What happened to Greg Gutfeld? The host’s Fox absence is finally explained

Greg Gutfeld‘s absence from Fox’s The Five has led people to question if the TV network has fired him, or if he decided to call it quits.

The political talk show host and late-night comedian has been missing from recent episodes, being replaced with a rotating wheel of co-hosts. So here’s what happened to Greg Gutfeld and any news about when he might be back.

What happened to Greg Gutfeld on The Five?

Gutfeld hasn’t been fired from The Five. He was absent because of the birth of his child, according to a Fox News announcement on Dec. 10, 2024. Gutfeld’s co-hosts, including Jesse Watters, shared he and his wife Elena Moussa had welcomed a baby girl.

Gutfeld released a statement to go along with the announcement, saying the baby, Mira, is healthy before adding, “As you can understand we value our privacy, and thank everyone for the good wishes.” That explains the brief hiatus.

There’s no news about when he will return to The Five or his late-night comedy show, Gutfeld!. But given the timing, it’s a safe bet it will be after Christmas and New Year. But he will be balancing Fox commitments with a tour, set to kick off in Indiana in March 2025.

The comic will hit the road with surprise guests, performing in a total of 12 cities before the tour ends in Sugar Land, Texas, on Oct. 5, 2025. Gutfeld cast host shows and do comedy routines at the same time, so he’ll likely have another leave of absence during those months.

Gutfeld Live 2025 dates:

• Mar. 15 in Fishers, Indiana
• Mar. 16 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania
• April 26 in Knoxville, Tennessee
• April 27 in Spartanburg, South Carolina
• May 17 in Highland Heights, Kentucky
• May 18 in Jacksonville, Florida
• June 7 in Grand Rapids, Michigan
• June 8 in Rockford, Illinois
• Sep. 20 in Allentown, Pennsylvania
• Sep. 21 in Mashantucket, Connecticut
• Oct. 4 in Prescott, Arizona
• Oct. 5 in Sugar Land, Texas

Gutfeld’s relationship with Fox began in Feb. 2007, when he co-hosted Red Eye on its news channel. Eventually, he became a panelist for The Five in 2011 and then started his own weekly talk show in 2015. He has appeared in Fox’s offerings ever since, giving his perspective as a self-described libertarian.

He told Reason, “I became a conservative by being around liberals, and I became a libertarian by being around conservatives. You realize that there’s something distinctly in common between the two groups, the left and the right; the worst part of each of them is the moralizing.”

However, controversies have aligned him with the right the longer he has stayed on TV. Another thing that led to people thinking Fox may have let him go is a 2023 controversy that arose after he made ludicrous comments about the Holocaust on air. During a discussion about slavery in the Florida education curriculum, he referenced Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search For Meaning to imply that Jewish people who survived the Holocaust had to be “useful.”

The Daily Beast claimed employees spoke to the outlet, with one producer calling it “a disgusting thing to say” and another insider claiming that “his career would be over.” Well, that never happened.