WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
  • Jessica Tarlov defended Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed despite concerns about his record toward Jews and Israel.
  • Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters challenged Tarlov’s argument after she cited personal conversations with El-Sayed.
  • Tarlov accused Republicans of campaigning on Islamophobia and warned that the strategy would not sit well with Jews.
  • Gad Saad later criticized Tarlov on X, while she had not publicly responded at the time of the account.

Fox News co-host Jessica Tarlov’s decision to defend Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed earned her two bruising rounds of criticism. The first unfolded on “The Five,” where Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters dismantled her case piece by piece, as reported by PJ Media.

Tarlov, who is Jewish, defended El-Sayed despite his record of hostility toward Jews and Israel. She began by attacking his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, for changing his position on tariffs.

Gutfeld quickly cut to the heart of the matter. “But so what?” he replied. “That still, that makes them worse than Abdul who doesn't like Jews?”

Tarlov responded by presenting her personal conversations with El-Sayed as evidence that concerns about him had been addressed. Her defense rested heavily on the fact that she had interviewed him and discussed the relevant issues directly.

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“I have interviewed Abdul, I have talked to him about this, I've talked about the concern of Jewish Michiganders, we have talked about the situation in the Middle East, we have talked about the situation here and preserving Jewish safety, and the Israel question,” Tarlov said.

In effect, Tarlov accepted what El-Sayed told her despite the record driving the criticism against him. That was apparently supposed to settle the matter, but it instead gave her colleagues an obvious opening.

Tarlov then accused Republicans of campaigning on Islamophobia. She warned that such a strategy “will not sit well with Jews.”

The performance fit Tarlov’s familiar effort to cast herself as the reasonable and broad minded voice at the table. Yet her defense looked considerably less impressive when placed beside the accusations concerning El-Sayed’s hostility toward Jews and Israel.

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Rather than grapple with that record, Tarlov appeared more concerned with rejecting Republican criticism and protecting the Democratic candidate. The result was a defense that treated the candidate’s assurances as sufficient while dismissing the political attack against him as Islamophobic.

Gad Saad then delivered the second round. Saad is a Canadian evolutionary psychologist, a Concordia University professor emeritus, and a native of Lebanon who has built his reputation by attacking political correctness, woke ideology, and irrational thinking in academia and the wider culture.

Tarlov’s appearance gave Saad fresh material. Pointing to the Islamist slaughter of Christians in Nigeria, he posted a response on X that sharply challenged her posture.

Saad’s response came Saturday, and Tarlov had not publicly answered it at the time of the account. After taking fire from Gutfeld and Watters, remaining silent rather than digging the hole deeper may have been the wiser choice.

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His language was harsh, but the substance of his criticism was dead on. Tarlov’s determination to prove she is not Islamophobic and to help Democrats has led her to support El-Sayed despite the concerns surrounding his record.

That is the trap of putting loyalty to a political party ahead of loyalty to one’s own people. It turns the person criticizing the party into the supposed villain while the people embraced by that party receive excuses and protection.

Tarlov could have treated the concerns of Jewish voters as more important than El-Sayed’s personal reassurances. Instead, she used those conversations to wave away a record that was already at the center of the dispute.

Gutfeld and Watters exposed the weakness of that argument on television. Saad followed by calling out the larger blindness behind it, and complaints about his tone do nothing to answer his underlying criticism.

The episode left Tarlov defending a candidate accused of hostility toward Jews while attacking Republicans for Islamophobia. That is a remarkable political contortion, even by the standards of a liberal panelist trying to rescue a Democrat from his own record.

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