's 5:00 in New York City and this is "The Five."
Get ready for masks to make a comeback even if you're vaccinated. Liberal cities are beginning to mandate them again as COVID cases from the delta variant surge across the country. And a new report says the White House is weighing whether it should shift guidance.
Aides reportedly talking to the CDC and one idea being considered is asking all Americans to wear masks when vaccinated and unvaccinated people are together indoors or at public places. Regardless of whether you have the shot, the White House pressed about it earlier today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETER DOOCY, FOX NEWS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: On masks, a few weeks ago, the president said we were closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus. Is that still the case if you guys are now reportedly considering asking vaccinated people to wear masks again?
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well, first of all, the CDC director, who oversees decisions along those lines and all of our public health decisions, made clear that that was not a decision that had been made just a few hours ago.
So we'll continue to communicate, convey what the actor of public health guidelines is. Nothing has changed about that. And of course we have ongoing discussions about how to keep the American people safe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAVLICH: But expect there to be pushback if masks make a return. Florida governor Ron DeSantis ripping into the idea of bringing back any mandates.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): I get a little bit frustrated when I see some of these jurisdictions saying -- even if you're healthy and vaccinated you must wear a mask as we're seeing increased cases. Understand what that message is sending to people who aren't vaccinated. It's telling them that the vaccines don't work. I think that's the worst message you can send to people at this time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAVLICH: So Jesse, the reason why there's been some hesitancy is that the White House roll-out of trying to get people vaccinated went poorly because they said basically you have no freedoms even if you're vaccinated, lifted some of the mandates hoping that would help, it's not and now they're setting themselves up for another credibility problem with the efficacy of the vaccine by saying maybe vaccinated people need to be wearing mask again.
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST: Biden's like the girl who keeps sending you mixed signals. You know, one day she's flirting and the next day she won't give you the time of day. It's like where do we stand. I just want to know where we stand. And the country does not know where Joe Biden stands on vaccines, on masks, and on delta.
I was getting my hair cut the other day. When it was finished, the barber says, by the way, you know, you're in the media, you know things. I said you'd be surprised. And I said what, what was the question? And he said, what is the deal with delta and are they going to shut my barber shop down again here in New York?
PAVLICH: Right.
WATTERS: And people are scared, Katie, because they don't know what's coming because we're just getting all these mixed signals. Right now there is no spike in cases. It is not a spike. We were at record low in cases and then there was a small rise in cases, and they're calling it this huge spike. It's not.
Deaths are at an all-time low. Repeat. All-time low. And masks are not going to flatten the curve. They never did. It was the vaccines that did it. So you can't ask vaccinated Americans to wear a mask, it destroys vaccine confidence and it actually punishes you for getting the shot, for doing the right thing.
And they already destroyed vaccine confidence when they screwed up the J&J stuff and that what sent those vaccination rates way down. If Biden wants to destroy the recovery and ruin my summer and everybody else's summer, he will bring back the mandates and he will try to out Fauci to sell it and the CDC woman who's been wrong every single time.
And it's just going to make everybody angry. And you can't do that while at the same time letting hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants pour in who haven't been vaccinated and shipping them to swing states. You cannot have both.
PAVLICH: So Greg, where I see this going is they're going to make this argument that, well, the honor system doesn't work when it comes to vaccines and all of you people don't want a vaccine passport system so therefore everybody else has to wear masks. That's where I see this argument going.
GREG GUTFELD, FOX NEWS HOST: I remember this was brought up by Pelosi and I remember screaming at the TV which I do now that I'm old. Our entire country is based on the honor system. What do you think -- what do you think -- you know, what do you think we do every day? The honor say we don't commit crimes, we cooperate with each other, we tell the truth, we try to do our best.
Everything is an honor system based on trusting the individual. So I'm sorry, that's the way it's going to go. You know, the government should not invoke a mask mandate because Americans will follow laws, but they won't follow orders. And this sounds like an order and you can't take an order from a politician because they're liars and they're thieves, especially Pelosi.
I had a really good thing I wanted to say. Oh, this is the Gutfeld rule, the first person to violate an order is always the one who gave it, right?
That should be in Bartlett's quotations and if it's not, Bartlett is a comey pinko (ph). But we can't have our freedoms with strings attached.
Another good quotation, I think.
But the thing is, you can't promise an incentive for a very invasive action like a vaccine. It's like when you're a kid, the doctor always said, get this shot, you get a lollipop. The mask, having the masks removed was the
2021 version of the lollipop. We were promised a lollipop and now they're saying we're not going to give you a lollipop. Those are fighting words.
