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This is a rush transcript of “The Five” on May 18, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS HOST: Hello, everybody. I’m Jesse Watters along with Kennedy, Geraldo, Dana, and Tyrus. It’s 5 o’clock in New York City, and this is THE FIVE.
Epic primary battles unfolding across America, setting the stage for what sure to be a blockbuster midterm election. It’s still down to the wire in Pennsylvania where Dave McCormick and Trump backed Dr. Mehmet Oz are neck and neck, and only separated by just a few thousand votes. But both candidates are confident of victory.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MEHMET OZ (R), PENNSYLVANIA SENATE CANDIDATE: When all the votes are tallied those tallied, I am confident that we will win.
(APPLAUSE)
OZ: We are making a ferocious charge. But when is this close, what else would you expect? Everything about this campaign has been tight.
DAVE MCCORMICK (R), PENNSYLVANIA SENATE CANDIDATE: We fought it on the ground. We knew —
(APPLAUSE)
MCCORMICK: — we knew it was working. We knew our message.
We can see the path ahead. We can see victory ahead.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: And it was a big night for other Trump backed candidates who won in there in Pennsylvania, in North Carolina, which is a historic contrast to President Biden. Democratic candidates like John Fetterman and Tim Ryan have kept their distance from the big guy. And Kellyanne Conway knows why.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KELLYANNE CONWAY, FORMER COUNSELOR TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: This is really the reflection of what’s going on with the two political parties and their heads right now. So, everybody wants Donald Trump’s endorsement. That does not happen in the Democratic side.
John Fetterman, the new Democratic nominee, thank God he’s recovered, he does not want Joe Biden. Joe Biden went to the state and he was never to be found until the bridge collapse and he showed up in his shorts and sweatshirts. They don’t want joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaigning with them. And it tells you the tale of the two parties right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: That comes as Mr. Unity goes negative. And who report claims President Biden is finally going to try to stop working with the GOP and instead go on the attack as he looks to create a contrast between his job performance and ultra MAGA candidates in his words. Dana, what was your reaction to what we saw last night?
DANA PERINO, FOX NEWS CO-HOST: I think there’s — well, how much time are you going to give me here?
WATTERS: Yes, go for it.
PERINO: All right. Well, a few things. One, if you look at the Senate race in North Carolina, the Trump backed candidate there, Ted Budd, ran away with it. I mean, the cat ran away with a spoon. It was caught at like, 8.02 p.m. There was no question that that was going to go in Ted Budd’s way. And McCrory just go away, I mean, it’s like by 35 points.
Madison Cawthorn losing, that is something that’s kind of, you know, this is a young man who maybe he’s — we’ll see where he is in five years.
WATTERS: OK.
PERINO: You know, does he take this experience and decide to do something different. One of the things he said is that he decided to hire mostly communications people. He didn’t need policy people. Well, if you don’t have that, you don’t have victories to run on or accomplishments to run and you end up basically running on a messaging and ended up getting viciously attacked. I’m not saying it wasn’t meritorious but, so he is no longer there.
But I think the Pennsylvania race is something that is just so interesting. One on the Republican side, if I could comment on the Democrats real quick. So, John Fetterman, also the cat ran away with the spoon in that one. he just destroyed Conor Lamb.
Conor Lamb was the guy who was considered like, you would think he was the perfect candidate. Straight out of central casting for a moderate Democrat in a state like Pennsylvania where he could appeal to the working class and he could also rub elbows with the tech guys that want to build more companies and in Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh and he just could never get any traction. Why?
So, John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor he ends up in the hospital. Gets a stroke. This guy, though, absolutely destroyed Conor Lamb. And so, this tells you where the Democratic Party is going. Fetterman oozes charisma and authenticity. He is an original Bernie bro.
WATTERS: Right.
PERINO: He wants Medicare for all and he is going to be tagged as a socialist. But I’m telling you that Republicans should not sleep on him because this race is also going to be really very tight. It’s not going to be tight in North Carolina. But Pennsylvania will remain tight.
On the Republican side of things, I would say that there’s only one candidate, presidential candidate that has one Pennsylvania since 1909 — 1988. And that was Donald Trump. And he ran a race that was different. It was wild. People are following it. The — he created this amazing base of support. And any Republican who is not him has to run a near perfect race.
Mitch McConnell today said he believes that whoever wins in Pennsylvania that they feel very strongly that they can win in Pennsylvania. But I will tell you I think that Republicans are just make sure that while they have this fight and they might have a recount. John Fetterman’s campaign is already off.
WATTERS: Fetterman. He is about your size, I think, right?
