“We live in a time where we have a president that’s making news every day,” says Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld, “and some of it is just unreal, and some of it is unbelievable.”

The rapid-fire, often mind-boggling nature of the Donald Trump news cycle is an asset to Gutfeld in putting contestants through the paces on What Did I Miss?, his zany new Fox Nation game show. The streaming program, which will have a three-episode run starting on May 12, is also something of a social experiment, featuring four people who have opted to remain in complete isolation from Inauguration Day until mid-April, with no media consumption or contact with the outside world. They’re welcomed back into society by coming face-to-face with Gutfeld and a live studio audience for a showdown to see who is best at separating actual news stories from bogus ones.

I recently caught up with the busy Fox News personality as he was in a car traveling from the network’s Midtown headquarters, where he cohosts The Five and late-night show Gutfeld!, to his home in the city. I was curious if Gutfeld, beyond making the show for its pure entertainment factor, was trying to drive home a larger point about the credibility of the news media. “Not a lot of deep thinking” was involved in the making of the show, says Gutfeld, who adds: “I think you can draw conclusions that in this world, it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not.”

Gutfeld, a former top editor at Men’s Health, Stuff, and Maxim UK, and a TV host who mixed comedy with conservative politics on his old wee-hours Fox News show, Red Eye, arguably blazed a trail for today’s manosphere, which we discussed, along with why he considers it “incredibly healthy” to question the legitimacy of the media; how Fox News fits into that equation; and, of course, Trump. Gutfeld, a Trump supporter, says that as far as politics and entertainment go, the president didn’t just blur the line—“he erased it.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Vanity Fair: I watched the first screener, and you called it the “strangest game show ever created.” I have to know—where did the idea come from, and how involved were you in shaping the format?

Greg Gutfeld: We had a couple of meetings on it, and I think originally we wanted to do it before the election because we thought the big question would be who becomes president. But these things take forever, so we ended up doing it in the new year. The contestants went in on Inauguration Day. Fox approached me with the idea, and I was like, I can’t believe this hasn’t been done before. It combined the reality show feel with a game show. And the idea that we get to make stuff up is fun too.

Was it meant to be purely funny, or was there an intention to say something deeper about the insanity of the news cycle or the media?

I think that’s a byproduct. It was just, Let’s do it. The concept itself didn’t need any heavy thinking. It was like, These people are going to miss the news; let’s talk about the news. And it just so happens that we live in a time where we have a president that’s making news every day, and some of it is just unreal, and some of it is unbelievable. That just added to the charm of it. Whatever you saw there was just us having fun, not a lot of deep thinking. But I think you can draw conclusions that in this world, it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not.