'Misconstruing my comments': Fox News host faces backlash on 'inappropriate' Harris remark

Fox News anchor Jesse Watters is responding to backlash, after a military policy criticism of Vice President Kamala Harris that critics said was loaded with gratuitously sexualized language, according to The Washington Post.

“There’s been some attention to comments I made on the show yesterday about V.P. Harris,” said Watters on Tuesday, during the latest panel of "The Five." “People are misconstruing my comments to mean something inappropriate. I wasn’t suggesting anything of a sexual nature. I was expressing my opinion that V.P. Harris’s current leadership style could be an issue if elected.”

The comments in question came on Monday, when Watters said on air, “We don’t know who she is. We don’t know what she believes. She’s going to get paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her.” His comments not only triggered widespread outrage from critics of the network, but even was rebuked immediately by his conservative female co-panelists, Dana Perino and Jeanine Pirro. “I don’t like that,” Pirro said, demanding he “take it back.”

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Watters, who also hosts the primetime slot previously held by former Fox personalities Bill O'Reilly and Tucker Carlson, has a long history of blowback for controversial decisions and statements.

In 2020, he faced outrage when he said the COVID pandemic started because the population of China is "a very hungry people" who "have these markets where they are eating raw bats and snakes." And in 2023 he got another smackdown from his co-hosts when he suggested women don't usually get a say in buying cars.

Nor is this the first time he has found himself in hot water for comments about Harris; in July of this year, Watters suggested Harris was only vice president because President Joe Biden cut a "DEI deal" with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — "DEI" meaning diversity, equity, and inclusion, a racial sensitivity policy that has become right-wing shorthand for over-promoting non-white people.