WATTERS: That's tough.
GUTFELD: I'm going to give -- nicely done.
WATTERS: Thank you.
GUTFELD: So here's the deal. I have the solution -- I have the solution.
One, if you're vaxed you should be able to do what you want. If you're unvaxed, do your best to wear a mask, right? That seems like common sense.
That's the honor system.
Three, everyone by next year, lose 15 pounds. Because the risk factors for COVID are weight and age and you can't do anything about your age, but you can do something about your weight and if you lose weight you also reduce risk factors for a myriad, myriad --
PAVLICH: Myriad.
GUTFELD: -- a myriad, which is -- or panoply of diseases, Jessica. And I know you want people to die, but I'm trying to help people.
JESSICA TARLOV, FOX NEWS HOST: But I want people to be skinny when they die.
PAVLICH: Well, got to be beautiful.
WATTERS: Nice looking corpse.
PAVLICH: Well, I'm so glad, Greg, that you brought up the people giving the orders but not following the orders because just last week we had one of those Texas Democrats, Jessica, Donna Howard flying maskless on this private plane, and now she's calling for a mask mandate for everybody else.
She sent out a tweet saying that she thinks that everybody should be masked. She said we need to follow the science here, Texas needs to change course and allow for universal mask wearing to prevent the spread of highly contagious delta variant especially as children under 12 cannot get vaccinated.
So, here she is coming to D.C. The Texas Democrats are spreading COVID all over the city and now she wants everybody else to be masked.
TARLOV: So, I think we need a language shift from getting COVID to getting severe COVID or getting hospitalized because that's really from the get go what we've all been trying to avoid. And that's what vaccinations do.
They keep you out of a severe case of COVID. They keep you out of the hospital. They keep you off a ventilator. And because we are over testing at this level, including six of those 12 Democrats, so everyone on that plane was vaccinated. Half of them ended up getting a milder asymptomatic case of COVID that we know about because we are testing so many people who are getting normal seasonal allergy stuff, flu things.
We also spent a year in a mask, so now we're being exposed to all these microbes that we were protected from for the last 12 months and everyone now has a cold. There's a big "New York Times" piece about why is the summer cold so bad this year. Because we wore a mask for a year, that does not mean you have COVID.
Everyone who is dying, 99.7 percent, they're unvaccinated. We don't want to take away the incentive to get the vaccine by making everyone put the mask back on, but we do need to figure out a better strategy to get the hesitant people who are hanging on to that to get their shot.
PAVLICH: But don't you think it's very difficult for people to take orders from people like that who aren't following their own rules. I mean, that doesn't make it any easier for people to say I've done this for a year.
Sure, I'll do it again even though they're not doing it.
TARLOV: I have not defended the Texas Democrats in this sense whatsoever. I think they should have stayed and filibustered and given great floor speeches, but there are people like Steve Scalise who is in a huge position of power who only just got his vaccine like last week.
Mitch McConnell is pleading with people, Ron DeSantis finally had to stand up and say, hey, you need to get your shot because was it 99.5 percent of cases, hospitalizations now in Florida are unvaccinated.
GUTFELD: How do you know why Scalise didn't get it?
PAVLICH: Right. There are lots of reasons why.
GUTFELD: I mean, the guy was shot. Like, if you have some immune issues, you know, or any kind of disabilities, there are, there are people that -- I mean --
TARLOV: A hundred percent, but he should talk about it. A hundred percent of Democrats are vaccinated.
GUTFELD: That's what they say.
PAVLICH: Contrary to popular belief, there are doctors who have told people not to get vaccinated for very individual health reasons. Dagen, I want to get this in because this is something I think that people really care about.
DAGEN MCDOWELL, FOX NEWS HOST: Yes.
PAVLICH: Last night, President Biden --
MCDOWELL: Oh, lord.
PAVLICH: -- talked about kids under 12 and whether they should wear a mask.
Let's listen to that and then we'll get your response.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The CDC is going to say that what we should do is everyone over the age -- under the age of 12 should probably be wearing a mask in school. That's probably what's going to happen.
Secondly, those over the age of 12 who are able to get vaccinated, if you're vaccinated, you shouldn't wear a mask. If you aren't vaccinated, you should be wearing a mask.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAVLICH: Dagen.
MCDOWELL: There is poor CDC data on children and adolescents so I don't know how they can make that call. Dr. Marty Makary wrote about this in the "Wall Street Journal" and I will be brief. Three hundred and thirty-five children under the age of 18 died with a COVID diagnosis. They make no -- they don't distinguish between actually COVID causing the death or the child having COVID and dying from something else.