GEORGE ‘TYRUS’ MURDOCH, FOX NEWS POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: He’s shorter, but yes.
WATTERS: Six-nine?
MURDOCH: Yes.
WATTERS: Shorter.
MURDOCH: Yes.
WATTERS: And he doesn’t —
(CROSSTALK)
MURDOCH: He’s smaller.
WATTERS: He doesn’t like suits.
MURDOCH: No.
WATTERS: He wears sweats.
MURDOCH: Yes. I like him in the sense that he is different. But looking at what I saw was a fever of just battles from top, like Republicans who had votes going 3D. Which means the numbers when you look at who was showing up to vote, the numbers of Republicans that were coming out to vote, I don’t hear if you are Superman running for a Democrat.
You should really be afraid because yes, your campaign is getting started early. But the sheer numbers, third place is running strong.
KENNEDY MONTGOMERY, FOX BUSINESS HOST: That’s true.
MURDOCH: Which means that when all of them come together —
(CROSSTALK)
WATTERS: And they have to come together.
MURDOCH: — and I think they will, I think the Republicans get it. Their – – you know, they know, they’ve seen what’s going on. They want their police forces back. They want respect back. They want to get inflation down. They want to get America back at least in the top five of importance in this country right now.
So, we’re seeing big numbers. And I’m just looking at how many people are showing up at the ballot and it’s a huge difference. I think the only ones who are showing up for the Democrats are the progressives.
MONTGOMERY: Yes.
MURDOCH: Because the moderates are going, you know what? We are kind of better off with the other guys.
WATTERS: That’s a good point. Do you think that the Republicans are going to coalesced around Mehmet or McCormick or whoever it is?
MONTGOMERY: I do. Absolutely. And I think that John Fetterman probably doesn’t want to go up against Mehmet Oz because not only he is a battle tested in a really tough primary, he’s got name recognition. And if you are talking about socialized medicine who better to dissect what the government has done to ruin healthcare in this country than a doctor who has enriched himself in the free market not only in medicine but in entertainment as well.
So, he really cares about that issue and I hope he pins John Fetterman down on this because with inflation where it’s at and you know, taxes, a tax hike on the horizon, you compound that with Medicare for all, we cannot afford that. The healthcare industry cannot afford that.
So yes, I do think it’s going to be very tough. I thought the Madison Cawthorn thing was interesting because he had been polling ahead. And I thought that perhaps the former president’s endorsement of him last minute might help. But he so far lost only by a couple percentage points.
And you’re absolutely right. There has to be something there. It has to be substantive. There has to be policy behind the person. We can no longer become attached to people because of their characteristics or their interesting life stories, how they lead and how they flees us (Ph) — far more important.
PERINO: Flees us.
WATTERS: Geraldo, looking at the endorsements, does Donald Trump still have that magic touch?
GERALDO RIVERA, FOX NEWS CO-HOST: No doubt about it. I think the fact that for my state in Ohio, everybody was, you know, looking for Donald Trump to endorse him and this very, very (Inaudible). He had a couple of misses here and there. We discuss Cawthorn and some others.
But I must say, a couple of quick points. Number one, John Fetterman is enormously charismatic. He does remind me a lot of you, Tyrus. And I believe that he will cross over. It’s not just progressives. It’s cool. He is a very cool guy. I like him a lot. I endorse if I could endorse Dr. Oz, a long-time friend of mine. Wife Liza, wonderful people. They are great on TV. But more than that, they are very good people.
And I was very, very disturbed by how he was slimed by Dave McCormick. Dave McCormick was also a very attractive guy. He’s a G.I., a self-made multimillionaire. He is a bronze star. You know, award of a bronze star.
But going up with Mehmet Oz, a lot of it was Muslim hate. You know, for family born in, you know, his parents were from Turkey. Oz served in the Turkish army. You know, I really found that extremely distasteful. I felt very bad that he had to endure — endure those attacks, very unfair attacks.
But I want to say one other thing about elections. When I was a kid, election day was a day. One day. You go to vote. You go to vote. Most people went in person to vote, you know, older or disabled people and now I am probably a number among them got absentee ballots, mail-in ballots very rare though as a percentage.
But everybody showed up. And that night, you could gather around the TV and you knew who won because the absentee ballots, the military ballots, the provisional ballots, all these ballots were — like Florida does now after the disaster of the hanging chad, now you get the account. You keep the running tally of the people who vote early. And election day, you do it, not this torture. It makes people lose late in the system. I —
(CROSSTALK)
WATTERS: And we get better ratings when they announce it —
RIVERA: Exactly.
