Editor’s note: Video contains profanity.
(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) After a six-year-long ratings slide for the once untouchable Daily Show, its co-creator, Lizz Winstead, recently lashed out at new “king of late night comedy” Greg Gutfeld and his 2.5 million Fox News viewers, Mediaite reported.
During an appearance on Sirius XM radio’s left-wing “Dean Obeidallah Show,” Winstead seemed to have been set off by Fox’s Super Bowl commercial celebrating Gutfeld’s ascension to the top of the ratings.
WATCH: @greggutfeld gets his first SuperBowl ad for @Gutfeldfox as ‘King of Late Night’ pic.twitter.com/z4nVaKNLea
— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) February 8, 2023
“He makes jokes about s**t that I care about, which is gross,” Winstead complained. “I think that whole situation’s gross.”
Winstead’s attack called to mind other sour-grapes leftists, like failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton—whose loss was credited, in part, to her having referred to Trump supporters as “deplorables.”
Calling Gutfeld the “king of s***ty f**king people,” Winstead seethed over her disconnect with the present cultural Zeitgeist, insisting that Gutfeld was not funny while lumping him in with red-pilled libertarian podcaster Joe Rogan and former President Donald Trump.
“He ain’t funny to me, but we see that there’s an audience out there for s**t like that,” she said. “There’s an audience out there for s**t like Joe Rogan, there’s an audience out there of f**king s**ty people—70 million people voted for Trump.”
Trump received 73.6 million votes, according to the final tally in the 2020 election, eclipsing former President Barack Obama’s re-election record by more than 7 million.
Gutfeld has similarly carved out a position for himself in late-night comedy, surpassing the likes of Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.
At its peak, the Daily Show averaged around 1.5 million, with more recent figures landing around 363,000 viewers in September 2021.
A Feb. 7 ratings report showed it placing 103rd in its time slot with about 288,000 viewers, just above the Discovery Channel’s Ice Cold Catch and a college basketball matchup between Marquette University and the University of Connecticut.
Gutfeld’s longtime side-man, George “Tyrus” Murdock, said the show’s willingness to explore a variety of viewpoints was key to its success.
“We bring our own thoughts [and] jokes to the table, and no one is ever asked to say something or go with the ‘tribe’ mentality,” he told Headline USA in an exclusive 2021 interview celebrating Gutfeld’s first emergence as a ratings leader.
“I think that’s our greatest strength—nothing ever forced,” he added. “I’m not a party-first guy; I’m a Republican, but I’m a free thinker. You can support ideas people from across the aisle.”
But don’t expect to see Winstead as one of the show’s guest panelists.
“Like Fox News, those people are going to laugh at s**t we think is f**ked up,” she said.
“The bottom line is, ‘Do I want them as my audience?” she continued. “No. I would never want to go on that show. It would never benefit me in any way.”
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