There are problems with the adolescent hospitalization data. There are problems with the vaccination side effect data. It goes on and on and on.
So, I don't know how they can make a call about this, quite frankly, at this point.
Jessica also read the Marty Makary co-authored op-ed in the "Wall Street" -
- in the "Washington Post" about we're over testing. But I want to speak for, allow me to speak for on behalf of maybe all vaccinated Americans, people who had COVID and have antibodies, about forcing us to wear masks.
Bite me. It's not going to happen. Mask off.
The White House always makes is motivated by political gain but even looking at mask mandates through blue colored -- deep blue colored glasses, this is stunningly stupid. You know, all the liberals last year who were the mask police, who were front -- yelling, streaking at people about getting masked up. They went in all their superiority and got vaccinated as well, and they're really happy not wearing a mask.
You can breathe. You don't have chin acne. You don't have rosacea or styes on your eyes. When you go on a date you don't look like you've been sucking on a plunger. So everybody's perfectly happy and so there is zero political benefit for Biden and company. That's how lost they are.
PAVLICH: Its torture for little kids who are sitting in class all day with this mask and it seems to be for the comfort of adults who can get vaccinated and be protected or who had COVID to make the kids suffer as a result of that.
MCDOWELL: Children did not contract it as easily as adults. They don't spread it as easily as adults and again, there are 335 children who died from COVID and the CDC doesn't even know if it was actually from COVID.
PAVLICH: All right. Straight ahead, President Biden tries to claim Republicans are lying about Democrats defunding the police.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WATTERS: President Biden and Democrats desperately trying to separate themselves from the crime surge raging in liberal cities and we've been showing you scenes like this where emboldened criminals can just casually walk out of the store with bags of stolen stuff and not get in trouble.
Biden is now trying to claim Republicans are lying about Democrats defunding the police.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: How do you respond to Republicans who try to paint you and your party as anti-police?
BIDEN: They're lying.
LEMON: What about defunding the police, though, because there is --
BIDEN: No, I never, never, never said defunding the police.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: So, let's refresh his memory on which party wants to cut funding to the cops.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. AYANNA PRESSLEY (D-MA): Yes, I support the defund movement.
REP. ILHAN OMAR (D-MN): Not only do we need to defund, but we need to dismantle and start anew.
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): Why use the word defund, why use the word defund? This is the word that's coming from the street.
UNKNOWN: I am for defunding the police.
UNKNOWN: A moment to reimagine policing.
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: In many cities in America, over one-third of their city budget goes to police, so we have to have this conversation.
UNKNOWN: Can we agree that we can redirect some of the funding?
BIDEN: Yes. Absolutely.
(END VIEDO CLIP)
WATTERS: Jessica? The floor is yours.
GUTFELD: Don't fall on it.
TARLOV: So, Joe Biden -- the question -- if it was just have you ever advocated to defund the police, Joe Biden would be right to say they're lying. Joe Biden has never advocated for that.
GUTFELD: He just said redirect.
WATTERS: He said redirect.
TARLOV: Redirecting is not actually defunding. Defunding means --
WATTERS: He said redirect money from the police.
TARLOV: Right, to what? You're going to make that to like nail salons? No.
It's to have -- they've even done this in New York City and actually there is some preliminary results that sending some 911 calls to people like social workers is making a big difference versus sending police -- I'm just telling you the facts.
WATTERS: He has a gun. She's pointing the gun at me. Come quick. We're going to transfer your call.
TARLOV: But that's not all the calls that go to 911, obviously. Joe Biden has talked about that --
WATTERS: So they wait -- so they say, well, let's drill down on this. So you're saying the 911 operator waits and then listens and then slowly makes a determination whether or not to send real 911 or whether it deserves a social worker. You think that that's just split second decision that's going to be good every time.
TARLOV: It's not necessarily going to be good every time but if you can have some more effective --
WATTERS: If I was the victim I want it to be good every time.
TARLOV: Okay, but not every call to 911 is he has a gun. A lot of people call 911 for other sorts of things where a police officer showing up armed is not going to be the right approach. But either way, obviously the montage is real, every member of the squad advocated for this. Nancy Pelosi didn't, whip Clyburn didn't, Joe Biden didn't. People in positions of power. It is obviously a bad issue for Democrats. We don't want to go in the midterms with it hanging around our necks.
WATTERS: That's all we wanted you to say.
TARLOV: Well, why didn't you just say that? I could have avoided two minutes of chat.
