GEOFF BENNETT: Jessica Tarlov has made a career out of disagreeing, often while being outnumbered.

As the liberal voice on FOX News' "The Five," she spends her days debating people who see the world very differently than she does.

And in her new book, "I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends," she argues that disagreement doesn't have to mean disdain, and that knowing how to talk to people across political divides is a skill we need now more than ever.

I recently spoke with her.

Jessica Tarlov, welcome to the "News Hour."

JESSICA TARLOV, Author, "I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends": Life aspiration fulfilled now to be here.

(LAUGHTER) JESSICA TARLOV: Thank you for inviting me.

GEOFF BENNETT: Terrific.

Well, happy to make it happen.

So, look, on "The Five," you are the liberal voice at this table where you are outnumbered four to one.

What has that taught you about the difference between winning an argument and persuading someone?

JESSICA TARLOV: It's taught me a lot about patience, first and foremost and one of the big philosophies of the book, which is knowing when to listen and when to talk.

And being able to engage oftentimes silently as someone is doing their thing and putting some facts or perspective out into the ether that I vehemently disagree with and that I'm jonesing to pick apart has made it easier for me to be able to do this job, to understand people that think differently than me, and to be able to rebut it, I think, more effectively.

So, persuasion, very definition of what that means, for me, this job is about opening people's minds to the idea that there's an alternative way of looking at a certain subject.

And the listening part of it is the crucial component.

GEOFF BENNETT: What do you understand differently now about conservatives or a conservative viewpoint that you didn't fully grasp when you started at FOX?

JESSICA TARLOV: A few things.

I grew up in New York City, a very liberal family, school with all liberals.

I didn't spend a lot of time with conservatives until I went to college, which I think is a lot of people's experiences who grow up in these kinds of enclaves.

And having exposure and working closely with people whose conservative values are rooted in the way they grew up, in their religion, traditions passed down across generations has been illuminating for me.

It hits different if you're talking about something like reproductive health care and the person you're debating or even just chatting with is a pro-life person because of their religion.

And you also can't win that argument in the same way that you might be able to with someone else.

Working with so many veterans, for instance.

I have a new take on gun culture from being around people who grew up with guns, hunters, conservationists, all giving me a bigger perspective, I think, on the way that the country works.

So that's one aspect of it.

And then the other is that -- and it's frustrating for liberals, but I have a front-row seat to the fact that they don't take politics as seriously as liberals.

And I know that that is this massive land mine for people on the left, where you just say, how is this possible that you don't care, right, or what you're allowing to slide, and how can you just sit there and accept something like this?

If you're -- we're debating immigration, for instance, and we're talking about real tragedies like what happened to Alex Pretti or Renee Good, and somebody says, well, it the larger picture is what matters to me, and we're moving in the right direction.

They shouldn't have been obstructing traffic.

Or this is what happens when you leave the border open during the Biden administration.

And that's hugely annoying to me and frustrating.

But they are not taking every bit of the story as seriously as the left is, and it is allowing them to focus on what they see as the bigger picture or the bigger project.

And I didn't understand that before I started working for them.

I thought that they were actually just deeply unserious about politics.

They're just longer-term-minded.

GEOFF BENNETT: You're fairly tough on Democrats in this book.

You say that they too often don't really inhabit conservative spaces, that they can be scolding, that the party has lost some of the joy and cultural connection that politics requires.

What do you think Democrats misunderstand about the people they need to win back?

JESSICA TARLOV: That those people are also not taking politics as seriously as they are, that they are consuming media that they are oftentimes not interested in engaging in.

That was one of the main findings of every autopsy there was from the 2024 election.

And you see Democrats dabbling more showing up.

A lot of them are coming on FOX News.

And the way that I found that politics and the politics of persuasion works is when you are in a long-term relationship with the people that you're talking to and with their audiences, and when then they can really feel like you're trying to be part of their world.

And most of the time, they want you to show up and not actually be talking about politics, which we're still not great at.

Democrats, we like football too, and all of the stuff that we get made fun of.

But showing up on things like "College GameDay" and making sure that you're going to those events, you see the reception that like a Wes Moore or a Josh Shapiro gets when they go out and do those kinds of things.

And I think that is still missing from the recipe.

I worry for the midterms, even though the polling looks great at this moment, and I know the country is in tremendous economic crisis, and folks, they know what it costs to fill up their tank, they know what groceries cost, but the results won't necessarily be an affirmation of the Democratic Party as a great option.

It might just be that the other side looked that much worse at this moment.

And I wanted the book to emphasize a path forward for the party, which I have been thinking a lot about in terms of policies that will move us forward, but also what leadership looks like and joy.

GEOFF BENNETT: You write about the emotional toll of being on the receiving end of attacks from President Trump.

Is there a point at which engagement stops being worthwhile?

JESSICA TARLOV: Well, engaging with him, I think, is not worthwhile.

And that is definitely my policy.

There's nothing really to say when the leader of the free world thinks that he should be watching "The Five", instead of overseeing the dropping of bunker-buster bombs on the Fordow nuclear enrichment complex, which is when he decided that he really needed to tell me how much he hated my jittery presentation.

But the big lesson that I took from the several times that he's come after me, or viewers, or when I get criticism even from people that I know in my real life is that oftentimes they're going to be focusing on the style of how you're doing something, like, I would have done it this way, or you're too much of this, you're not enough of that, you're unendurable voice, which was I think it must have been Steven Cheung who wrote that, because it doesn't sound like Trump.

GEOFF BENNETT: The White House communications director.

JESSICA TARLOV: Yes.

But they focus on your style when they can't deal with your substance.

And that has made me a lot stronger in my passion for what I do and the kind of advocacy that I feel like I'm putting out there to an audience that might not necessarily have a ton of access to someone who thinks like me.

And I wanted to make sure that that was an important thread of the book, because I especially want folks and younger women to understand the workplace can be quite rough-and-tumble.

And people are going to criticize you and come after you.

And if you can find a way to internally process that and unpack what their criticism actually means, you can succeed and just feel much better about yourself on the other end.

But it's also OK to cry, which I have in the book too.

(LAUGHTER) JESSICA TARLOV: Vulnerability matters.

GEOFF BENNETT: Yes.

The book is "I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends."

Jessica Tarlov, it's great to have you here.

JESSICA TARLOV: Yes, thank you so much.