Fox News host Jessica Tarlov on Wednesday offered a blunt assessment of the frenzied start to President Donald Trump’s second term including the since-rescinded, controversial memo that would have frozen all federal grants and loan disbursements.
“It is complete chaos,” said “The Five” host of the funding freeze, which had been temporarily halted by a federal judge one day earlier.
“It is not being managed in any sort of orderly fashion at all.”
Moments earlier, Tarlov hit back at co-host Jeanine Pirro as she weighed in on the Trump administration offering buyouts to all federal employees and tied the White House’s email to workers to one with an nearly-identical title sent by Elon Musk to Twitter employees in 2022.
“And Elon Musk reduced the workforce at X and yet he was able to run it just as efficiently,” Pirro said.
“I’m not sure about the ‘running it as efficiently,’ he obviously got rid of a lot of engineers and certainly the fact-checking folks there,” Tarlov noted.
She went on to argue that the Trump administration’s proposal is having the “opposite reaction that they intended” and pointed to federal workers on Reddit who have declared that the buyouts made them “more motivated to do their job.”
Co-host Jesse Watters — after Tarlov read a comment from someone “motivated” to stay to defend the Constitution — sarcastically responded, “Great,” before letting out a chuckle.
Tarlov swiftly replied, “Acting as if everybody who has dedicated their life to public service is easily replaceable or not doing their job is a gross position and not reflective of reality at all and they will learn that the hard way when they started pushing people out.”
She then mockingly referred to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s “good first day” on the job before digging into the funding memo chaos which she said has been “confusing even Republican senators who are getting their marching orders from the top.”
“Then they go out there and say what they are supposed to say like good little soldiers. Then they hear from all of their constituents that the portals are down, they don’t know what is going on with Head Start, Medicaid, etc.,” Tarlov said.
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“Then they hear that the freeze has been frozen. They say that is a good thing, and I am sure they are about to get slapped on the wrist again when they’ve stepped out of line.”