WATTERS: All right, Greg. I mean, it's pretty bad that your biggest defense is na-uh (ph), they did it.
GUTFELD: I do not blame Joe Biden at all. He clearly doesn't have the internet. And he also doesn't watch Fox because if he stuck to his normal menu of news, he may not never have heard this before. It was like the fine people hoax. It was news to him that it wasn't true. That's why they stopped it. It took him like a year to stop saying it.
And also, he doesn't get any push back from the (inaudible) media. You saw Don Lemon just, you know, nodding along like he's listening to Josh Groban.
Joe's like an undisciplined kid. He can -- he break things and throw tantrums but the dotting parents are the media and they're, oh, he's so adorable when he lies. Isn't that cute? Maybe he really believes that.
No one will ever call him on it so the bigger problem here is I think that the Dems have turned a basic need into a political football and the people playing with that football are immune to the consequences of their action.
They are behind gated communities, we say that over and over again, but there's a weird let them eat cake thing here, especially among the national news media.
It's not happening exactly outside their door so they don't really care. I think the solution will not come from Republicans because no one's going to listen to them. No one is going to listen to Fox. They're going to people like Jessica or Harold Ford.
Moderate Democrats have to expunge the elite activist class who are deliberately subverting our nation by unraveling the basic tenants of justice. And the only people who can do that are Democrats like Jessica.
You guys have to make a stance. Like if we have nuters (ph), you know, on the other side, we're pretty good at booting them to the street. It's time because you've got a nugget of nut bags who want to destroy this country.
PAVLICH: A nugget of nut bags.
WATTERS: Boot your nuters (ph), Jessica.
GUTFELD: Boot your nuters (ph).
WATTERS: And then when you're finished booting them, expunge them.
GUTFELD: Hit them in the nuters.
WATTERS: Dagen.
MCDOWELL: Don't these people in power, these left wing nuts, to use your word, don't they listen to the family members who are on local TV and on Fox News who have lost their loved ones who -- there was a woman on earlier on Fox News whose son was murdered, and the prosecutor, the circuit attorney, cut a deal on her son's murderer. And she -- I guess they're ignoring that.
And they're also -- there's a bigger lie that's going on here. And, by the way, Joe Biden, and I say this over and over and over again. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris both proposed getting rid of cash bail. That is the revolving door that has caused a spike in crime here in New York and in other places.
But they're all part of this liberal ecosystem, from the lunatics in Washington to the left wing -- the governors, the mayors, the city council, the district attorneys who have implemented these policies that pamper the perpetrators. Gavin Newsom said something yesterday and I want to push back on it. I forgot to yesterday.
He said the evidence doesn't back it up. Over the last three decades, we've actually seen a significant decline in crime in his state and they say it about other places. You know why? Because there were policies in place that you have ripped up. He's talking about three decades where it was conservative policies that cracked down on crime. That put people in jail.
And I just wanted to point out just like here in New York, in California, the violent crime rate was up last year, the rape rate fell but aggravated assault increased. And so he's, again, focusing on -- he's trying to take credit for something he didn't do.
PAVLICH: Well, he's being very dishonest because they're not recording the crime. So, if you don't arrest anybody or if you don't prosecute anybody it's not in the record and you can say, hey, look, the statistics are less than last year so therefore crime is going down.
But you don't have to be part of the literal defunding monetarily of the police to defund the police. I mean, Democrats across the board have adopted the BLM message, the Black Lives Matter Movement. They didn't speak out last summer when cities were burning and they were causing $2 billion worth of damage which of course demoralized the police.
They basically painted every single police officer in the country with this racism argument that if you're a white police officer, you're out to get black men every single time you wake up and put on your badge and go out on the street. That's demoralizing, which is why you're seeing these mass retirements, nobody signing up to do the job.
And also, you know, it's amazing how Democrats have embraced BLM which is proven itself to not be a movement interested in black lives or else they would speak out, again, on all these crime that's happening in black neighborhoods, but really about enriching themselves and taking the country into more of a Marxist style of economy rather than the capitalist society we have now.
And so, you don't have to say I support defund or dismantle like AOC or Ilhan Omar to be part of that movement. Democrats thoroughly embrace the movement, emboldening criminals and demoralize police officers across the country.
WATTERS: All right, we got to go and Jessica's going to start expunging the nuts as we speak. No pressure. President Biden has a message for struggling small businesses. Too bad, deal with it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GUTFELD: Businesses all across America struggling to find workers but they aren't getting a lot of sympathy from President Biden. Check out this exchange with a small business owner.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: How do you and the Biden administration plan to incentivize those that haven't returned to work yet?
