Greg Gutfeld Bombs With His Own Studio Audience After Taking a Shot at Ex-Fox Colleague Chris Wallace

Ah, political comedy. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, and on Thursday’s edition of Fox News’ Gutfeld!, the audience was the best judge.

During a monologue about the immigration crisis hitting several major cities including New York City, where Gutfeld! is filmed, host Greg Gutfeld rattled through a bunch of roasty jokes about several political and media figures who were either related or unrelated to the crisis. If that sounds confusing, that might be why the audience only had a smattering of applause to offer up. One of them was even about former Fox host Chris Wallace, who now works for CNN:

Liberal goals without conservative systems mean there are freebies minus results, and that doesn’t work. [New York City Mayor Eric] Adams sees this, we think. Look at bail reform, the free-range homeless. That reminds me, I promised Chris Wallace I’d let him borrow my tent.

Yeah, reader, these jokes were bad. Not because they’re “conservative” jokes, but because there’s a way to do that. There’s also nothing wrong with making conservative points; many people don’t believe that social safety nets work. Fair enough! But good comedy has to have an element of truth, and the truth is Chris Wallace is actually doing just fine. And while he hasn’t made the migrant crisis his cause célèbre — to use a liberal elitist French phrase — Wallace has interviewed Adams and tried to hold him and other Democrats accountable for what’s happening in New York and other “lefty” cities. This joke doesn’t work.

Maybe I’m a hopeless and idealistic failed comedian, but I know a good joke when I see it. Hacky potshots are only funny to other hacks, and hacks aren’t funny. Hacks punch down for no good reason, often while ignoring the truth. Or they punch sideways without being able to hit their target because there was no reason to punch in the first place (see: the “jokes” about Brian Stelter and Rep. Nancy Pelosi). Comedians punch up while confronting their targets with the truth. Here are examples of several jokes that work by Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery, another Fox News host, made on a recent edition of The Big Weekend Show:

The wrath of tropical storm Hilary — 42 million desperate souls in the path of the storm which made landfall several hours ago, but they let it right into the country because it’s Biden’s America!

Its impact far from over, it’s the first tropical storm to hit California since 1939, when Joe Biden started his Senate career.

Are these jokes that worked from a news desk? Maybe not. Are they jokes I would tell? Definitely not. But do they work as jokes? Absolutely! (And no, the lefty website to which I linked above clearly did not get nor appreciate the joke. That’s fine too. They are not the audience for these jokes.) President Joe Biden’s policies and his age, which are also jokes that he makes about himself, are fair game. The people in peril? Immigrants seeking asylum from homes that have become too dangerous? Not the targets here.

And yeah, I know there’s nothing more hilarious than picking apart jokes and analyzing them, so you’re welcome, America.

I’m not saying Greg Gutfeld can’t be funny, but there’s a way to do this and a way to do it better.

Watch the video above via Fox News.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.