The night after verbally sparring with Abdul El-Sayed on primetime television, Fox News host Jesse Watters had kind words for the progressive Michigan Senate nominee.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like him,\u201d Watters remarked Tuesday to his co-hosts on \u201cThe Five,\u201d albeit right after saying he doesn\u2019t trust him. \u201cI don\u2019t want to like him, but I like him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Less than 24 hours prior, the two had engaged in an adversarial, wide-ranging interview<\/a> in which Watters pressed El-Sayed to explain his stance on transgender women in sports and his support for the Green New Deal. For his part, El-Sayed tried to spin Watters\u2019 pointed questions into opportunities to recite his core campaign slogan and call his Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, a \u201cbeta\u201d male.<\/p>\n

Who exactly won the interaction is less relevant than the fact that El-Sayed, a progressive, went on one of the nation\u2019s top conservative-leaning cable news shows to spar with one of Fox News\u2019 stars.<\/p>\n

His performance, in which El-Sayed gave little ground to Watters \u2014 regularly talking over him to finish a point and negging him for the pointed nature of his questions \u2014 presents a new model for how some progressives, hot off a string of primary victories, are looking to market themselves to a wider range of voters while also showing they can withstand scrutiny, or even fight back, on America\u2019s marquee conservative network.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you only get 30 seconds, that\u2019s the length of a political campaign ad, and they\u2019re basically handing you air time to speak to a couple million people, potentially,\u201d said Nathan J. Robinson, editor-in-chief of progressive magazine Current Affairs and occasional guest on the network.<\/p>\n

Those appearances, however, are fraught with risk. Every second-too-long pause, jumbled response or nodding agreement on live television can be instantaneously clipped and become fodder to delegitimize their platform. It\u2019s already happened a handful of times this cycle.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you don\u2019t do well is when you go on and hand them exactly what they want, by appearing to not know what you\u2019re talking about,\u201d Robinson said.<\/p>\n

Democrats have long appeared on Fox News as a way to reach conservative audiences who otherwise might prove unreachable.<\/p>\n

But those trudging to Fox News\u2019 green rooms had, in the past, broadly been more centrist Democrats trying to make a general election case than progressives gearing up for a brawl, particularly with the network\u2019s primetime lineup of conservative opinion hosts.<\/p>\n

Potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, considered one of the party\u2019s strongest communicators and a self-described moderate, has been a regular on the network dating back to his 2020 run<\/a> \u2014 a strategy he cast in 2024, at least, as an effort to argue on behalf of Democrats<\/a> for viewers who don\u2019t usually hear their side of an issue.<\/p>\n

Progressives now say they see a similar value proposition. Conservative media has spent much of the ongoing election cycle scrutinizing progressives and, specifically, the Democratic<\/a> Socialists<\/a> of<\/a> America<\/a> \u2014 who have endorsed multiple candidates running in November. Going on Fox News, some argue, simultaneously gives the left an opportunity to vouch for itself while also giving the movement more visibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very exciting for us as leftists to finally have to think about these things,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t used to invite us on cable news shows.\u201d<\/p>\n

When reached for comment, Fox News spokesperson Jessica Ketner pointed to viewership data from Nielsen indicating its spot as the most viewed cable network in the U.S., with an average of 2.5 million viewers during primetime.<\/p>\n