Conservative author Jason Mattera’s ambush of former IRS official Lois Lerner has earned plaudits from certain conservative circles, but it was too much for the gang on Fox News Channel’s “The Five.”
Co-host Greg Gutfeld said Wednesday that the video — in which Mattera chased Lerner around a suburban Washington, D.C. neighborhood as she walked her dogs — pulled off the impossible.
“Seriously, that even made me feel bad for Lerner, and I can’t stand her,” Gutfeld said.
Gutfeld’s fellow conservatives on the roundtable mostly agreed — reminiscent of Keith Olbermann sticking up for Bill O’Reilly in 2007 when the Fox News host was ambushed outside his home by a liberal blogger. O’Reilly himself has denounced Mattera’s stunts in the past.
But no one on the “Five” panel was more outraged than the show’s resident liberal, Bob Beckel, who said that Mattera’s video was an “insult” to the legacy of the late right-wing provocateur Andrew Breitbart. (A writer at the very website Breitbart founded would seem to disagree.)
In fact, Beckel was so incensed that he’s apparently willing to throw down with Mattera.
“You’re twice as young as I am,” Beckel said in an on-air message directed at Mattera. “You’re a punk. You’re a coward. And my name is Bob Beckel. I would like you to call you any time, any place, and let’s let you and I discuss it ’cause you’re a coward, you’re a punk, you pick on people and you deserve to have your ass kicked. And I wanna do it, so get in touch with me.”
“And bring a knife, punk,” Beckel added later.
Mattera told Mediaite that he’s happy to have a debate with Beckel over “effective journalism.”
