It wasn’t a meltdown. It wasn’t a debate. It was a moment — sharp, unscripted, and just off-format enough to make the studio freeze. One voice pushed. Another snapped. And what followed wasn’t just tension. It was a glimpse of how tightly the rules are held — and what happens when someone decides to test them, live

The Five” co-hosts Greg Gutfeld and Jessica Tarlov got in a heated argument over political violence, who is responsible for it, and more on Wednesday’s broadcast of the FOX News Channel show. Read the full transcript:

JESSE WATTERS: Jessica, you have never called ICE agents fascists or Gestapo, Nazis, you’ve never done that, but there are people in your party that have done that. Do you think that’s responsible?JESSICA TARLOV: Listen, I think that fascism and fascists is a very special category of people and you should use it when it’s really applicable and sparingly, because then people will believe you when you say it. And it has become too common to hear words like that and that is a both sides problem and last week we went through the litany of times that Donald Trump has used that rhetoric. And the fact that he came out after Charlie Kirk’s tragic assassination and said the radical left did this, And then we heard a chorus of we are at war. And that does permeate the entirety of American society that they hear that from the top.

GREG GUTFELD: We don’t know that much. That is absolute garbage. It is. Continue.

When something terrible happens —

JESSICA TARVLOR: Greg —

GREG GUTFELD: When somebody gets murdered, you’re saying how dare you be enraged by it? Continue.

JESSICA TARLOV: No, what I say is how dare you play in —

GREG GUTFELD: I’ll give you the both, no, Jessica, I’ll give you the both sides. I agree with you, there is both sides.

[CROSSTALK]

GREG GUTFELD: On one hand you have the hard left and on the other hand, you have the left.

JESSICA TARLOV: Why are you —

GREG GUTFELD: They’re both sides of the same coin — because you walk into this room and you’re not reading it. There is no both sides. You don’t have the evidence for that.

[CROSSTALK]

GREG GUTFELD: You can’t say that Donald Trump says this.

JESSICA TARLOV: That’s not true. Someone —

GREG GUTFELD: You guys act on it. You guys act on it. We don’t. What do you want?

JESSICA TARLOV: What do I want? I would like to talk about the specifics of who Vance Boelter actually was since we fought about that last time because you make it out as — he knew Melissa Hortman.

GREG GUTFELD: Let’s focus on this thing now. I’ll destroy you on that later. But focus on this now.

JESSICA TARLOV: I’ll focus on this now. This looks like a kid that was inflamed either by the leftist cabal or maybe he used his own eyes and maybe he saw what’s going on. Maybe there are people in his community who are being picked up by people from ICE.

Maybe he saw raids at Home Depot or maybe he did hear J.B. Pritzker. He seems like a Morning Joe viewer to me. Someone who had tuned in saw Hillary Clinton and then went out and grabbed his gun.

The common denominator in all of this is that we have young men, usually young white men, who have access to these guns and are carrying out these tragedies. They are nihilists. They live online. And again, do you think it’s normal that people are writing on casings anti-ICE? They think that it’s a joke.

You look at Tyler Robinson’s text messages with his roommate and partner. It reads like a joke. They just wanted us on FOX News to have to be able to read that stuff out loud. He even said it in the messages. So I get it. You’re amped up. I don’t think that I said anything worthy of that level of exposure.

GREG GUTFELD: Your rationalization of both sides.

JESSICA TARLOV: I’m not rationalizing anything.

GREG GUTFELD: You have to understand, since Kirk’s death, there is no both sides anymore, Jessica.

JESSICA TARLOV: Why did the DOJ take down the study that showed how much right-wing exposure there is?

GREG GUTFELD: What study was that? Which one? The one in The Economist that was sponsored by a group run by a guy in Antifa? That study that has been discredited by the Federalist? You’re walking down a really bad alley right now.

JESSICA TARLOV: In the Federalist?

GREG GUTFELD: Yes, yes. I actually did see, Jessica, I did the deep dive on that study. That study was authored by a project that was run by a guy who says he was Antifa. That is why that whole thing has been scrubbed, okay?

It’s real simple. You label someone a fascist or a racist or a Nazi, it makes you free to attack them, and that has been the ideology from the start. It’s weird.

JESSICA TARLOV: So why is it okay when Donald Trump does it?

GREG GUTFELD: What?

JESSICA TARLOV: Just tell me why it’s okay when Donald Trump does it.

GREG GUTFELD: No, I’m getting there. I’m getting there.

JESSICA TARLOV: Great. I’m enjoying this.

GREG GUTFELD: Okay. You won’t be for long.

The left calls Trump a hate monger. They have called me a hate monger because I ridicule the left. I ridicule protesters. I ridicule academia, Hollywood, the news media. I make fun of The View every day. I make fun of the UN. Guess what? No one acts on the things that I say because my side doesn’t do that.

We say people are stupid. We say people are wrong, but we don’t say they’re evil. That is your game, okay? And then you come and you say, okay, ma’am, this is a mentally ill loner. Well, who do you think does this stuff? It’s not Ben Affleck. It’s not Tom Brady. It’s not even Carrot Top. People who do this stuff are always that way. The question is who points them in that direction?

Why pick ICE? Why pick Kirk? Why target TV stations that put bombs under FOX trucks? Why vandalize memorials? Why kill kids in Catholic schools? Two things can be true. A person can be mentally ill, and you can be guiding him to that place in his life. That is how brainwashing works.

JESSICA TARLOV: There is a litany of examples.

GREG GUTFELD: You will not have them. If I gave you two months to look for them, you couldn’t find them.

JESSICA TARLOV: Really?

GREG GUTFELD: Because they’ve been debunked.

JESSICA TARLOV: Really?

GREG TUFELD: You have one thing.

JESSICA TARLOV: Dylan Roof has been debunked. Vance Boelter and his list of dozens of Democrats.

GREG GUTFELD: Vance Boelter, we can talk about that.

JESSICA TARLOV: Go ahead and talk about it.

GREG GUTFELD: Okay, you want to talk about it? I do. Okay. There was not a relentless drumbeat for 10 years about his victim like there was here. There was an intent and a motive for her killing by her killer alone. It wasn’t The Five. It wasn’t National Review. It wasn’t any show going like, you know what? We need to go after this fascist. Hopefully, someone will take her out. That never happened. That is why your analogy is so pointless and desperate.

JESSICA TARLOV: Pipe bombs being sent to Democrats’ houses. People saying in court, I was inspired by Donald Trump.

GREG GUTFELD: If you want to do this math, you are going to be embarrassed.

JESSICA TARLOV: According to you, I’m embarrassed every day. Frankly, I’m just feeling normal. Thank you.

JESSE WATTERS: We should do this every week. Yes.

JESSICA TARLOV: Honestly, the first day of the week with Greg seems to go badly for me.

GREG GUTFELD: Well, you don’t come in here with both sides. It’s like going into a funeral and saying, hey, let’s have a kegger.

JESSICA TARLOV: Well, sometimes you should just celebrate the life.

PAUL MAURO: Dana, is it always like this?

DANA PERINO: You should see when I get going