BIDEN: Two things. One, if you notice, we kept you open. And I think it really is a matter of people deciding now that they have opportunities to do other things and there is a shortage of employees. People are looking to make more money and to bargain. And so I think your business, and the tourist business, is really going to be in a bind for a little while. And one of the things, we're ending all those things that are there things that's keeping people back from going back to work, etcetera. It'll be interesting to see what --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUTFELD: But it was so nice of him to say we kept you open. Wasn't that pleasant? You know, Dagen, it's kind of weird that I am a small business owner, that I know more about economics than an 80-year-old President of the United States. If you pay more people, you're going to have to raise all the salaries, and then you're going to have to start letting go workers so you can afford the higher salaries, or you increase the price of your product, which then increases inflation. And that's what you're going to see. Did I just explain Economics 101?
MCDOWELL: Yes.
GUTFELD: I think I deserve a Nobel Prize.
MCDOWELL: So, I have a 10-page article from the Wall Street Journal that I plan to read the entirety of it out loud in this segment about how much the goods that are going up in price that companies are having to raise all these prices. Inflation has clearly become a huge issue for the White House. But Joe Biden keeps coming out and saying we're going to spend more money, so that's going to help inflation.
And actually, people's wages, when adjusted for inflation, are going down.
They're down in the most recent month, and they're down over the last year.
But that whole -- that is the one thing that I wrote down. We kept you open. Are we such a benevolent king and that business owner is just some plebe? That is the thinking of somebody who has been in politics for five decades. It's awful. Screw that.
GUTFELD: Yes, it's definitely -- it's only something, Jessica, a Democrat would say. Because democrat believes that the power of big government and the -- that that Trumps anything like small business. Meanwhile, who made a lot of money in the -- during -- because of Biden big business. All the small businesses are affected. Should he be impeached?
TARLOV: That's tomorrow.
GUTFELD: OK.
TARLOV: I already got the topic list. No, he shouldn't be impeached. So, his answer was actually he talked for two and a half minutes in Biden style.
PAVLICH: Biden style.
TARLOV: And there were actually a lot of -- like, Gangnam Style.
PERINO: Yes.
GUTFELD: It's one long palindrome.
TARLOV: But there was actually a lot of sentimentality to it. He talked about how his father-in-law of his deceased wife was a restaurant owner up in Syracuse and desperately wanted him to stay to take over the business and he said, like God love you for what you do. I also want to point out not that it doesn't mean that small businesses aren't struggling. That gentleman who asked the question owns 39 restaurants.
He's not a mom-and-pop shop on the corner. People have been getting wiped out by Amazon for years, right?
GUTFELD: Right.
TARLOV: It's a different kind of thing. The inflation issue is definitely becoming a polling nightmare for Democrats, because people are -- their groceries costs more. I've seen a lot online, Bethany Mandel has been tweeting about the price of diapers. She just had, I think, her fifth child last week and she's like, oh, my God, I've only taken a year and a half out of this game and the price is so exorbitant.
And these are things people need. And if that continues into an election, you are going to have a problem. And he said we have an economist. We have several who are saying that this is temporary. That is my hope. But there definitely needs to be a backup plan to this if it isn't something that's temporary and you want to stay in power.
WATTERS: Did you just say The Real Housewife?
TARLOV: Bethany Mandel?
WATTERS: Is she a Real Housewife?
GUTFELD: No.
MCDOWELL: That's Bethenny Frankel.
WATTERS: Bethany Mandel.
PAVLICH: I think Bethany Mandel, she's a wonderful writer, and she has five children, and she's a stay-at-home mother who homeschools her children.
TARLOV: Seth Mandel's wife. She's a great --
WATTERS: Oh, Seth Mandel's wife. I don't know who these people are. Listen
--
GUTFELD: But wait a minute.
PAVLICH: She's a wonderful person who knows a lot about a lot of things.
GUTFELD: What about the price of diapers, because you got a baby?
TARLOV: You got a baby.
PAVLICH: He doesn't know anything about the diapers.
WATTERS: I look -- I look at other prices. I look at other prices they're probably up. He lied out of the gate. He said, We kept you open. Biden's party kept restaurants closed, not only last year --
TARLOV: But they got PPP loans.
WATTERS: -- but into this year. And that was a Trump program that bailed out those restaurants, not him. And then to say that, you know, we kept you open -- Democrat governors were arresting restaurant owners who tried to open and fining them. And then you've spelled it out perfectly, that's why we had the $200 fries, Gutfeld, because you're competing with the federal government's $300 fake bonus. So, you have to raise wages, you have small profit margins, pass it on to the customer, raise prices. That's why things are so expensive.
