How Fox News (Yes, Fox News) Managed to Beat ‘The Tonight Show’

One evening in May, the most-watched man in late-night television these days staked out a curious if characteristic position: A 38-year-old teacher who allegedly had sex with a 16-year-old student, the host said, was the hero this nation needed.

“Can we live in the real world?” asked the host, Greg Gutfeld of Fox News, before invoking the Van Halen song “Hot for Teacher.” “It wasn’t written about ‘Hey, let’s have a responsible relationship with someone close to my age.’”

Reaction on the set of his show, “Gutfeld!” — where a regular, Kat Timpf, declared herself “vehemently against banging kids” — was mixed. The judgments online were swift.

“Fox News Is Now Praising Statutory Rape on Air,” The New Republic wrote, one of nearly a dozen outlets to sternly relay Mr. Gutfeld’s doings on his political satire-ish 11 p.m. hour.

In Mr. Gutfeld’s telling, his teacher bit and the reaction it spawned are part of the grand plan that has delivered him to the ratings summit of late night, to the surprise and occasional horror of many former colleagues and industry stalwarts. To their eye, he has completed a baffling march from Fox’s 3 a.m. slot to a nightly forum where consciously hacky jokes about women drivers and Hunter Biden’s addictions garner a larger audience than “The Tonight Show.”