Jessica Tarlov tried to defend the fake Dan Sullivan scheme in Alaska on The Five earlier this week, and Greg Gutfeld tore her apart.

The lawsuit the Justice Department filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska is what triggered Tarlov. The DOJ wants to block the state from certifying its Senate results if Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) loses, arguing that the second Dan Sullivan entered the race as a Republican "with the intention of misleading" the incumbent's supporters.

"Should Alaska certify any electoral results tainted by the inclusion on the ballot of Daniel J. Sullivan… the State and its officers will fail in its obligation to protect the integrity of its election," the lawsuit says.

Tarlov treated the filing as proof that Republicans had something to hide. "And they're giving the game up," she said. "The fact that the DOJ filed to invalidate the results in Alaska, if Mary Peltola wins, because people, I guess, are too stupid to know what 'Dan Sullivan incumbent' means versus Dan Sullivan […] that's what President Trump is saying by filing that lawsuit.”

The irony is thick. Tarlov's party has spent years calling voter ID laws racist, an argument that only works if you believe that minorities are too stupid to get an ID, which clearly Democrats must believe. Yet Democrats suddenly have unshakable faith in every voter's ability to sort out two identical names on a ballot.

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Gutfeld cut in and said that the panel should "do a segment on that and how low down it was to introduce somebody of the same name."

"We didn't do that!" Tarlov shot back.

"Oh, who did?" Gutfeld replied. "I don't know who did. It just happened. Another Dan Sullivan showed up. How did that happen? It was just, you know pure coincidence."

Tarlov continued, so Gutfeld explained what her defense actually cost her. "I get it. But see, what you just do, what you've done is you've opened the door for everything," he said. "Now nothing, now there's no reason to even defend the most low down dirty thing when you defend that."

Gutfeld nailed it. Once you defend a trick like this, you surrender any claim to caring about election integrity, and you inevitably welcome the same trick to be pulled on you. If Republicans had planted a second Mary Peltola on the ballot, Tarlov would never defend it. No Democrat would. They'd be screaming about it being an “attack on democracy.”

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Tarlov’s denial that the Democrats had anything to do with it also aged rather poorly. The next morning, The New York Times laid out how Democrat operatives aligned with Peltola went hunting in the summer of 2025 for another man named Dan Sullivan to run. Their bet was simple: Confused voters would bleed support away from the incumbent.

The Times reported that the operation drew in Peltola campaign aides, officials from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), campaign lawyers, and a Democrat operative who allegedly recruited candidates under the fake name "Zane."

The scheme went further. Drywall contractor Gerald Heikes jumped in and became the fourth name on the ballot. After the primary, the team reportedly helped talk far-left Democrat David Leslie into dropping out, which opened the spot for Heikes and his potential to siphon off Republican votes. Aides also explored funneling money to the new candidates through outside spending and a new super PAC called Alaska Values, and they toyed with launching a "MAGA party" to split conservatives even further before scrapping the idea.

Former Peltola campaign manager Elisa Rios served as a major source for the story and later tried to take back what she said. The Times ran her account anyway, noting that it lined up with the rest of its reporting.

Alaska's nonpartisan primary made all of this possible, since anyone can land on the ballot under a party label without the party vetting them. If Peltola wins by a margin smaller than the spoiler candidates' combined vote, the state faces a brutal legal fight.

What an embarrassing display for Tarlov.

This is the party that has spent a decade lecturing Americans about threats to democracy. Democrats have no problem with cheating when it helps them win, and they save their outrage for anyone who tries to stop it. When their media defenders rush to excuse a scheme like this before the truth even comes out, it tells you everything about what all those sermons on democracy were really about: power, and keeping it at any cost.