MONTGOMERY: Even when it’s in that middle of the night. How exciting is that.
WATTERS: Yes, stay up. Watching.
MURDOCH: Absolutely not between 11 and 12 p.m. I know at certain —
WATTERS: Right. OK.
MURDOCH: Very upset. Chester Butterfield.
WATTERS: He is always upset.
RIVERA: He could be your lifeboat.
MURDOCH: VIP (Inaudible) shallow water.
WATTERS: All right. Coming up, get ready for a summer of rage. What the far left is planning if they don’t get their way at the Supreme Court.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PERINO: America could be in for a summer of rage. Similar to the protest we saw in 2020. The Department of Homeland Security now bracing for violence ahead of the Supreme Court expected ruling overturning Roe versus Wade. Protesters already showing up outside of justices’ homes.
And a right to life building in Wisconsin was hit with a Molotov cocktail. A new memo revealing that the agency believes there will be more threats targeting, quote, “justices, members of Congress and others associated with the abortion debate are likely to persist and may increase leading up to and following the issuing of the court’s official ruling.”
The White House pressed on this issue earlier.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETER DOOCY, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: DHS is worried if Roe v. Wade is overturned, there could be violence against the Supreme Court building or Supreme Court justices. Are these threats from pro-abortion activists or anti-abortion activists?
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: So, the president is clear on this question, he believed the right to peacefully protest in this country is fundamental. But he also believes that violence, threats and intimidation have no place in political discourse anywhere.
It seems like to us, it is a very one sided on what we call out as intimidation or as violent. So, we want to make sure we are calling out on both sides of what is happening and what we are seeing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PERINO: OK. So that’s what she is saying, Tyrus, is that the DHS has obviously, intel and information or something telling them that they need to put up this memo to say that the left is intending to have — to foment violence if this Roe — Roe v. Wade decision comes down the way we expect.
MURDOCH: So now they are going to telegraph before they dropped the ball. One thing you see in this administration whether it’s Afghanistan, whether we’re dealing with dealing getting baby food, it’s always the same thing. There’s always a plan after the fact. So, this time they are trying to get in front of it.
But again, what would curtail this stuff would be adding — providing more security for justices, which would mean, what? More police officers? More things of that which they fundamentally have gone against and depleted and disrespected.
So, this is not going to have the same effect as they did before where you are going to see people on TV going, it’s a mostly peaceful protest. Americans are sick of this. Now they are going to see it being standing outside the Supreme Court justices’ house and doing these things is only going to inspire more and more Americans to vote right.
Because they are going to see this is going down. And you’ve seen what happened before. You’ve seen this course, and now the best thing you’re telling us is look out, it’s coming. But again, where is the plan? What are you doing? National Guard? What are you doing to protect our justices? Nothing you’re talking about. It’s like they ae going to make a web site of where you can report somebody protesting on somebody’s house. That’s probably what we’re looking for. So, again, it’s a bad — it’s a missed point.
PERINO: These web sites are very helpful as we’ve seen, Jesse.
MURDOCH: Yes.
WATTERS: I don’t put a lot of stock in government warnings, whether it is hurricanes or COVID hotspots. They don’t have a great track record. But I don’t think the left, if they do get violence is going to do anything to tamp down the violence if it happens. And someone like let’s say the McCloskey’s get outside their house. They’ll get indicted for just trying to protect themselves.
You know how this play. They are not going to go in the FBI and infiltrate the radical left wing pro-choice movement and concoct stings like they did against the Gretchen kidnappers. I guess they weren’t kidnappers. That was a sole set up.
So, it looks like if you are running a Supreme Court justice into hiding, that’s a return to normalcy. That is restoring the institution to this country because that’s what they said they were going to do. But you are going to see that, because I think it’s a very emotional issue, abortion. And a lot of people don’t understand it.
There are women who are past their prime who can’t even get pregnant but you will see them out there, screaming at the top of their lungs almost resorting to violence because it’s just, it’s a religious tenet to these people. And we have to understand that.
I would stay away from these people all summer if you hear about a protest in your city, I wouldn’t engage. I’d go to the beach. Even on a social level, if it’ not your friend or your family, don’t involve yourself with a very, you know, turbulent conversation about it. It’s really not worth it.
I would give advice to these protesters if this does the way we think it is. There is a Democratic process. You can go, you can petition, you can run for office if you want to. And you know what, if that doesn’t work out in your state, you can move states. That’s the great part about this republic. You can move states and live a totally different lifestyle if it doesn’t work out for you in the state you are living in right now.
