The self-proclaimed (and, to be fair, ratings-backed since 2022) “King of Late Night” says network TV’s after-hours desk jockeys are failing because they’re beholden to “publicists and celebrities” who are too controversy-averse, while he succeeds by “saying things that they’re thinking.”

“Gutfeld!” host Greg Gutfeld got the last word on the matter Monday night on Fox News’ “The Five,” contrasting his rotating panelist format with what he sees as an ideologically constrained mainstream comedy landscape.

“They are beholden to publicists and celebrities,” Gutfeld said of traditional late-night hosts. “They can’t ask anything that isn’t safe. So if you were to say, ‘Have you been following men in women’s sports?’ whoever you have on — Brad Pitt is going to look at his publicist and go, ‘Get me out of here.’”

Gutfeld credited his own show’s success to offering a space where alternative viewpoints can breathe in a media environment he described as airless and intellectually dishonest.

“People find my show entertaining because I’m saying things that they’re thinking that they thought they couldn’t say,” he said. “Everybody else has made it so suffocating.”

The conversation came amid broader discussion of the reported cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” and in particular, Jay Leno’s recent comments that late night comedians’ leaning to one political side created a disconnect between mainstream comedy and the American TV audience.

Gutfeld also took aim at the notion that hosts like Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel were taking bold political stances:

“I take issue with the biggest lie you’re seeing here, which is that Colbert or Kimmel were risk-takers,” he said. “They had long, rewarding, lucrative careers doing exactly what was expected from them. Just so happens the audience found an alternate universe that found they were lying to them.”

Co-host Dana Perino noted that Gutfeld gives his guests the freedom to express themselves without fear of cancellation. Gutfeld quipped in response, “Sometimes I’ll get rid of them.”

Gutfeld’s comments reflect his broader thesis: that his success is as much a reaction to the failures of his competition as it is about any single formula.

“The only reason I think that my show exists is because of the arrogance, the ego, and the assumptions that the liberals have to turn comedy sideways,” he said.

In 2022, Fox News Channel’s “Gutfeld!” overtook the mainstays of late-night network television — including “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” — in average total viewers, the first time a cable late-night show has sustained a total-viewership win across an entire month.

The gap has only grown since, with “Gutfeld!” opening a nearly million-total-viewer lead over his next-closest competitor in live-plus-seven numbers – Colbert – and sustaining a healthy edge in the 25-45-year-old adults demo in Q2 of 2025, according to Nielsen stats.