Just to remind you one of the reasons why we staked out Jesse Watters' house this morning: Via his Twitter page, he says, 'I don't consider what I do 'ambushing.' That's a lie. [Update below]
UPDATE: Jesse Watters' Twitter account is fake. But the questions we want him to answer are real.
Jesse Watters' Twitter Account is Fake
Whoops. The Twitter account we thought Jesse Watters was taunting us from is fake. We would have…
One of Watters' fans wrote this on his Twitter page in reference to Watters' cunning escape from this morning's attempted Gawker ambush: 'escape and evade. Live to ambush another day.'
Bill O'Reilly's Stalker Still Won't Talk
The latest tweets from @wattersworld. The latest tweets from @jessebwatters.
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- UPDATE: Jesse Watters' Twitter account is fake. But the questions we want him to answer are real. Jesse Watters' Twitter Account is Fake. The Twitter account we thought Jesse Watters was.
- Fox News host Jesse Watters and his wife Emma welcomed a son on Thursday afternoon. 'The Five' co-host Dana Perino announced the news with a 'Fox News Alert' off the top of the program.
Jesse Watters, Bill O'Reilly's ambush specialist, may have slipped past our stakeout this …
Watters responded: 'I don't consider what I do 'ambushing', but thanks for the support.'
All right, then. This is from a 2007 interview with Watters, conducted by his boss Bill O'Reilly and aired on his network, Fox News Channel:
BILL O'REILLY, HOST: 'Back of the Book' segment tonight, ambush journalism. As you may know, 'The Factor' occasionally sends out producers to confront people who will not answer serious questions about controversial things they do, like judges giving child rapists probation, for example.
Now, some object to displays like these. But we feel they're a vital tool in holding public servants accountable for their actions, and we do not go after people lightly. We always ask them on the program first, or to issue a clear statement explaining their actions.
With us now 'Factor' producer Jesse Watters, one of our field guides.
In 2007, Watters himself wrote a post on O'Reilly's blog about his unannounced interviews. It was called 'Producer's Notebook: Ambushed.'
Watters ought to get his story straight. He also ought to be held accountable for what he does. For the record, our attempted ambush this morning was distinguished from Watters' way of doing business by the fact that we announced, on this blog, the very fact that we were trying to ambush him. It sort of undermines the whole point of an ambush, but we thought it was the gentlemanly thing to do. In that spirit, and to remind people why we are doing this, we've also decided to give Watters a head start on the questions we will ask him when we find him. Which we will.
- Is everybody compelled to defend their ideas and actions on television to Bill O'Reilly simply because he desires that they do so? Why doesn't Mike Hoyt, the executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, whom you ambushed on his way to work after he said he was too busy to do the show, have a right to decline to appear on your program?
- Why did O'Reilly lie by saying that Hendrik Hertzberg 'refused to come on 'The Factor' last December, when in fact Hertzberg had received no invitation to appear on the show? And why did you participate in that lie by showing up at Hertzberg's home, without warning, to interview him on camera under the false pretense that he would not submit to a formal interview? Why didn't you just invite him on the show?
- Why did O'Reilly lie by saying that he contacted ThinkProgress, the nonprofit that employs blogger Amanda Terkel, before he sent you to ambush her? And why did you participate in that lie by following Terkel from her home in the Washington, D.C., area for two hours and then confronting her outside a hotel in Virginia while she was on a weekend getaway? Why didn't you just invite her on the show?
- How can you refuse to defend your tactics to us, or to the New York Times, when you have repeatedly harassed other people in your efforts to force them to defend themselves? What makes you less accountable for your actions than Hertzberg, or Terkel, or Hoyt? Why are you and O'Reilly permitted to have your questions answered, whenever you like, by anyone you seek to question, while no one else may question you? Aren't you a coward?
- Why didn't you identify yourself as a Fox News employee who was there to gather audio for a television program when you entered the GE shareholders' meeting this week in Florida under the pretense that you own GE stock? Why didn't you alert the participants that you were recording the conversation?
- You wrote that when you ambushed Mike Nifong, the prosecuter in the Duke lacrosse case, 'it didn't register until then that I had gotten him on camera in his bathrobe and slippers. As serious as the legal circumstances were, I couldn't help but smile.' Why did you smile? Do you think it's funny to capture people on camera in their bathrobe and slippers by sneaking up on them? Is that why you do it?
- You wrote that when you ambushed Meyera Oberndorf, the mayor of Virginia Beach, Va., you were 'trying to elicit an emotional response from her.' Why? Weren't you trying to get answers to your questions? Why were you trying to rile her emotions? After her husband confronted you and tried to wrestle your microphone away from you, you told your crew that 'this will be great TV.' Is that why you ambush people? Because physical confrontations and emotional women make 'great TV'?