PERINO: Geraldo?
RIVERA: Well, I think that you may be that last person in America that that group will take advice from just to say.
WATTERS: True.
RIVERA: I believe that Jesse is right in this regard. I think there is a storm coming. I believe that this issue is very central to the identity of tens of millions of women and others. You know? And their partners and these are folks who believe that a right, a constitutional right have been stripped away.
How would you feel if the Second Amendment was stripped away after 50 years? I just think that it’s impossible to belittle. It is going to be energetic. There’s going to be suburban, multiethnic, multiracial, it’s — I don’t think it’s going to be necessarily violent; I pray that it will not be. But I think it will be very, very spread out, villages, suburbs, cities.
PERINO: OK.
RIVERA: East, north, south, I think is either
PERINO: Kennedy, what’s lost in this is any sort of conversation about when you can have a conversation with graciousness and dignity and facts and merits and understanding and a willingness to listen. But the left is telegraphing and DHS is picking it up. That they have no intention of that.
MONTGOMERY: No. There’s no curiosity. There’s no polite discourse. I know that this is probably the most emotional issue that faces society and faces women. But this is not the way, having — throwing a cultural tantrum is not the way to come to resolution on an emotional issue. It is just not.
And I know a lot of people, a lot of Democrats who say, I am pro-choice but I don’t believe that we should be killing babies after 15 weeks. I certainly don’t think that we should be performing these procedures and celebrating them at 28 weeks.
You have a lot of Democrats saying, you know, we used to hear safe, legal, and rare.
MURDOCH: Yes.
MONTGOMERY: You don’t hear that anymore. You hear people chanting about how great abortion is. Regardless of how you feel about whether or not the courts or Congress should be involved, that is not something to be celebrated. And we have lost the plot as a society so don’t be surprised when there are mass casualty events at the hands of sociopaths when we have so little regard for human life, and that starts with basic decent conversations where we have mutual dignity and curiosity. We have to find a way to get back to that place even when we disagree vehemently.
RIVERA: So, you think that people who seek abortions are sociopaths?
MONTGOMERY: No, I’m saying that mass shooters are sociopaths. Mass shooters and people like that are raised to have very little respect for human life. And I think we have to get back to a place in society where we do have respect for each other, where you don’t have people going on the subway and shooting people and trying to kill dozens of people, where you don’t have people mowing into a crowd of innocent people at a parade, where you don’t have a guy who targets old people in a black neighborhood at a supermarket because they don’t have basic respect for human life.
That is a very different question as to whether or not I think abortion is a personal issue.
(CROSSTALK)
RIVERA: I think those are separate conversation.
MONTGOMERY: And you know whether or not that — they are separate conversations. But the lack of respect for life, it is so massive. It is so pervasive and that is one of the things that is pulling us apart at the seams.
MURDOCH: Preach.
PERINO: Up next, the president and Dems deflecting blame as the baby formula gets dangerous. Two children have been hospitalized. We’ll have an update.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
RIVERA: The baby formula crisis may be getting worse even as parents scramble desperate to get the food their babies need. There’s been another incident Dana mentioned earlier.
Two young children in Tennessee reportedly hospitalized for intestinal problems because their parents were not able to obtain the specific type of formula they needed. So, the kids were fed inappropriate stuff they got sick. And as the bad news piles up Democrats are looking to blame somebody not named Biden.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raising eyebrows today after saying criminal charges. Criminal charges may be warranted for the fiasco.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), UNITED STATES SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I think that when all of this is done, I’m not associating my colleagues with what I’m going to say, I’m just saying it myself, I think there might be a need for indictment.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RIVERA: Indictment, criminal indictment. Now some in the media like my friend Whoopi Goldberg are rallying around the president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WHOOPI GOLDBERG, CO-HOST, ABC: Everybody is suffering but let’s place it in the places that it belongs.
UNKNOWN: Right.
GOLDBERG: OK? Gas prices aren’t bad because of anything Biden did. It’s just what he’s going to absorb. The —
UNKNOWN: There’s also a war going on.
GOLDBERG: There is a war going on. And everybody said this is what we got to do so we’re in the midst of it. People want baby food, baby formula.
UNKNOWN: Plus, formula.
GOLDBERG: That also is not on him.
UNKNOWN: No.
GOLDBERG: That’s on Abbott. But I noticed that when people talk about these things specific to what you were just saying, nobody ever says, you know, here’s the cause of this and here’s how we have to fight this.
