NO, JESSE WATTERS WASN'T HUMILIATED BY HIS MOTHER ON HIS NEW FOX SHOW

Some people on our side believe that a segment on Fox's first 8:00 P.M. Jesse Watters show was an embarrassment for the host:

Pretty confident this show just peaked. It doesn't get better than this. This level of humiliation on night one. Just perfect. https://t.co/Y5X7AkakK8

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) July 18, 2023

More:

The mother of Fox News host Jesse Watters has urged her "honeybun" son to avoid falling down "conspiracy rabbit holes," warning that he could be putting his job in jeopardy....

"Use your voice responsibly, to promote conversation that maintains a narrative thread," Anne Watters said. "There really has been enough Biden bashing. And the laptop is old."

"Perhaps you could suggest that your people take less interest, for example, in other people's bodies," she added. "And you could talk about that."

Please don't imagine that Watters was surprised by his mother's comments. He's been using her as an on-air foil for years, as The Atlantic's Joe Pinsker told us in 2019:

Anne Bailey Watters’s motherly blend of reprimand and encouragement has inspired a sporadically recurring segment on The Five called “Mom Texts,” in which Jesse gleefully reads aloud (mostly critical) text messages from his very liberal mom....

Jesse started receiving these text-message reviews of his performance after he joined The Five in the spring of 2017. “I used to read them to my co-hosts, and everyone just got a kick out of it,” he told me. He doesn’t remember if it was his idea or a producer’s to read them on air, but, he said, “I always thought they were gold.” ...

Anne ... routinely addresses their serious differences head-on. One Mom Text was “Do your research about border security—you don’t sound like you have any facts!” Another was “I hope your Squad criticism can be just a tad more measured today … Please don’t sound like an old white guy who lacks any understanding of otherness.” ... Even as Anne has taken issue with her son’s commentary on the House impeachment hearings, she has sprinkled some affection into her messages: “Please be assured that despite your WRETCHED political orientation I love you forever!” read a text broadcast last week.

When Watters does this, it's meant to disarm us. It makes him look harmless and fair-minded, and not like what he really is: a media predator who punches down -- against Asian people (in a notorious 2016 segment for Bill O'Reilly's show), against homeless people (whom he's been denouncing for a decade), against women 9asking "Can you paddle female students?" in a discussion of corporal punishment, asserting that female reporters routinely have sex with their sources, arguing that single women need to get married so they'll stop voting Democratic), and so on.

Remember, Fox hires some angry shouters -- Mark Levin, Jeannine Pirro -- but its big prime-time stars are generally people the audience is supposed to read as reasonable. Sean Hannity doesn't yell. Tucker Carlson persuaded his audience that he was just asking questions, and was genuinely upset because his very deep research told him that the answers weren't what the authorities said they were. Bill O'Reilly is best known to lefties for shouty clips, but he delivered most of his monologues in a soft baritone voice, which was meant to suggest that when he did get angry, it was in response to something really awful.

Watters and his producers know that Mom's messages make him seem less nasty and threatening. They probably hoped that putting Mom on the first show would get Watters publicity outside the right-wing bubble. And guess what? It worked.