- David Tabicoff, your fellow producer at the O'Reilly Factor, told the New York Times, 'We're trying to get answers from people. Sometimes the only way to get them is via these methods.' Has anybody, ever, actually answered a question during one of your ambushes? Is the point to get answers, or is to get embarassing footage of you chasing them, hounding them, and peppering them with questions? Because if it's the latter, that would help us refine our tactics when it comes to interviewing you.
Know something we should know about Jesse Watters? Email me.
Donna Brazile, guest co-hosting on The Five, fired back at Jesse Watters for his long, disjointed rant about the injustice of Twitter actively flagging two of Trump’s tweets for false claims, viciously mocking Watters’ “whining” and saying “Jesus Christ, Jesse, I wish I could send you some tissues.”
The former DNC chairwoman unleashed a fiery rebuttal aimed not only at Watters but the rest of The Five panel over Trump’s lies about mail-in and absentee voting as well as his ugly conspiracy theory posts about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough.
As the panel brought up Twitter’s unprecedented move on Tuesday to flag two of Trump’s tweets for false claims about California mail-in ballots, Watters ripped into the decision.
“What about pencil-neck?” Watters complained, lapsing into Fox News-speak about House Intelligence Chair Rep. Adam Schiff. “He’s been lying about closure for three years. I would put a fact-check behind any of those tweets. I know why they chose this. It is the only way they are going to beat Trump, ballot harvesting.”
What Happened To Jesse Watters On Fox
Watters’ ominous use of the term “ballot harvesting” belies the the infinitesimal low rate of mail voting fraud, which one study found occurred at a rate of one per 15 million eligible voters. Five states currently vote entirely by mail, and 30 more offer no-excuse absentee voting by mail. Whats’ more, a recent Reuters poll found that more than seven in 10 Americans — including 79% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans — want the option for voting by mail in November amidst the coronavirus pandemic.
“It’s not even a fact-check,” Watters claimed, before suggesting Twitter was part of vast left-wing plot to hurt Trump’s reelection chances. “It is spin. I have sheets of paper here of reports that I found on Twitter that say that there’s a lot of abuse with mail ballots. It’s from the New York Times, AP, CBS. These aren’t fact-checkers. It’s like the Democrat State of the Union rebuttal and they don’t understand how weak it makes the left look. Because Biden can’t take them out. The media can’t take them out. Now they are asking Big Tech for help? You guys can’t do this on your own? Why can’t Biden retweet Trump and say this or that? That’s his job. Then you find out that the guy in charge of enforcing the rules on Twitter is some left-wing hack that called the Trump folks Nazis. The whole thing is so cooked up. It’s almost helping the president because it makes him, again, look like he’s not everybody against him. Twitter, the FBI, the mainstream media. He’s going to shove it right back in their face in November.”
Co-host Katie Pavlich then threw to Brazile for comment and she let loose on Watters.
“I’m so sick and tired of hearing all the whining, all the whining, all this whining,” Brazile said, mocking Watters. “Jesus Christ, Jesse, I wish I could send you some tissues but I’d have to be six feet from you and therefore I’d have to throw it at you.”
“I’m not whining!” Watters quickly insisted, before deploying the I’m-rubber-you’re-glue argument. “You’re the one who’s whining! You guys are the ones that complain to the refs….”
The segment then descended into several seconds of barely intelligible arguing as Watters continued to try to interrupt and talk over Brazile during her time — and she refused to yield.
“You’re talking over me because you’re talking nonsense,” Brazile shot back, finally quieting down her co-host. “These conspiracy theories. The information, the president’s tweets should have been deleted. I would have deleted the president’s tweets. You know why? It’s a bald-faced lie. It’s Republicans who use absentee ballots to get out their vote. That’s traditionally been the way that Republicans have always motivated their voters: ‘Go ahead and vote early.'”
“I think the social media platform company should regulate themselves and they should make sure that these conspiracy theories, the one the president put out about Joe Scarborough, it should be deleted,” Brazile added. “The lies need to stop. There is no First Amendment right to lie. Period.”
Co-hosts Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld did not try to defend Trump’s ugly conspiracy theory attacks on Scarborough, but did break in to note that it is not illegal to lie. Brazile then made the point that just because something is not against the law does not mean it is an affirmatively-protected constitutional right.
“There’s no First Amendment right to lie. There is no First Amendment right to lie,” she repeated. “You just go ahead and lie, but if they want to delete or put a fact-check on…” but before she could finish she was swallowed up in more interruptions.
Jesse Watters Fox News Twitter
“If you couldn’t lie, you’d have no politics!” then snarked Gutfeld, as the segment wrapped up.
Jesse Watters Twitter Account
Watch the video above, via Fox News.