Jessica Tarlov spends her career sparring with conservatives on Fox News's The Five. During a panel on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, she admitted those same Republicans treat her better than most of the online left does.

It's a striking thing for Tarlov to concede. Her job is to be the resident liberal foil, the one pushing back against her conservative co-hosts every day. Yet when it came to actual decency, she admitted the people she disagrees with on television have shown her more of it than the people who are supposed to be on her side.

That admission is worth keeping in mind, especially because it was during this same episode that Tarlov insisted Democrats are the sane ones.

Maher explained his theory for why Republicans keep winning elections. "I think all these recent elections have been about the Democrats are crazy on social issues, people don't like that," he said. "Trump's crazy, but the economy is better."

Tarlov interrupted him mid-sentence to insist, "And we're less crazy."

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Maher reacted with disbelief. "Who's less crazy?" he asked. "Democrats," Tarlov said. "What?" Maher shot back.

She wasn't kidding. Pressed on it, Tarlov doubled down, asking, "You haven't noticed?" and confirming she meant it when Maher assumed she had to be joking. Her clarification didn't help much. "Maybe not inside, but we're at least when we go out and give a speech. Talking about the economy and corruption," she said.

Maher wasn't buying it. "They're communists who think the Islamists are the good guys," he said of Democrats. "Are you kidding? Less crazy?"

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This is what bugs me about Tarlov more than anything. She isn’t honest. She knows the left is crazy, but can’t admit it. Not directly, anyway. Because she did admit so elsewhere in the conversation.

Well, technically, Maher outed her on this point.

“You and I have pretty much the same experience with the left,” he noted. “I’ve heard you say it, that you get treated better by their conservatives on The Five than you did by — what podcast were you talking about? That? You were on?”

“It was a conference, a live thing called Crooked Con,” she corrected. “The guys who do Pod Save America. Okay, and I went and was surprised by how far left the activist class had moved.”

She'd figured the images conservative media circulated of far-left activists were overblown. "I thought it was a bit like lore from the clips I was seeing," Tarlov said, noting that right-leaning outlets tend to spotlight fringe groups like the Democratic Socialists of America. Sitting in a room with a thousand people she called "diehard Democrats or progressives" changed her mind fast. "There is some kooky stuff — more kooky stuff than I had thought going on here," she said.

Tarlov started to draw the obvious conclusion. "I realized that being center left is," she said. Maher finished the thought for her. "Not good enough," he said.

Tarlov didn't argue. "I failed a little bit, yeah," she said.

Christopher Rufo put it more bluntly. "This is like being center left during the French Revolution. It doesn't work out very well," he said.

None of this should surprise anyone who's watched how the Democrat Party treats its own who don’t conform 100%. Look at Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.). He votes with his party 95% of the time. He’s not a moderate; he’s a leftist. Yet he's on track to be primaried out of his own seat in 2028 over his views on immigration and Israel. He now polls better with Pennsylvania Republicans than he does with Democrats.

Tarlov can insist all she wants that Democrats are the less crazy ones. Her own experience on The Five says otherwise, but she knows very well that conservatives are the normal and more tolerant ones.