Jesse Watters: A Primer on Fox News Star’s Racism, Transphobia

If you thought Fox News was turning a page on their incendiary talking heads after they fired Tucker Carlson in April, you’d be wrong. The Rupert Murdoch-owned network just announced that Jesse Watters — a host who made a name for himself doing racist “man on the street” segments on The O’Reilly Factor — is taking over Carlson’s time slot.

Watters will move his 7 p.m. Eastern show to the 8 p.m. slot (formerly Carlson’s), while another xenophobe, Laura Ingraham, will move from the 10 p.m. slot to 7 p.m. Sean Hannity will stay at 9 p.m., while Greg Gutfeld will move his news and comedy program from 11 p.m. to 10 p.m.

With today’s announcement of the new Fox News primetime lineup, it’s clear that Fox News didn’t part ways with Carlson because of his proudly racist and transphobic views, where he regularly whipped up animus against immigrants, refugees, and gender-nonconforming children (the termination was likely because Carlson became a financial and legal liability for the network after their Dominion Voting System’s nearly $800 million judgment against it). Watters espouses the same “replacement theory” views that Carlson does and devotes airtime to demonizing queer people, especially trans youth, trans athletes, and their parents.

There was the time last year that Watters “railed against trans athletes,” according to the Los Angeles Blade, and then hosted South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, congratulating her on signing a bill that banned trans students from playing sports.

During his “Watters World” segments on Bill O’Reilly’s show, Watters attended Pride events and asked attendees if he could have a “straight Pride” and queried people on the street if certain individuals “dressed gay.” His most notoriously racist “Watters” segment involved going to New York City's Chinatown and mocking Asian people as “Kung Fu Fighting” played in the background.

He’s also gone after Black people, saying their modern history shouldn’t be taught in schools, and told Black people to worry more about “absent fathers, education issues” and less about white supremacist mass shooters.

Watters reserves some of his most vile diatribes to unhoused individuals. During a 2022 segment, Watters suggested a solution for removing squatters from a home: light it on fire, reports Media Matters.

Watters happily toes the Fox News line (lie) that immigrants and migrants are going to replace white people — the aforementioned “replacement theory” — and instead of encouraging empathy for these struggling individuals, he demonizes them. "We had a million Americans die from COVID-19 and Joe Biden just brought in a million illegal aliens to take their place,” Watters said last year.

Watters, just shy of 45, was born in Philadelphia. He began his career as a production assistant at Fox News before joining The O’Reilly Factor in the early Aughts. Watters is the father of four and is currently married to his second wife, Emma DiGiovine, a Fox News staffer he previously supervised. Watters's history of sexism is long and repugnant.