And then he said the funniest thing. He said spending $6 trillion will not increase inflation, it will decrease inflation. And then he cited Moody's.
Now, never listen to Moody's. You know this. Moody's is a left-wing operation. Mark Zandi is a left-wing guy, donates to the Clintons, donates to all Democrats. He predicted that Trump was going to sink the economy into a recession in 2018 and destroy three and a half million jobs, and predicted Barack Obama's recovery was going to be the hottest on record.
So, never listen to a Democrat when they cite Moody's.
GUTFELD: There you go.
WATTERS: That's a warning.
GUTFELD: Katie, it seems to me that the Biden ministration cares more about the woke than the work.
PAVLICH: I think that's true. I think that was -- that was a good one, Greg.
GUTFELD: Thank you.
PAVLICH: As someone who -- as someone who grew up in a small business, the responses like this from politicians who've been getting paychecks from taxpayers, sign the back of them rather than signing the front of them their entire lives for 30, 40 years is really enraging. And when you look at the way that the Biden administration is importing millions of people, a.k.a. cheap foreign labor, which obviously suppresses the wages of American workers at a time when people should be going back to work.
And then you had today Jen Psaki saying that it's a workers market. Well, why is it a workers market? You would think that after a pandemic, when a lot of people lost their jobs, you will be clamoring to get back to work to get back into the labor force. Instead, they're competing with the federal government who is paying people with hard-earned taxpayer dollars not to go back to work. And then they have the nerve to say, you need to pay $15.00 an hour, no matter which city you live in, no matter what economic situation your town may be in. It's just such a naive, elitist argument to make.
GUTFELD: And the government can afford this.
PAVLICH: Right.
GUTFELD: But the people that the government is competing against can't.
PAVLICH: Exactly.
GUTFELD: They're saying, you should just raise your prices. That's what we're doing.
PAVLICH: It's so ridiculous.
TARLOV: But policy is ending, and he cited that. That was something that they did --
PAVLICH: Well, he admitted -- he admitted it finally. So, forever, the White House was saying this has no impact on people going back to work, the unemployment. And then, Biden admits finally yesterday that yes, we're ending those programs because it's preventing people from going back to work.
MCDOWELL: Except all these new entitlements he wants to push through or not based on work.
PAVLICH: Right. There's no work requirement.
MCDOWELL: You can collect them with no work requirement. My parents are small business owners and you get screwed by the government over and over again. That's why I said screw them.
GUTFELD: All right now, ahead, get ready for the woke Olympics U.S. women's soccer players kneeling, and now other countries are doing it too.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MCDOWELL: Brace yourself for the woke Olympics this year. The games officially kick off tomorrow, but the protests have already begun. Several teams including the US women's soccer team, losers, taking a knee right before the start of the opening matches, the one that they lost. Thanks to new rules, we could be seeing more of that.
Athletes are now allowed to express their views more freely than in the past and can demonstrate peacefully on the field as long as the competition has not begun. I want to see a disruptive protests, Greg. Like if you're going to protest, like see fights and like, clawing at each other.
GUTFELD: Full on streaking, you name it, shocking, throwing food. You know, did they lose because they kneeled, probably not because everybody is kneeling, including the people that beat them. But the kneeling has caused me not to care that they lost. So, that's a -- that's a difference. It's like it didn't -- it had no impact on the game, but on the fans, it's like all the sanctimony, it's -- all this virtue signaling, it's worn off.
I don't see them as American athletes anymore. I see them as a media -- self-important media creations. It's great for Rapinoe. I don't know if it's great for the sport or it's great for other players, but the self- righteousness of the woke athlete comes off as the opposite of the athlete persona. The athlete was always a hard-working, strong, silent, determined type. And now we have this kind of whiny, attention-seeking, I don't know, creature.
They may win -- they may not win the game, but they got the gold in pretentious sanctimony.
MCDOWELL: Yes. Katie, who is saying we need more politics in sports? Like, who's really saying that?
PAVLICH: The people kneeling on the field. But the good news is -- is that Rapinoe or Rapinoe?
GUTFELD: I don't remember.
PAVLICH: Either way, she's got a backup plan as Victoria's Secret model.
So, even if she lost the soccer game, she has a future career. If you notice the kinds of -- the countries that the people are from, the people who are kneeling, they are from Western democracies where they have the right to kneel without being killed, for example.
