Since this past summer, The Five—the late-afternoon talk show Gutfeld has co-hosted since the program’s debut in 2011—has overtaken Hannity’s eponymous 9 p.m. as the second-most-watched show in all of cable news. At the same time, the show has nipped at Tucker Carlson Tonight’s heels, at one point surpassing the primetime star in October as cable’s most-viewed program. (In fact, for both the month of December and the final quarter of the year, The Five actually placed first in total viewership, topping Carlson by a slim 6,000 viewers in the final quarter of 2021.)…

Over the past few years, he has transformed from irreverent satirist to acerbic ideologue, spending much of the Trump years actively boosting and rooting for the then-president while basking in the TV-addicted president’s adulation.

But much like Carlson, Gutfeld’s MAGA adjacency never became his overarching identity. In a post-Trump world, in which Fox News has pivoted to culture-war grievances, right-wing outrage bait, and incessant anti-Bidenism, Gutfeld’s broad ideology of being decidedly anti-liberal has undoubtedly helped elevate his profile. Meanwhile, Hannity, whose wagon was firmly hitched to all things Trump fandom, has struggled for an identity.