“The Five” host Jesse Watters didn’t hold back Thursday after The New York Times published an op-ed calling for the abolition of billionaires.

“This is what I call an idiot brush fire,” Watters told his co-hosts after he called the writer of the op-ed an idiot.

“Billionaires should not exist — at least not in their present numbers, with their current globe-swallowing power, garnering this level of adulation, while the rest of the economy scrapes by,” Farhad Manjoo wrote in The Times yesterday.

“Everybody starts talking about abolishing billionaires and it spreads,” Watters explained to laughter. “Then we have to come in and put out the idiot brush fire. But you know what, we get burned putting out the fire …because you want to know why?”

“Why?” co-host Greg Gutfeld asked.

“Because we’re sitting around defending billionaires!” said Watters. “Then we look like idiots that are out of touch and sucking up to the billionaires.”

OPINION: MANY 2020 DEMS HAVE DECIDED WEALTH IS JUST EVIL

Wealth has become a focus of attention recently for newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and potential presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

Ocasio-Cortez earlier last month called for a 70 percent tax on the super-wealthy while Warren proposed her own separate “wealth tax” at the end of January.

“The ultra-rich keep getting richer while 40% of Americans can’t come up with $400 in an emergency. That’s not a sustainable economy, or a sustainable democracy,” Warren tweeted last Tuesday.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The Fox segment started with a monologue by Gutfeld, who expressed his displeasure with the Times piece, highlighted the benefits of capitalism and noted that The New York Times' largest investor is billionaire Carlos Slim.

“It’s driven by man’s worst flaw… envy,” Gutfeld said of the proposed billionaire ban.