On Thursday night's episode of The Five, co-host Eric Bolling -- fresh off his guest-hosting duties on The O'Reilly Factor -- proposed that the best way for GOP candidates to avoid being tricked into saying terrible things about social issues would be to simply refuse to answer questions about them.
Co-host Greg Gutfeld noted that when Trump claimed that there conservatives who believe that women who receive illegal abortions should be prosecuted, he was flabbergasted, as "I don't know a single one."
Melissa Francis, another panelist, agreed -- and echoing Marc Thiessen's complaints to Megyn Kelly earlier that evening, added that "he managed to offend everyone with one single answer. I felt like he was playing Jeopardy, he kept saying 'The answer is, the answer is.'"
Bolling suggested that the ideal "answer" would be a bitten tongue, but Gutfeld wasn't satisfied by that. "You don't want a president who's prepared?" he asked.
"That's not what I said," Bolling replied, even though that was clearly what he said. "What I would recommend would be instead of answering Chris's question, dodge it. I wouldn't answer a question on gay marriage, abortion or -- What was the third one? -- contraception."
The unfortunate echo of Rick Perry aside, Bolling said that Republican candidates should refuse to answer any questions that the American people might not like their answers to, and "stick to jobs issue...the economy issue...foreign policy and terror and security."
"If someone asks you a gay marriage question, just say, 'Look, I really want to stay on the thing that matter most to the American public right now and it's safety and jobs,'" he concluded.
Watch the entire exchange below via Media Matters.
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