Friday night's episode of The Five gave viewers a masterclass in what happens when a liberal co-host way out of her depth tries to lecture the panel and ends up lecturing herself into a corner. Jessica Tarlov set out to catch her conservative colleagues in a supposed contradiction on socialism. She walked out of the segment looking like a fool in the process.
Tarlov opened by accusing Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters of hypocrisy over the Trump administration's equity stakes in companies such as U.S. Steel and Intel, arguing that conservatives have been throwing around the word "socialist" for years without meaning it. "You've been calling every Democratic candidate for over a decade a socialist or communist," Tarlov said.
Gutfeld wasn't having it. "The socialists are calling themselves socialists! We didn't name them the DSA," he said.
That’s the big problem with Tarlov’s argument. She thinks Republicans are just tossing the label “socialist” out there as if it were an overused pejorative, but the truth is the socialist insurgency that’s going on right now in the party is happening with candidates who are openly calling themselves socialists and are associated with the Democratic Socialists of America.
Undeterred, Tarlov pressed her theory that the Trump administration taking a government stake in a private company is functionally the same as socialism, maybe even communism, and that her co-hosts were too busy defending Trump to notice. Gutfeld asked her to actually make the case. "Explain the stake and how it works, please. Like, how is that the same as socialism?" he said.
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Watters jumped in with the obvious counterpoint. "He's not controlling the company, he's just putting money into it, it's industrial policy," Watters said.
Tarlov kept trying, bless her heart. "They have to pay a tithe to the U.S. government. Everyone knows that, that's why they show up in the Oval Office."
Gutfeld tried again with an example that undercuts her framing entirely. "What about Tesla? This happens a lot, the government gives money, loans, money gets paid back," he said. Tarlov expects us to believe that government investment in industry counts as socialism... at least when Trump does it, while brushing past every instance of Democrat presidents propping up private companies. She tried to draw a technical distinction anyway. "It is part ownership of an American company that is supposed to be distinct from the government. If you are not being massive hypocrites, but you are, and we are out of time," she said.
That's when Watters landed the finishing blow. "So you should love it then, right? Because you're a liberal," he said.
By the time Tarlov tried pivoting to polling numbers and tariff revenue, Watters had already stopped taking her seriously. "You're just rambling," he said.
The hypocrisy knows no bounds. Socialism is bad but it’s a-okay if Trump takes stakes in American companies like US Steel and Intel. The words mean nothing anymore. Only the team does. pic.twitter.com/AO4V0qXSGM
— Jessica Tarlov (@JessicaTarlov) July 25, 2026
Tarlov walked into that segment trying to catch her co-hosts in a gotcha. Instead, Gutfeld and Watters made her look like the fool that she is.
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