UNKNOWN: Right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RIVERA: If the whistleblower is right, the whistleblower on the baby food on Abbott nutrition. If he is right, and they did falsify documents, high safety problems, understate or inaccurately report them. There may be criminal indictments. She may be right.
WATTERS: She may be right. And it may be worthy of an indictment and they’ll have to prove it in court. But there also should be accountability for the federal officials who slept on this, did nothing, and then never warn the country that this was coming down the pipeline.
How are you going to know this months ago and Joe never dropped the export controls, import controls, never boosted production here domestically. And never even told parents that this might be happening. So, that’s a total failure. And to say that he’s been on this since day one is just a flat-out lie. It’s like the same thing he did with the Taliban takeover, or the COVID waves, or the supply chains. He never sees anything coming. And then it blows up in his face, and he points the finger.
Now, to that view thing, if this had happened during the Trump administration —
PERINO: Oh, my gosh.
MONTGOMERY: Oh, my gosh.
WATTERS: That family that was in the hospital for these starving kids would have been on the cover of Time Magazine.
RIVERA: You maybe right.
WATTERS: OK. So, that’s the truth. And OK, you have to be able to be honest about that. Now, it is a good thing that people are focused on this baby formula stuff, because I’m hearing the European baby formula is good stuff. So, if we can get more of that in here — it’s not just like powder and oil that they mix together. It’s good stuff.
MONTGOMERY: Oh, it is.
RIVERA: In that regard, Nestle, the third-largest producer of baby formula, Kennedy, has really accelerated efforts to get these imports to the United States.
MONTGOMERY: Yes.
RIVERA: I just wonder what takes them so long.
MONTGOMERY: Oh, do you wonder why it takes them so long? It’s called the FDA.
PERINO: Yes.
MONTGOMERY: So, there is a 17 percent tariff on baby formula coming from different countries. If you export baby formula from another country, if your instructions are not in English, it is not allowed to arrive in this country even though people who are getting baby food from other parts of the world, they know exactly what they’re getting and they’re able to use Google Translate. They could probably figure out pretty quickly.
And also, Abbott didn’t close their own facility. Abbott would love to reopen their facility. It’s the federal government standing in the way of that.
RIVERA: Well, now, they’ll open in the next few weeks.
MONTGOMERY: By the way, Abbott — and I learned this from a woman at the Cato Institute who is a an expert on trade. And she told me, Gabriella told me this incredible story how these big formula companies have to bid contracts with individual states. And Abbott is in 31 states. They’re one of three main suppliers.
That means if they go out because the FDA has taken them out of business, they’re — you’re 33 percent down on what you can produce. I’m sure they would love to reopen.
RIVERA: Nestle is big — Nestle is big in Cleveland. So, does it seem to you, Dana, that President Biden is lazy? Is he lazy or lack of energy? Remember, Trump always used to bus people for lack of energy. It seems to me that everything — to get going, there’s no urgency of the — of the moment with the President Biden.
PERINO: I think that one of the worst things that can happen to an administration is when you get labeled with the I-word, which is incompetence. There is no chaos from all of the problems that the government is imposing on people today. We know that the American Rescue Plan that the Democrats insisted on passing has led to the — all of this extra inflation. Putin is not to blame for the price hikes in new gasoline.
And we also know that, for example, in this regard, that the President of the United States himself said, well, we could have done something about this if we were mind readers. So, for all the administration officials who go out and say, we’ve been working on this since day one, well, that melts on contact as soon as you have the President of the United States. And I have no idea.
And I’ll tell you one other thing. The White House will not answer this question. When did the President find out about the baby formula crisis? And that tells you everything you need to know. And I also think it’s insulting that Congress thinks, oh, let’s just throw a bunch of money at it. They’re going to pass $28 million?
Well, maybe we need that money. But the point that Kennedy made, which is they shut down the plant, and they did nothing to supplement it, because they didn’t care and they didn’t know. And that is — they always talked about they have a whole of government approach. This is a whole of government failure.
RIVERA: I agree and shutting it down without Tyrus making some alternative to shutting it down. Somebody must have, as they shut it down for the four cases. Somebody must have — must have said, well, what’s going to happen now to the consumers of the product?
MURDOCH: I, my dear sweet Geraldo, I’m going to go on a limb here and said nobody did that. Because when you base most of your administration on who checks a box and who doesn’t have experience to get jobs done, this is what happened.
I never thought in my lifetime that I’d be using myself like, Hi, I’m Tyrus. Your donation of Similac today will help our children in America get fed. I’m ought to do that in Europe, in Canada, Japan, Mexico. We’re going to — the United States is going to need countries to help feed our children.
