PIRRO: “Alright, Greg, your take?”

GUTFELD: “Well, I think Dana is wrong. There was a breakout star and it was Dana Perino. I did not envy you. I was watching it. You were pretty much shouldering the load for two hours and you didn’t break a sweat. It was amazing. My problem with the debate wasn’t really the candidates at all because the outcomes you get are created by the design, and Fox joining Univision perhaps was the worst partnership I’ve ever seen since Bud Light hired Dylan Mulvaney. I mean, you have a host unload a litany of liberal clichés, whose premises we challenge successfully every day. And yet, they were treated as approved truths. She had no follow-up to each one, which is weird, so it was like a deliberate list prepared by the DNC to tweak the candidates, to tweak the audience. It didn’t feel like a journalism debate to me, it felt like The View without pastries. And by the way, this isn’t on Fox, right, so don’t accuse me of shooting in the tent. Hosts had their autonomy over their questions. This is on the RNC who felt they had to have Fox partner with Univision as if it would be value added, when in fact, it was value subtracted. Perhaps give Univision their own debate, right, instead of loading questions with, like, these not-so-subtle accusations. I was waiting for her to ask one of the candidates, when was the last time you beat your kids? It was just so silly. I would reexamine the structure of the debates, less questions against a ton of candidates, consider the success of podcasting where you can go deep with the candidate, whether it’s Vivek or RFK Jr., we tend to learn a lot from that. Maybe one-night debates, you have four 30-minute debates with two candidates each. That way you can go deep. People can talk. There’s no insulting because people actually relate to each other. This debate felt like 2015. It’s 2023. Maybe it’s time to reexamine this.”

[It wasn’t just Ilia Calderón, but I can appreciate why Gutfeld had to frame it that way. Perino was just as guilty of asking lib-framed questions and attempts to manipulate the candidates into attacking each other. That was the whole point of Perino’s “Survivor” stunt, and Perino was the moderator who explicitly asked Scott to attack Haley. I’m actually surprised that Gutfeld went this far in criticizing the debate, though. I can’t imagine Fox was too happy about that. — Ed]