Fox News' Gutfeld, his national panelists, mock small-town Iowa House candidate's weight, calling him 'Benjamin Broken Buttons' amid a barrage of mean-spirited jokes in viral segment
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld and his orbiting panelists relentlessly mocked the weight of a Dunlap, Iowa Democrat, a rural middle- and high school band teacher and candidate for the Iowa Legislature, in a viral three-minute national broadcast earlier this week.
The barbs aimed at Dunlap City Councilman Benjamin Schauer, who is running in Iowa House District 15, were incessant and cruel, and the piece has generated comments in a range of online forums, including The Daily Caller.
“You know something I don’t think anyone’s touched on is that guy’s penis,” one of the Fox commentators, Jamie Lissow, said, with another panelist adding that Schauer’s weight is so great it would be hard to see his genitals.
“I never expected that part of my body to be discussed on national television, but here we go,” Schauer said in an interview with The Iowa Mercury.
Lissow also referred to Schauer as “Benjamin Broken Buttons.”
“I have a mirror, I’m well aware I’m overweight,” Schauer said in The Iowa Mercury interview.
The Fox Gutfeld segment just kept going and going with comments about Schauer, a largely obscure candidate even in his home state.
“He could be our next Pritzker,” host Greg Gutfeld said, referring to the governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker. “I need new blood. I lost that guy in New Jersey.” (An apparent reference to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Chistie).
The panel made nasty jokes about Schauer being heavy enough to take down an airplane if he boarded.
“The pilot said, ‘We’re going to be flying in an altitude of ‘oops, maybe not.’”
There is much cackling from the panelists after this with plenty of background laughter in the segment from the audience.
The show catalyzed online comments in the thousands. Here is a sampling from the YouTube post of the segment:
His blood type is “Gravy.”
I’m glad we got a picture before PETA pushed it back into the ocean.
Get’s his clothes at Iowa Tent and Awning.
Give Him a Break! He was Able to Stand for 15 seconds!!
Schauer, 32, is an alum of the University of Iowa, where he earned a bachelor’s degree. He later received a master’s degree at Drake University where he is now working toward a doctorate. He lives in the western Iowa city of Dunlap, between Missouri Valley and Denison along U.S. Highway 30, a federal highway that runs from New York to California.
He’s running in the decidedly Republican western Iowa House District 15. Schauer lost a race in the district, which includes all of Harrison County and a slice of rural Pottawattamie County, in 2024 to State Rep. Matt Windschitl, a Republican, 69 percent to 31 percent. There is a Republican primary for the seat this cycle. Windschitl is seeking the 4th District congressional seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Hull.
For his part, Schauer said that the students he teaches in grades 5 to 12 in the Boyer Valley Community School District have been supportive and kind, as has the broader Harrison County community, as he is held up for online shaming. The posts will likely trail him for the rest of his life as the social media algorithms feed on virality.
“The community has really rallied around behind me,” Schauer said. “It’s been a wonderful testament of just how much support people have for me, and also just the fact that people don’t tolerate that type of behavior. They think it’s just awful on both sides of the spectrum. I’ve gotten so much support from people saying, ‘This is not Ok.’”
In short, the national ugliness has been meet with what is generally local kindness, as residents of Dunlap, and other small towns near it, who know Schauer as an educator and local government official, see the effects of viral internet toxicity and cruelty on someone they know to be a good person, a man they see around town at local stores and regular school functions, Schauer said.
“It’s really opened some people’s eyes to how a lot of the media whenever they do these things how they operate and when it impacts someone that they actually know how devastating that can be for some people, Schauer said. “So there’s been a lot of good out of it despite the terrible jokes.”
Schauer is 6’5” tall. He does not disclose his weight because he said he understands who he is — and sees his overweight status as a work in progress.
“I am comfortable with who I am,” Schauer said.
Schauer, who grew up in Oklahoma before moving to Iowa City as a teen-ager, said many people in his family are overweight.
“We grew up poor,” he said in the interview with The Iowa Mercury. “We know that poverty often leads to obesity.”
Schauer said he’s looked at measures to cut weight. He went to a medical facility in Omaha, Nebraska, not far from Dunlap, to investigate weight-loss procedures that he learned where not covered by his health insurance.
In fact, Schauer was advocating for improved health care for all Iowans in the video endorsement he received from Iowa Congressional candidate Stephanie Steiner, a Sutherland Democrat, that sparked some of the online banter that led to the Fox News national pickup. Gutfeld led off his segment with a clip from that endorsement video.
Schauer is a long shot to win the western Iowa district where he teaches in even the best of cycles, a wave for Democrats, which reveals the Fox mocking to be an extraordinary act of punching down, a battery of adolescent-level bullying with no likely effect on what is widely viewed as a locked-down, solid Iowa House district for Republicans.
Schauer said Democrats might perform better in the district than political analysts think.
“Honestly, this story I think will also impact that race as well because a lot of these folks are seeing that these are the type of people that are uplifting our current administration, that they are the type of people that are basically being the cheerleaders for the current people that are in charge of our state and our country,” Schauer said. “And if they’re willing to do it to me — for a lot of people that was really an eye-opening thing.”
About The Iowa Mercury
(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )
That's why there are so few right wing comedians, because all they do is punch down, and most people are not good with that, while liberal comedians always punch up, which is what good humor always has done. The minority that does like humor that punches down all the time, are bullies themselves, or wish they could be, if they had the guts to openly take on people they don't like. Both of those groups make up the folks who support our current Bully In Chief...
Thank you for telling Benjamin's story, Doug. Carry on, Mr. Schauer. You have the high road here. Those clowns on the right will continue to show us how little and nasty they are every time they open their mouths. Good luck in the race.