Chew the fat, tripe and rabbit, like a fool (4,8)

'a fool' is the definition.
I know nothing about this answer so I cannot tell whether it can be defined by this definition.

'chew the fat tripe and rabbit' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'tripe' could be 'nonsense' (I've seen this before) and 'nonsense' is present in the answer.
'rabbit' could be 'talk' (I've seen this before) and 'talk' is found within the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).

'like' acts as a link.

Can you help me to learn more?