PERINO: Right.
MURDOCH: How is that OK? And the answer is we’re going to give you money. No. You know what we need? We need Operation Warp Speed and getting babies their food and lifting up regulations to get the stuff in here. That’s what you do when you’re proactive and you want to get things done.
RIVERA: And you’ve put them on planes, not ships.
MURDOCH: Yes.
PERINO: Can I say one other thing? The other thing that problem for the Biden administration is that the media is so focused on Donald Trump, who is no longer president, that they missed everything. Did you think — what reporter is covering HHS? Where’s the Secretary of Health and Human Services? He’s basically on milk carton, you can’t find them anywhere.
And then you have — these reporters are just so focused on that issue they’re not covering USDA, FDA. Nobody is covering this issue. No one is surfing the boards to see what the mom groups are saying. They’re only so focused on Donald Trump and ultra MAGA that they miss everything.
So, even the early warning system that you might find — and the newspapers say, this is — this doesn’t look good. It looks like there might be a problem. Baby formula in Ohio, has anybody heard about this, we should raise this at senior staff meeting, and nobody does that. So, of course —
RIVERA: What about Ron Klain? I mean, these are professional politicians.
PERINO: That’s great question. And maybe my prediction will come true.
WATTERS: Oh.
MURDOCH: They’ve been focused on Elon Musk too.
(CROSSTALK)
PERINO: I said before the end of the year, but we’ll —
RIVERA: Up next, Biden’s disinformation board, remember that, the disinformation board, the Mary Poppins singing leader, getting shut down. The details next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MONTGOMERY: Welcome back after. Weeks of backlash and concerns over free speech, the Department of Homeland Security is pausing its controversial disinformation governance board, the Ministry of Truth. And the Mary Poppins singing partisan hack they hired to run it Nina Jankowicz, reportedly will be resigning. But she shouldn’t worry, we have Broadway is back.
Of course, the White House defending Jankowicz and claims the controversy surrounding her is just smear. It’s from right-wing actors.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETER DOOCY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: So, if it’s pausing because you think the board was mischaracterized, then the disinformation board is being shut down because of disinformation. Is that what’s happening here?
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Look, I mean, the board was put forth for purpose, right, to make sure that we really did — really did address what was happening across the country when it came to disinformation. We’re going to pause it, and we’re going to do an assessment. But the work does — the work doesn’t stop.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PERINO: Well —
MONTGOMERY: Dana, what would you like to say?
PERINO: Well, I just — so, you’re not going to pause it, but the work doesn’t stop. But if you’re pausing it, then the work on this stops. We all know what happened here. Like, they had a terrible rollout of an idea that was half baked, and they set this person up for fail — to fail. And that’s not just me saying that, that is anonymous Democrat quoted in The Washington Post piece where this was first revealed.
She had a terrible — it was a terrible rollout. Remember, Mayorkas goes up on the Hill. They asked him all the questions. He’s like, yes, I don’t really know what the board is for or what she’s going to do. But she’s great and this is really important. So, there was that.
I said from the beginning, this board is never going to happen, and they were going to ruin her reputation. And sure enough, in that article, it says that DHS officials said she was not allowed to try to defend herself.
MONTGOMERY: Yes.
PERINO: So, she just sits out there for weeks. And now, she has no recourse. And this reminds me of — remember the ATF director they had to pull? Neera Tanden, they had to pull. And the communist comptroller lady they had to pull. They are not set up setting these people up to succeed. And they’re not explaining to Americans why they think they need such a board. And that’s why they take such a beating.
MONTGOMERY: Well, and there also might be some crossover with other agencies. They’re already doing this. And they tried to say — obviously they rolled this out after Elon Musk said he was going to buy Twitter. And there was this huge brouhaha on the left that, you know, free speech isn’t that great. We should have content moderation. So, that’s essentially what this board was meant to do.
And they said, you know, this idea was put together under Trump. Well, a board like this is great when your guy is in charge and can squash any enemy who’s putting out disinformation however that’s loosely to find. But you know, if Trump or Republican assumes the presidency again, they will have kittens.
RIVERA: You know, there’s a disinformation trial going on right now in Washington D.C. Michael Sussmann, the Clinton operative who went to the FBI with disinformation, I wonder if this board would busted him before he started the whole Russia-Russia hoax that really hurt profoundly the first two years of the Trump presidency. I hope that there’s a responsibility assigned there.
One man’s disinformation though, is another man’s, you know, war cry. You got to be very careful. I just like — let the Ministry of Truth exist in Orwell’s 1984, not in real life.
