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Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, a favorite of Donald Trump, was a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Thursday as the president continues to hint that the SNL alum and fellow late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel could be about to lose their jobs.
Gutfeld was warmly received by Fallon, with the two men steering clear of politics as the conservative given the floor to tell a lengthy anecdote about his first encounter with Fallon in a bar in Hell’s Kitchen at which both parties were “wasted” and engaged in a drunken wrestling bout. The former Maxim editor then rattled through his pre-Fox career and promoted his new game show, What Did I Miss?
“This is hilarious – we’ve met before,” Fallon opened with. “Yes, you have no memory of it. Which is understandable, because we were wasted,” the former Red Eye host said.
The two continued to banter about drunkenly wrestling each other.
“And you run towards me, and you tackle me, like you’re a giant golden retriever. You’re like on top of me. And so we’re wrestling. We’re wrestling. And then you change, and you start wrestling my buddy Andy, and you’re wrestling him. And you guys get on the ground. You guys are now on the ground wrestling,” Gutfeld told the audience, who gave the host a generally warm reception.
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Fox News host Greg Gutfeld guests on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Thursday August 7 2025 (The Tonight Show/NBC)
Last week, Gutfeld alluded to his upcoming appearance with Fallon, saying it would be the “biggest crossover since the Harlem Globetrotters visited the Golden Girls.”
“Unlike the other guys, Jimmy sitting with me proves he’s not afraid of upsetting his peers or afraid of my mesmerizing charm,” he added.
Fallon has shown his willingness to be pragmatic about humoring the right before, famously hosting Trump in September 2016, two months before his victory win over Hillary Clinton, and ruffling the New York property tycoon’s blonde hair to check whether it was real.
The gesture alienated some of The Tonight Show’s audience, and Fallon later expressed regret over it, telling The New York Times in 2017: “I didn’t do it to humanize him. I almost did it to minimize him. I didn’t think that would be a compliment: ‘He did the thing that we all wanted to do.’”
In another interview with NBC’s Today the same year, Fallon said political comedy is “just not what I do,” adding: “I don’t really even care that much about politics. I love pop culture more than I love politics.”
The comedian subsequently complained about the negative response his segment with the Republican had attracted, telling The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast he felt like asking the public: “So now what? Are you happy? I’m depressed. Do you want to push me more? What do you want me to do? You want me to kill myself? What would make you happy? Get over it.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to make anyone angry – I never do and I never will. It’s all in the fun of the show. I made a mistake. I’m sorry if I made anyone mad. And looking back, I would do it differently.”
Trump himself was angered over Fallon’s “whimpering” attempts to distance himself from the controversy, rebuking him on Twitter: “Be a man Jimmy!”
The host did make one risque joke at the president’s expense in his opening monologue to Thursday’s show, shortly before Gutfeld was introduced, discussing Trump’s tariff program coming into effect and remarking: “The only places Trump didn’t [tariff] are North Korea and Epstein Island.”
The president appears to have his late-night detractors in his sights right now and was asked at a press conference on Wednesday about “shock jock” Howard Stern’s Sirius XM radio show reportedly being brought to an end, shortly after Paramount cancelled CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and whether that meant anti-Trump comedy was facing extinction.
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Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that Fallon and fellow late-night host Jimmy Kimmel are facing the axe (Getty)
“Well, it hasn’t worked,” the president answered. “And it hasn’t worked, really, for a long time, and I would say pretty much from the beginning. Colbert has no talent.
“I mean, I could take anybody here. I could go outside in the beautiful streets and pick a couple of people that do just as well or better. They’d get higher ratings than he did. He’s got no talent.
“Fallon has no talent. Kimmel has no talent. They’re next. They’re going to be going. I hear they’re going to be going. I don’t know, but I would imagine because they’d get – you know, Colbert has better ratings than Kimmel or Fallon.”
By contrast, Trump has long been a champion of Gutfeld, posting a Fox press release celebrating his high ratings on Truth Social last September and writing in all-caps: “GUTFELD! NOTCHES LARGEST AUDIENCE IN PROGRAM HISTORY WITH NEARLY FIVE MILLION VIEWERS DURING INTERVIEW WITH FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP.”
When Colbert’s show was canned last month, he wrote: “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”
Gutfeld likewise gloated over The Late Show’s demise, commenting on Fox: “This was an ‘institution,’ and rather than put someone in his place they just said, ‘We’re closing up.’ Imagine being a chef. You’re such a bad chef that they cancel food… It’s so obvious. You can’t do a comedy show and a sermon at the same time.”