Fox News commentator Kat Timpf talks about her new book and her sexuality

Working at Fox News brings a lot of assumptions.

Just ask Kat Timpf. The squeaky-smart co-host of “Gutfeld!” and Fox News analyst is a one-woman wrecking ball when it comes to shattering those expectations. She’s not MAGA. (“Trump? My (The guy I didn’t even vote for?”) Nor is she one of those Never Trumpers who yearn for a next-generation Bush-Cheney ticket (“The Defense Department—more like the War Department—makes money.'”) And you can’t call her straight. In fact, she begins her latest book, I Used to Like You Until…: (How Binary Thinking Divides Us), with a hilarious revelation about a budding romance with a woman that was thwarted by her mother. The unexpected plot twist: The mother was not a Bible-believing evangelical Christian but “a very, very, very feminist gender studies professor” who was horrified to find her daughter holed up in the apartment of a popular Fox News host.

“I don’t want to be too drastic, but, um, I wasn’t against women”, says Timpf ironically about what happened between the sheets.

Still, on this hot late August afternoon, the commentator and comedian rolls her eyes when asked how her “coming out” (our words) as a sexually flexible person will be received within and outside the “we report, you decide” crowd.

“It seems dramatic to me,” she says, laughing. “I actually shudder to think that there might be headlines about it. Everyone in my life says, ‘Yeah, we know that. We remember when you went out with that girl, etc., etc.’ But I’ve never spoken about it publicly because I didn’t want the public to make a bigger deal out of it than it was to me.”

Timpf has two deadlines ahead of her. Her book – a sequel to her 2023 New York Times bestseller “You Can’t Joke About That” – is out Sept. 10. And she is 17 weeks pregnant with her first child with husband Cameron Friscia. In the meantime, she wants to offer a sobering analysis of our insular and dysfunctional society, a paradigm that is even more evident in an election year.

In the book, she addresses her pariah status. Take, for example, her (unnamed) ex-boyfriend, a rapper who posted a picture of her in his sweatsuit in his hotel room on Instagram and then quickly removed it so no one would associate him with a Fox News figure.

“It even happens when I try to book theaters for my (comedy) tour. Like, ‘We’re not welcoming a Fox employee into this theater,'” she says. “It really doesn’t make sense to me. If you think I’m disgusting the way I am, that’s one thing. But if it’s just because of where I work and whatever your preconceived notions are about where I work, what – what does that even mean? Fox is not an idea. It’s a platform to share ideas.”

The self-proclaimed libertarian also has many friends there. And also at MSNBC.

“Greg (Gutfeld) and I have been close for about a decade,” she says. “I actually have a lot of friends, pretty much across the political spectrum. I think it’s really sad that we live in a culture where it’s so common to just write a person off based on a single opinion or even an association, without getting to know the person and what else you might have in common.”

Perhaps because Timpf doesn’t quite fit into the algorithm, she receives a lot of hate mail. She has even found a use for it. “I always liked you until…” shows a photo of a naked Timpf, which is full of hate mail.

“The idea is to be willing to be vulnerable, even in the face of overwhelming hatred, because I think that’s such a great tool to get us out of this mess,” she says. “That’s why I say binary thinking is the enemy of critical thinking. Because once we’ve chosen a side, we don’t have to think anymore – the thinking has already been done for us.”

As for those ride-or-die “sides” in November, Timpf says she’s on team neither. She won’t vote for Donald Trump. She won’t vote for Kamala Harris, either. She’ll vote for a third party.

“All I know is that no matter who wins,” she adds, “the other side will blame me for the loss because I didn’t vote for either of them.”