MONTGOMERY: Yes, absolutely. And you know, Dana is absolutely right. This was destined to fail. And they always start out small. They’re always like, no, no, we just want to inform DHS if there are bad actors out there trying to infiltrate the media and social media with falsehoods. But then all of a sudden, they’re spying on you.
MURDOCH: Yes, they were always spying on us. I always love the word pause. Has anyone ever had anything paused that actually came back? I mean, we’re going to have a pause in our marriage right now. And that mean it’s over. And we’re going to have a pause of our program, because this administration will never ever say, you know what, we got this wrong, and here’s how we’re going to make it right. We’re going to scratch it. No one should have this power and move on.
No, they’re going to pause it because evil right-wing said bad things to hurt our feelings. And it’s pause. So, I think we could just pause this administration for a minute and get a reset.
MONTGOMERY: We need a break. Our delightful Peter Doocy has had Karine Jean-Pierre’s number twice this week. First time trying to pin her down on raising corporate taxes and the correlation with inflation which she couldn’t answer, and now about the disinformation board being shut down because of disinformation. Is she doomed?
WATTERS: Is she doomed? I think she is. It’s not going to be good the next couple of months. You’re going to have radical protesters on the streets, you’re going to have high gas prices. You might have blackouts in California —
MONTGOMERY: Title 42.
WATTERS: And maybe an indictment coming down, so it’s going to be a mess. But I just love political scalps. Don’t you love when one side just takes a scalp? I mean —
RIVERA: It’s gross.
WATTERS: And it’s true. But it’s so true you revel in it. And I’m happy Poppins got bounced. I mean, they took Flynn down. We got Poppins. It’s fine. Not really a fair trade. But it wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t sung — sang, sung, I don’t know. But if she was just mute and hadn’t done that little act, I don’t think people really would have caught on, you wouldn’t have seen it on cable, and it wouldn’t have had traction.
But if she — if she just would shut her mouth, not sing Poppins like that, she probably could have skated. Mayorkas would have been saved.
MONTGOMERY: She probably thought she was so clever when she wrote and recorded that. It’s like, oh, my gosh, that is so amazing. And now she has to hear it endlessly on a loop and it must drive her crazy because it was her great undoing.
WATTERS: Yes.
RIVERA: Her life is defined now.
WATTERS: Yes.
MONTGOMERY: It really is. And I don’t know if it’s positively. Well, please don’t go anywhere. A popular food app who offered to give millions of people free lunch, it ended in total disaster. The details next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MURDOCH: My umbrella. Grubhub’s offer for free lunch for everyone in America’s biggest city ending in mass chaos, and some were very hungry. The company is processing nearly 6,000 orders a minute causing the website to crash and restaurants were unable to keep up. You think?
One business got slammed with a mountain of orders. And a video appears to show dozens of abandoned orders that were never picked up and had to be thrown out. Customers waited for hours, and some never got their food.
All right, speed round here. Watters, first, what’s your favorite food and how long would you wait for it?
WATTERS: Ribeye. I waited less than 45 minutes. I used to work at a kitchen and after I got fired two weeks later, but that time it’s like — it’s like a pit stop at NASCAR. You got people moving things around. It’s like a beehive. And that’s just for the customers outside. Maybe you get a dozen takeout or delivery orders. If you triple that or quadruple that, you’re going to have chefs committing suicide or homicide back there in the kitchen.
MURDOCH: Right, or doing weird stuff to your food. Geraldo, favorite food and how long will you wait for it?
RIVERA: I also — I like Puerto Rican food, pork, rice, and beans. I don’t like waiting at all, Tyrus. I also believe that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Whenever there’s something free. That’s like — that’s like getting in your car at rush hour. You know it’s going to be a mob. You know, it’s like Friday trying to get to the Hamptons. It’s very — it’s —
(CROSSTALK)
PERINO: You know how it is, America.
MURDOCH: I used to ride my bike to The Hamptons in the weekend. Kennedy, favorite food and how long will you wait at home for your order?
MONTGOMERY: Well, a couple of weeks ago, I waited an hour and a half for Five Guys.
WATTERS: Oh.
MONTGOMERY: And I kept calling the restaurant like, please, I’ll do anything. And they’re like, we’re doing — I’m like, on your app, it wasn’t even Grubhub, or Seamless, or DoorDash. But I waited. I was patient. They only pack the fries when the delivery person is there. The problem with this, there’s never enough delivery people for that number of orders.
RIVERA: Because there’s not enough migrants.
MURDOCH: OK. All right, Dana, favorite food and how long would you wait?
