Fox News Host Delivers Speech Arguing America Isn’t Racist—Seconds Later, He Proves Himself Wrong

By Judd Legum, ThinkProgress

14 August 17

ver the weekend, hundreds of white supremacists and neo-Nazis descended on Charlottesville, Virginia. The “Unite the Right” rally quickly erupted in violence and ended when, allegedly, a white supremacist plowed through a crowd of counter-protesters with his car, leaving one woman dead and many others seriously injured.

For Fox News’ Jesse Watters, this seemed like the perfect time to argue that racism isn’t a big problem in America.

On Sunday’s edition of Watters World, the eponymous host launched into a lengthy argument defending Trump’s silence on the white supremacists. Watters claimed the President was simply “looking at this from a big picture perspective in the large context of hatred in America.” According to Waters, Trump was under no obligation to call out white supremacists, even after a woman was murdered, because the bigger problem is “left-wing radicals who have terrorized this country.”

In the end, Watters believes, this is much ado about nothing. “America is not a racist nation, it’s time we stop acting like it is,” he concludes.

Watters then looks at his teleprompter, pauses awkwardly and takes a deep breath. “Not sure what we are going to do next, but we have a great show,” Watters says, almost to himself.

He then introduces two segments attacking African-Americans and playing off racial stereotyping.

The first segment accuses Congresswoman Maxine Waters and former National Security Advisor Susan Rice of “siding with a North Korea dictator.” He then plays footage for the next statement, over grainy footage of young black men swearing. Watters says that segment is about “guys with guns threatening President Trump over food stamps.”

Watters, who rose to prominence on Fox as Bill O’Reilly’s protege, garnered criticism last year for a racist segment in New York City’s Chinatown, which included virtually every imaginable stereotype of Asian-Americans. A few months later, he was promoted and given his own show.