dpIn her new book, Fox News co-host Jessica Tarlov advocates for constructive disagreement — “acknowledge without accepting,” or hearing someone out, hard as it may be, without torching the relationship or one’s own beliefs.
In an interview with Jewish Insider ahead of Tuesday’s release of I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends, Tarlov pointed to her closely watched sit-down last year with far-left streamer Hasan Piker as evidence that her framework holds even when strained against its limits. Piker was “incredibly nice and gracious,” she recalled, arguing that calls for him to be shut out of Democratic circles are misguided.
The exchange highlights the balancing act central to both Tarlov’s book and her on-air image as the primary liberal co-host on the Fox News talk show “The Five.” But in her conversation with JI, Tarlov, who is Jewish, noted that there is sometimes discomfort in that instinct to engage across lines — the thesis of her book. She said she finds unease in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign appearance with Columbia University anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil, accusations that Israel committed “genocide” and just how much attention Piker’s commentary is getting in a divided Democratic Party.
“How much the discourse is dominated by Hasan Piker and those kinds of discussions is just a general turnoff” of the Democratic Party, Tarlov told JI, “and people don’t necessarily feel like we’re getting the news because there’s so much focus on the infighting.” She pointed to Michigan’s upcoming Senate race between Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) as a key test of just how deep those divisions run. “It will be a really interesting test as to how divided the party actually is along the lines of this issue — and who comes around to El-Sayed, who goes through with voting for Mike Rogers, or sitting home.”
Despite her willingness to engage with Piker, Tarlov argued the wall-to-wall focus on him has become its own kind of distraction from the issues actually most important to voters.
“I do think the discourse being about him 24/7 is really ignoring what most people are concerned about in their lives,” she said. “They’re thinking ‘my gas prices are up’ and we’re like, ‘Hasan Piker.’ That’s just really missing the mark.”
Last November, when Tarlov found herself seated next to Piker on a panel at Crooked Media’s Crooked Con, she said she was “nervous” going in, given how divisive of an issue his past rhetoric — including justifying Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and saying America deserved 9/11 — had already become. But she found him friendly, and even took some of his feedback under consideration: “The one thing he did say to me, which did resonate, was that the only criticism of what I do is that I’m too hard on the progressive left. I spent a lot of time thinking about that and ultimately I do think that he’s right.”
“It had been much easier for me to insult AOC for instance and it was kind of low-hanging fruit and there are enough people now who aren’t even necessarily in the far-left party who want things like universal health care. The center part of the party hasn’t been talking about affordability issues in a way that is connecting like Mamdani did in the mayoral election, or that we’re not talking enough about building affordable housing. I thought that was a good note,” she added.
Asked if Democrats should more vigorously condemn Piker — who has over 3 million Twitch followers — or banish him from party circles, Tarlov rejected the premise.
“The idea of us deciding who has legitimacy or platforming when someone has a platform of that size already is really missing the point,” she said. “I show up everyday and talk to people who I disagree with, in some cases people who believe in things I am deeply against. If you don’t engage you leave open this chasm for other people to fill it. I’m not running to be on Hasan’s stream — I wasn’t invited either — but I do think this idea of we’re not going to platform him when he has a bigger platform than most of the people who are saying they have no interest in having him is a little bit embarrassing.”
“In terms of being more culturally Jewish, I do think Oct. 7 changed everything for many nonpracticing Jews in this country, where it became such a bigger part of our identity, where we’re more attuned to discussions around Judaism and Israel in general and it has made us more interested in being affiliated with the religion. It just becomes a more prominent part of your identity when something like that happens,” Tarlov said.
Tarlov’s prominent role as the only Jewish panelist on “The Five” has coincided with Fox News catching the eye of some liberal-leaning American Jews who felt that in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, much of the mainstream coverage was biased against Israel.
Tarlov said she brings up her Jewish background on air, including her family’s history of fleeing Europe ahead of the Holocaust and her own run-in with rising antisemitism as a student in London two decades ago, “because I think it is relevant and I have a pretty mainstream Jewish perspective on what’s going on in the Middle East and what [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has done and the aftermath of Oct. 7,” she told JI. “I draw on it explicitly because I think it’s important for viewers to know there is a Jewish person who is saying this who is not just someone with an opinion and that I have real connective tissue to the religion and to Israel.”
“In terms of being more culturally Jewish, I do think Oct. 7 changed everything for many nonpracticing Jews in this country, where it became such a bigger part of our identity, where we’re more attuned to discussions around Judaism and Israel in general and it has made us more interested in being affiliated with the religion. It just becomes a more prominent part of your identity when something like that happens,” she continued.
