Jesse Watters

Throughout the segment, the 1974 song "Kung Fu Fighting" plays in the background, and the interviews are interspersed with references to martial arts and clips of Watters getting a foot massage and playing with nunchucks.

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio denounced Watters' segment as "vile, racist behavior" that "has no place in our city".

Numerous other lawmakers and journalists, including Asian Americans Mazie Hirono and Judy Chu, also condemned Watters.

The segment was also criticized by the Asian American Journalists Association, which issued a statement saying, "We should be far beyond tired, racist stereotypes and targeting an ethnic group for humiliation and objectification on the basis of their race."

Jesse Bailey Watters (born July 9, 1978) is an American conservative political commentator and a television host on Fox News.

In 2001, he graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, with a B.A. in history.

After his graduation, Watters began work as a production assistant at Fox News.

In 2003, he moved to the production staff of The O'Reilly Factor, and in 2004 he began to appear on air in segments of O'Reilly's show.

In 2009, on assignment for The O'Reilly Factor, Watters and his cameraman followed journalist Amanda Terkel in her car for two hours while she drove to Winchester, VA for vacation, and then accosted her to ask her questions about an article she wrote that was critical of Bill O'Reilly.

Seven years later, at the White House Correspondents Dinner journalists' reception, The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim approached Watters with his phone camera running and asked him to walk over to Terkel and apologize.

Watters at first said he would apologize and then said he wouldn't, adding, "I ambushed her because O'Reilly told me to get her because she said some bad shit."

Video of the incident shows Watters then grabbing Grim's phone and throwing it on the floor, and later grabbing it again and putting it in his pocket.

Eventually, the two got into a shoving match, as Grim attempted to recover his phone.

Watters later commented on the incident on The O'Reilly Factor, stating, "I was at this party trying to enjoy myself. This guy came up to me. He starts putting it in my face."

Terkel wrote that Watters' response was "surprising", considering that "Watters' way of confronting his subjects is to thrust cameras in their faces unexpectedly and pepper them with aggressive questions."

On June 11, 2014, Watters debuted on the Fox News show Outnumbered, later occasionally appearing as a guest co-host.

He frequently appeared on the political talk show The O'Reilly Factor and was known for his man-on-the-street interviews, featured in his segment "Watters' World", which became its own show in 2015.

On November 20, 2015, Watters debuted his own monthly Fox News program, Watters' World.

In October 2016, Watters was criticized for a segment of Watters' World that was widely considered racist toward Asian Americans.

In New York City's Chinatown, Watters asked Chinese Americans if they knew karate (a Japanese word), if he should bow before he greets them, or if their watches were stolen.

On October 5, 2016, Watters tweeted what Variety's Will Thorne called a "non-apology" about the segment.

In January 2017, Watters' World became weekly, and in April 2017, he became a co-host of the roundtable series The Five.

In 2021, he published his first book, How I Saved the World.

In January 2022, Watters became host of Jesse Watters Primetime.

Watters was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, son of Stephen Hapgood Watters, a teacher, and child psychologist Anne Purvis, daughter of Morton Bailey, Jr., publisher of Better Homes and Gardens magazine.

His maternal great-grandfather was Morton Bailey, publisher of The Saturday Evening Post; his maternal great-great-grandfather was the politician Morton S. Bailey.

Watters' paternal grandfather, Franklin Benjamin Watters, was a cardiologist at the Veterans Administration Hospital at Newington, Connecticut, and a professor at the University of Connecticut Medical Dental School.

Watters is the nephew of New Hampshire state senator David H. Watters.

He has some Irish ancestry on his father's side.

Watters is named after his mother's great-grandfather Jesse Andrew Burnett, an associate chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court.

Watters grew up in the Germantown and then East Falls neighborhoods.

He attended the William Penn Charter School through junior year, before moving with his family to Long Island, New York.

While Watters is characterized as an "ambush journalist", Watters has said, "I try to make it enjoyable for the person I'm interviewing. We always come away from the interview all smiles, for the most part. And it's always fun to come back and look at the footage and say, 'Oh my gosh, what just happened?'" In January 2017, Watters' World became a weekly show, airing Saturdays at 8 p.m. ET.

In April 2017, Watters became a co-host of the roundtable series The Five.

In April 2021, HarperCollins announced the publication of Watters' new book How I Saved the World, which was published on July 6.

The book debuted at number one on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for the week ending July 10, 2021.

After being one of several rotating fill-in hosts in the network's 7 PM time slot, it was announced on January 10, 2022 that Watters would become the permanent host of a new primetime show, titled Jesse Watters Primetime, which debuted on January 24, 2022.

Watters' World ended on January 15, 2022, while Watters continues to be a co-host of The Five.

In June 2023, Fox News announced Watters as the permanent host of the network's 8 p.m. EST hour following the firing of Tucker Carlson.

In January 2024, he presented to his viewers a theory, without evidence, that Taylor Swift and Kansas City chiefs player Travis Kelce's relationship was part of a "psyop" directed by the U.S. Department of Defense.