The first time you tune into “The Five,” Fox’s popular daily political talk show, you immediately know one of the cohosts is not like the others. On a network where women once had a uniform of bright sheath dresses, Jessica Tarlov is wearing sneakers. Converse, to be exact.
Also different: her politics. She’s the lone liberal at the table, going toe-to-toe with conservative cohosts Emily Compagno, Greg Gutfeld, Dana Perino and Jesse Watters. “I am outnumbered,” she says. The 4-to-1 odds don’t phase her. “I still do well though, I think. Or at least that's what my mom tells me,” she says with a laugh.
Now, she’s publishing her first book, “I Disagree: Winning Arguments without Losing Friends,” out Sept. 15. Part memoir, part how-to guide for heated
political conversations, it’s perfectly timed for what could be one of the most expensive and most polarized midterm elections in modern history.
“I hear constantly from people on the right and on the left that they wish they were having conversations with people they disagree with, that we're too siloed, we're too hyper-partisan,” she tells USA TODAY. “They are not necessarily in it to convert people to their point of view, but they're sick of losing people in their lives.”
She sees her coveted seat on the most-watched cable news show not as a lonely one, but one with huge opportunity. “Do I want to change votes? Absolutely. I want to win elections,” she says. “I think your quality of life will be better under a Democratic administration.”
Her focus is on the long game – on opening minds to different perspectives and modeling "discourse which is grounded in civility,” she says. “That doesn't mean it doesn't get hot. But I’m a big girl and I can deal with all that. I've figured out a way, I think, to calm even the tensest moments with a dose of humanity or humor or building that connective tissue so that I can get my points in and continue opening minds.”
It’s a skill she wants everyone to have.
Jessica Tarlov is 'partisan to my core'
Tarlov was raised in New York City by parents in the film industry and attended schools including Bryn Mawr College and London School of Economics, where she studied public policy and research and got her PhD in political science and government. Hers is the type of tony background many democrats have been running away from lately.
Some also wouldn’t sign up to work for a conservative, as she did while in London during Boris Johnson’s mayoral reelection campaign. After that she joined a prominent democratic polling and consulting firm, which led to guest spots on Fox shows like “The Five,” “Fox & Friends” and “Hannity.” She was officially named a contributor in 2017, and by 2022, a cohost on “The Five.”
Tarlov juggles her TV duties while also cohosting a podcast called “Raging Moderates” with Scott Galloway, a coveted press stop for democratic candidates, from Senate hopefuls like James Talarico and Abdul El-Sayed, to possible presidential contenders like Governor J.B. Pritzker and Senators Chris Murphy and Mark Warner.
CEO of Fox News Suzanne Scott offered Tarlov the job when she was eight months pregnant and they signed the deal while she was on maternity leave. Her father had been in treatment for cancer during COVID and died when she was 20 weeks pregnant. It had not been an easy year. “Having an employer that basically says, ‘You take as big of a swing as you want’,” was a big vote of confidence, Tarlov recalls.
The support of the top boss and her colleagues has helped both day-to-day, but also when blowback online gets intense. “If you go and check out my social media feed, it is bleak,” she says. “It is nasty and it's difficult to stomach certainly for people who care about me.” Commenters have called her a “traitor,” say she’s “unsufferable,” take digs at her voice (“like nails down a chalkboard”) and many things unprintable in a newspaper.
She’s also been criticized by the person who has the world’s biggest megaphone: President Trump.
She chronicles his first take-down of her (like other female journalists, there have been several) in detail in her book. It was 24 hours before the US bombed Fordow, an Iranian underground nuclear enrichment site. “That’s when he decided to post about me,” she writes.
“Her voice, her manner, and above all else, what she says, are a disgrace to television broadcasting," Trump said, in part. “Nobody can stand Tarlov! She lies over and over again, and MAGA is complaining, BIG LEAGUE, that she’s all over Fox... People like Jessica Tarlov make MAGA absolutely hate Fox.”
She writes about how she tried to process her reaction: “Could I see the career benefit of being a Trump target? Isn’t all press good press? Trump certainly lives by that credo. Was I going to cry? Yup, that’s the one. I was going to cry. And I did.“ She showed her husband the post, and then began "really-deep-sobbing-into-his-shirt crying with all my makeup on to boot. Had-to-unstick-my-fake-eyelash-from-his-chest crying.”
Why share the details of that day? “It was important to me in the book to tell the whole story, not just what I said on air that day, what he wrote about me, and then how I showed up the next day, but what that evening looked like for me and for my husband, who was my support system through this,” she says.
At the time, she had been receiving death threats, and as a result of the president’s post, she says she needed more security. “Then you start to think he controls the FBI that’s looking into this,” says the mom of two. “Your mind goes to very dark places, especially when you have little kids. You go back [into the ring] because you have to, but also because I’ve built up enough of a portfolio of doing my job well to know that he’s coming after me because I’ve done something right. I’ve put information into what he sees as his bubble, his domain.”
She hopes that story illustrates two things. First, the human impact of Trump's remarks. “I wanted to make sure that people knew that this all isn't a joke,“ she says “Trump acts like it's a joke. He did this particular attack while he was in the midst of a bombing campaign in Iran, and you're thinking, 'OK, you should definitely be busier. You should not be watching 'The Five.' ' We appreciate all the viewership, but please – how do you have the time?” Second, she hopes readers learn something for their own lives: “Most important, as a takeaway for the reader, is that a criticism on style is a win on substance.”
Everyone wants to win the argument. Tarlov wants to break the cycle.
Humor has always been a big part of Tarlov’s family, and she loves a good zinger.
In a recent segment about Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom, her colleague Jesse Waters, a staunch Trump supporter, asked if “blind loyalty to an idiot” overrides common sense. Tarlov quickly quipped, “Well you do blind loyalty to an idiot every day, how does it feel?” eliciting laughs from everyone at the desk.
But she doesn’t believe in punching down. Be sharp and snappy, but not mean. In today’s news cycle and on social media, “There is too much emphasis put on quick wins,” she says. “Winning is the long game to me. Every bit of this conversation [on 'The Five'] chips away at people's perceptions of the Democratic Party as maybe too aloof or elitist or out of touch.” A win for her is “every time that I show them that there's another way to look at an issue.”
That’s what she advocates for in her book. That people listen, keep talking even when things get heated, and try to be open-minded.
“Being with bona fide conservative people who grew up in a wildly different ways,” she says, has impacted her perspective on hot-button issues like immigration, abortion, and gun culture – and given her an edge.
“Coming to terms with the first three years of the Biden administration's approach to immigration was something that was made a lot easier for me because of where I worked," she says. "I was ahead of the curve, about a year ahead of the rest of the Democratic Party, frankly, and certainly the Biden administration, in saying it's quite obvious that there's a huge problem here.”
A win for her team in 2026 and 2028 will require candidates to have real-world solutions, to not alienate voters, and to give people the space to change their minds.
“You've got to make room in your coalition for people who you might think made an egregious mistake [in voting for Trump]. As far as I'm concerned, Trump 2.0 has been an abject disaster thus far,” she says. “But I don't want to be yelling at people or talking down to them because they chose the guy who they thought was going to be better for them economically at a time when they were suffering.“
Grace is what she’s calling for. “Just chill out about one another,” she says, “No matter your politics, the other side is not as bad as you think.”
Wendy Naugle is USA TODAY's Executive Editor of Entertainment. Follow her on Instagram @wendy_naugle.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: On Fox News' 'The Five', liberal Jessica Tarlov won't give up the fight | Exclusive