While her cultural connection to Judaism deepened after Oct. 7, Tarlov is no stranger to antisemitism. In her book, she recounts heated politics over Israel during her time at the London School of Economics and former London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s controversial rhetoric during his 2012 campaign to reclaim the office. Tarlov told JI that the period “shaped my current political perspective” and felt like a foreshadowing of the current climate on U.S. college campuses.
“You can draw a straight line from those experiences to what happened at Columbia,” she said. “If there had been an igniting event like Oct. 7 you could easily see how it would spill over into something like that. I’m a little bit embarrassed that I didn’t understand the gravity of it in full back when it was going on. But I definitely see important comparisons — and as someone who likes to look at politics from a sociological lens — how much writing was on the wall. This was really an international movement that got so powerful in what feels like a short period of time.”
“And then working on [then-Mayor] Boris Johnson’s 2012 campaign and following Ken Livingstone, the labor candidate, and seeing him speak at town halls and mosques and how much widespread acceptance there was for antisemitism, was very jarring for me,” said Tarlov. “That stuck with me.”
Tarlov is seeing similar dynamics play out where she lives now, in Manhattan. She writes in her book that “making Jewish New Yorkers feel safe” was on her checklist for the city’s mayoral candidate, and Mamdani didn’t meet it. Eight months after he moved into Gracie Mansion, Tarlov told JI she’s “conflicted” about that view.
“I think he’s been better than a lot of people expected,” she said. “I’m close with a lot of people in the Modern Orthodox community of Riverdale and I pay a lot of attention to how they’re feeling and where they’re going for their information. If you ask them, they’d say there are [good policies like] universal childcare, not related to the Jewish community. But they feel he’s fallen short when it comes to [other issues]. I’m in the realm of neutral based upon my expectations.”
Still, she noted that “one of the difficult moments for me in his campaign was when he campaigned with Mahmoud Khalil.”
“Khalil represents somebody that infringed upon Jewish students at Columbia’s civil rights,” she said. “I was overwhelmed by the feeling that if that happened to Black students, trans students, any other protected sect that would never have been tolerated. So to see him as a campaign surrogate was very difficult for me. I understand that the Trump administration unfairly targeted [Khalil with deportation threats] and I know that’s the thrust of why he was part of the campaign, and he’s been to Gracie Mansion since then, but that was quite jolting to me.”
Asked whether she agreed with Jewish leaders who’ve blamed Mamdani’s rhetoric on Israel for fueling New York’s rise in antisemitism, Tarlov pushed back, framing the criticism as part of a broader pattern she sees playing out with Piker. “This gets back to the Hasan Piker discourse,” she said. “Everyone is going crazy about his comments and then there’s a lot of footage of other people saying similar things, and people said Hasan was antisemitic for saying that.”
She traced the surge in antisemitic rhetoric more broadly to the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks rather than to any one figure. “I wouldn’t put it at Mamdani’s feet like that,” she said, though she added she understood the impulse among Jewish leaders trying to reassure anxious congregants: “People are trying to manage a congregation full of people who are afraid and angry, and a lot of them are disappointed that there wasn’t a candidate that they were excited about.”
The book’s core idea is “acknowledge without accepting,” something Tarlov has proven she can do across many political subjects. But does that framework still work when the disagreement is about something like Israel’s right to exist?
Tarlov’s advice is to “find a way to slide in your perspective without making it a knockdown, drag-out fight.” She pointed to a recent appearance by Ryan Grim — the co-founder of the Hamas-sympathetic outlet Drop Site News — on “Raging Moderates,” the podcast that she co-hosts with Scott Galloway. On air, Grim referred to Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza.
“The point of my book was for people to have a longer-term perspective on these tough issues and tips and tricks that could help them do better in these fraught conversations,” Tarlov told JI.
“When he was finished talking, I said, ‘I don’t use that term, I don’t see it that way,’ and then moved on,” Tarlov recalled. “So there are ways to acknowledge without accepting, as per the book, but to make sure it doesn’t cut off all conversation.”
“I think you should always have the conversation — I believe in that,” she continued.
“Understanding other people’s point of view is really of value. I also understand how deeply personal [Israel] is for people. It’s a little different than hearing someone’s view of immigration, let’s say, where they want mass deportations. Saying there should be a one-state solution in the Palestinian direction feels different than that.”
“The point of my book was for people to have a longer-term perspective on these tough issues and tips and tricks that could help them do better in these fraught conversations,” Tarlov told JI.
“That absolutely does apply to being able to dialogue with people over something like Israel and its right to exist. On an emotional level, I think it is more complicated than your average policy issue but I still think the framework applies, and I did have it in mind as I was writing the book. It’s up there as a top five difficult issue for people to talk about and was pulling my political party — and relationships — apart.”