PERINO: Well, I won’t — I won’t wait very long. I need to eat like — I won’t be hungry at all, and then I’m starving.
MURDOCH: Are you grouchy when you start.
PERINO: Oh, I awful. Yes, so I just give me a cracker and I’m fine. But the thing is, like, these tech companies, they’re they have so much data and they’re so smart and they’re just all so good. And they have no common sense that this was going to crush these restaurants.
RIVERA: Exactly.
PERINO: And that is irritating.
MURDOCH: See, I have meal prep, so I’m going to wait for nobody. “ONE MORE THING” is up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WATTERS: It’s time now for “ONE MORE THING.” I don’t like to praise Red Sox fans on principle, but I will have to give a shout out to this fan. He caught two home runs in the same game, in the same the same inning.
RIVERA: The same fan?
WATTERS: The same guy, the same game, the same inning. Now, the chances of doing that, and we have the producer calculate this, one in 14 billion, all right.
MONTGOMERY: Wow.
WATTERS: You have a better chance of winning the lottery, being attacked by a shark, or being struck by lightning. This is the luckiest guy I’ve ever seen except he’s a Red Sox fan. So, we’ll let that slide.
Speaking of homeruns, we have Glenn Younkin on the show tonight at 7:00. I didn’t think he liked me. But apparently, he’s doing the show. We’ve been trying to get him on for a long time. But we’re going to have Youngkin on tonight to react to a lot of hot topics. So, watch at 7:00. Dana Perino.
WATTERS: Both.
PERINO: Maybe you’re respected.
WATTERS: Both.
PERINO: But you have a great show.
WATTERS: So you’re saying he dislikes me and respect me?
PERINO: I’m just saying, well, look, you have a great show at 7:00 p.m. so maybe he looks at that and says I’m going to come.
WATTERS: OK, all right, it has nothing to do with me personally?
PERINO: Also, maybe his — maybe his children are big fans.
WATTERS: Oh, that works.
PERINO: That happens as well. Hey, Animals Are Great, my edition. This is an elephant who started bellowing when she saw this antelope drowning. And so she sent out an SOS. And so, the zookeeper ran and helped pull the antelope out and save the antelope. She — this elephant is 61 years old. She’s at La Aurora Zoo in Guatemala City. And now she’s being honored along with the animal caretaker for their teamwork in saving the antelope.
WATTERS: Animal caretaker, is that a new word?
PERINO: Like a proper word?
WATTERS: Is that like a proper word?
PERINO: Well, I don’t know what it was before.
WATTERS: Zookeeper?
PERINO: Zookeeper.
WATTERS: I don’t know. I don’t want to offend anybody. Geraldo.
RIVERA: I love all five of my children. One is really in the spotlight this week. My dear daughter Simone is graduated from Yale Law School. She’s really a great kid. Here we are at the rooftop of the peninsula. We hang out when we can. She’s graduating Northwestern. I love my girl. I love her.
She survived the terrorist attack in Paris in 2015.
PERINO: Yes.
RIVERA: Really that’s what she got her interest in foreign affairs. She’s already got a clerkship. There she is on my bad boy. That’s her mom, Cece. Congrats to Simone. We love you. And I’ll be proudly standing there when you graduate.
WATTERS: And O’Reilly’s new book Killing the Killers talks about that, her surviving that terrorist attack in Paris. Kennedy.
PERINO: I’m going to do this quickly. Pope Francis has been suffering from strained ligaments in his right knee. He said the thing that is healed him and taken away the pain, Tequila. There you go.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (text): Pope Francis! How is your leg? How is your knee?
POPE FRANCIS (text): It’s being naughty. I need a little bit of tequila for my leg!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WATTERS: You need some tequila?
MURDOCH: There’s always time for tequila. There’s Margaritaville somewhere, right? Listen, I always love this one. Promises made and promises kept. Jerome Bettis, after 28 years, went back and got his college degree. It’s always nice to see an athlete goes back and finished it.
WATTERS: The Bus.
MURDOCH: And I just got a text from Gutfeld saying that I have to push that I’ll be in Salt Lake City this week with Greg at a book signing.
PERINO: On Saturday.
MURDOCH: On Saturday, yes.
WATTERS: All right.
PERINO: This Saturday, May 21.
WATTERS: I’m sorry you had to travel with Greg.
MURDOCH: I don’t travel with him.
WATTERS: Oh, good. That should be a policy for everybody.
MURDOCH: Yes.
WATTERS: All right, that’s it for us. “SPECIAL REPORT” is up next with Bret Baier.
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