Geraldo Rivera and Greg Gutfeld have a real love-hate relationship. In that they love to hate on each other, then make up, rinse, and repeat. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot the two agree on, and their disagreements regularly turn into full-blown freak-outs, with Gutfeld mugging for the camera and Rivera, somehow, often seeming like the voice of reason on Fox News’ The Five. But on Tuesday, as Mediaite reports, the two got into an argument that quickly escalated to pretty epic proportions—even for them.
The topic? It started with the gubernatorial race in Virginia, and comments made by Democratic frontrunner Terry McAuliffe about how he doesn’t “think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” or have a say when it comes to each school’s policies to protect trans and non-binary students from being discriminated against. The bigger issue that’s playing into this at the moment, however, is a walkout staged by students in Loudon County, Virginia following the rape of two young girls by the same student—a boy wearing a skirt (yes, that part is important to this argument)—and how the story has been largely buried by the press. Which is something that’s been bothering Gutfeld, who explained:
“This is the thing that has been driving me nuts for like a week, alright? How the news decides when to turn the spigot of news on or off. A young girl is raped by a boy. Forget even the part about the skirt, right? This is after the boy had assaulted somebody else. Adults knew about this. When you think about how horrible this is, it should be a national story, because it’s bloody insane. This kid raped somebody in the school, then raped another person, wearing a skirt. But it’s not a story… Now we know that it’s true. The rapist has pled guilty. And no one would have known about this if it wasn’t for the dad of the victim being arrested and humiliated and called a ‘domestic terrorist’ by the school board.”
The victim’s father was arrested after showing up to a school board meeting and demanding to know why his daughter’s attacker was not being prosecuted. But Gutfeld’s conclusion is that this is a story about “a young girl being raped in her school by a guy who might’ve been using a skirt as a ruse. That is a huge, huge story! So it had to be covered up for the sake of the election, or because there was some sympathy toward the suspect, and some antipathy toward the victim. That’s a possibility. But if you vote for Terry McAuliffe, you’re voting for the same corrupt system that condoned a rape because the suspect may have worn a skirt? Who knows. But if you vote for Terry McAuliffe, you’re voting for rape!”
(Got that?)
While Gutfeld was careful to preface his comments by saying to “forget about the skirt part,” it was something he mentioned several times, which didn’t sit so well with Geraldo, who said that he agreed with McAuliffe’s statements that teaching kids about diversity is as important as teaching them math—which got him a few eye rolls from his co-hosts. And while Rivera (thankfully) concurred that the sexual assault was “horrifying,” he then went on to say that “we’re living in a brand-new world” and “a guy wearing a skirt is not the definition of all these kids struggling with their gender identity.”
An apoplectic Gutfeld claimed that, “You get more angry over people who don’t get the frickin’ vaccine than you are over a rapist!” Which Rivera called “bullcrap,” then called Gutfeld out for starting his argument off by saying to “‘forget about the skirt,’ then you mentioned the skirt 10 more times.”
If just reading this sounds juvenile, watching it—which you can do, if you dare, at Mediaite—is even more migraine-inducing.
(Via Mediaite)