You're not going to see people from China or people from Iran, if they're in the Olympics. I don't have the whole list of tyrannical regimes that have athletes competing, but you're not going to see those people kneeling on the field because they'll be killed as a result. And it's -- you know, there are 69 countries in the world that criminalize homosexuality, many of them with the consequences of death.
And so, with that contrast, it really just points out to the people who are kneeling on the field are completely out of touch and ungrateful for the freedoms that they have that are so rare in the rest of the world.
MCDOWELL: Jessica, I know you're grateful for the right to be wrong.
TARLOV: I mean, sure. But I also happened to be right, which is a bonus in all of this.
MCDOWELL: We'll see.
TARLOV: To the question of who wants to see more politics in sports, if he were alive, Muhammad Ali would like to see more politics and sport, right?
I think that we could all agree that he was a pretty amazing athlete and someone who used his platform to take a stand on a political cause that matter to millions and millions of people and lost a great deal as a result of his decision to protest, go and serve in the Vietnam War. So, this is not a new thing.
I take Katie's point about the athletes who are predominantly doing this.
But it is when we talk about all the time about what a special place we live and what a great community we're part of with these Western democracies, why is it this a good thing that we can also see us coming together especially at the Olympics, and everybody taking a need to say the world is not equal. It's an unequal in all different sorts of ways, but we want to be united in this.
MCDOWELL: But we're not united, Jesse. I'm waiting for LeBron James now to his Space Jam flick is out to actually criticize China and talk about the Uyghurs. They're being imprisoned by the Communist Party of China and all -
- well, the fact that more than four million people were killed by the Communist Party in China in essence by the virus.
WATTERS: Jessica is saying the world is not equal. Oh, wow. When is it ever been equal? It's never going to be equal, Jessica. Come on, you're smarter than that. Hating America is not fashionable anymore. Maybe when Kaepernick did it a couple of years ago that was cutting edge, but Greg's right. It's kind of lost its bite. It's gone out of style. And this country is thirsty for patriotism. Conservatives will always be patriotic no matter who's president. Now, that Biden's president, Democrats feel patriotic again.
So, let's unite. Let's win some golds. Because when I look at these women, I agree again with Greg, I hate to say that, it makes it harder for us to root for them. A lot of people, millions of Americans don't like to see that because they don't think oh, police brutality. They think, what a selfish athlete who maybe I won't clap for anymore.
We are trying to put our best foot forward on the world stage. This is not our best foot forward. We want to present a united patriotic front and this is not it.
PAVLICH: And to falsely compare the United States to these other countries is just a false moral equivalent.
WATTERS: I don't want to be equal to other countries. I want to be better.
PAVLICH: Yes, I don't either.
GUTFELD: We already are.
WATTERS: We already are better.
GUTFELD: Except in soccer. We suck.
WATTERS: Yes, apparently.
GUTFELD: I actually -- no, they were undefeated for two years.
WATTERS: Well, the curse is in me.
TARLOV: The Swedes are really good though. If that was --
WATTERS: What are the Swedes kneeling about? I thought that place was perfect according to you guys.
GUTFELD: It's about the people.
MCDOWELL: Yes, exactly.
TARLOV: Denmark is perfect, not Sweden.
MCDOWELL: Yes, if you want an attention, just take a photo of your armpit and put it on social media. Coming up, a shocking number of college grads don't know how to be adults.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TARLOV: Being an adult is apparently very, very hard. 81 percent of college graduates wish they were taught more life skills before graduating. The biggest trouble areas including investing and financial planning, household maintenance, like unclogging a toilet or resetting a WiFi router, and not knowing how to cook or do laundry.
The WiFi router class is an interesting idea, but Home Ec, you said last night that you did take home act, Dagen.
MCDOWELL: Yes. You learned how to like, sew. I mean --
WATTERS: Sew.
TARLOV: Unclog a toilet.
MCDOWELL: Sewing is important.
TARLOV: Yes, sewing is important.
MCDOWELL: You know what, you can Google all -- you can Google everything you need to know. What you can't Google is like how to spot a guy you start dating who's going to steal your ATM card, right?
TARLOV: That's what the --
MCDOWELL: Or like -- or like squat in your apartment and you can't get him out.
TARLOV: OK.
PAVLICH: Asking for a friend.
TARLOV: Jesse, what's one life skill that you wish that you were taught that you weren't?
WATTERS: You should have lifted heavier in college. I didn't start lifting heavy until later in life. So, I would tell younger Jesse to lift heavier.
But I don't think the powerful people in America want young Americans to be financially literate. They want them riddled with debt. They want them living paycheck to paycheck, so they're easier to control and subsidize and that's just how the country is operating right now.
But I didn't understand how 17 percent of kids don't know how to do laundry. All you do is put in dirties in the laundry machine, add the detergent, and hit start. And then when it's done, you take them and put them in the dryer. And if you're really a pro, you take the fabric softener, and you push that in. How is that 17 percent of us don't know how to do that?
TARLOV: I don't know if you separate the colors. We got a nod on finances from the millennial. Greg, final thought?
WATTERS: Separate the colors. That's advanced.
PAVLICH: I have a thought though. I have a thought. Lots of thoughts
TARLOV: Let's have it.
PAVLICH: I 100 percent agree that the government doesn't want people to be self-sufficient.
WATTERS: No.
PAVLICH: They want people to delay adulthood --
WATTERS: Exactly.
PAVLICH: -- for as long as possible. Self-sufficiency is a gift. I like being an adult because it means freedom to make your own decisions. I am grateful that I took shop class and Home Ec so I know how to weld, I know how to make a cutting board, I know how to fix stuff because I grew up in a carwash, so I'm grateful to my parents for that. But yes, self-sufficiency is essential to people.
WATTERS: Where did you sleep in a car wash?
PAVLICH: Where did I sleep in a car wash?
WATTERS: You grew up in a carwash.
PAVLICH: I wasn't allowed to sleep. That's how much I got to work.
WATTERS: Oh, man, that is child labor.
PAVLICH: Child labor. It was great, though.
TARLOV: Greg, did you grow up in a carwash?
GUTFELD: No, but I don't really have fond memories of shops class. But anyway, you know what? What's interesting -- I just had an epiphany. You don't need any of this. Like, college is worthless. You have YouTube. Kids are learning how to put on their own makeup. I learned the other day --
(CROSSTALK)
GUTFELD: You can string your guitars, you can -- you can learn how to unclog the toilet. It's all there. People are doing it for you every day.
This idea that college is somehow makes you a better person, that's a lie.
What you want to be in life, the number one skill is to be useful. That's the -- you wake up every morning and you want to be useful. That should be the first thought in your brain.
Probably the best skill in the world is learning how to dial down conflict.
And we're unfortunately teaching the opposite to kids. Social media is teaching kids to be more dramatically aggressive. So, now they're dialing up conflict. Be useful by dialing it down. Put that in (INAUDIBLE).
PAVLICH: Perfect.
TARLOV: All right, "ONE MORE THING" is up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PAVLICH: Time now for "ONE MORE THING." Jesse.
WATTERS: Big summer sale at the Fox News Shop. Go to shop.foxnews.com right now, 15 percent off. Use the promo code Fox Summer. This pillow, I swear to God, this is going to be a good one. It's going to sell more than the Gutfeld shirt, I guarantee it.
GUTFELD: How about the Gutfeld hat?
WATTERS: And the Gutfeld hat. But they have T-shirts, they got the hat, they got the drink cup, and they got this really stylish jacket, lightweight. You can wear it in the summer. So, go check that out right now shop.foxnews.com.
PAVLICH: Good stuff. All right, Greg.
GUTFELD: Excellent. All right, let's do this one last time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GUTFELD: It's Greg's international, global, amazing, awesome National Flattery Week.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUTFELD: We're going to be starting a new week next week. It's going to be
-- I dropped a hint.
PAVLICH: Insult week.
GUTFELD: No, I dropped a hint of it during the show. But because this is the last day, I think it's beholden to us to compliment or flatter the person who comes after us. And I will start by saying Bret Baier looks very, very buffed lately. Have you noticed that, very muscular?
WATTERS: You know, he also has a really great tan, Greg.
GUTFELD: Yes. You know what?
WATTERS: And that means a lot coming from me.
GUTFELD: Yes.
PAVLICH: I've heard Bret Baier's golf game is on point every time. And that when his balls go into the swamp, he wrestles alligators to get them out.
GUTFELD: Wow. I heard that from him.
MCDOWELL: Yes, Bret your handicap is so, so low.
TARLOV: I don't want to continue this trend at all on the golf front. Bret Baier is an extremely philanthropic man. He's a great family.
GUTFELD: No, no, no. Talk about his physical appearance.
TARLOV: I don't want to objectify the man.
WATTERS: No, objectify his hair. Come on.
TARLOV: It's really good hair.
WATTERS: There you go.
TARLOV: It's better than your hair.
WATTERS: What?
(CROSSTALK)
PAVLICH: That's it for us. "SPECIAL REPORT" is up next. Hi, Bret.
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