Fox News host Jesse Watters is facing blowback for recent remarks he made at a conservative political conference, where he used violent rhetoric to explain how citizen journalists should confront Dr. Anthony Fauci with questions in the hopes of going viral.
Speaking at Turning Point USA’s Americafest over the weekend, Watters urged young conservatives to “ambush” the nation’s top infectious disease expert and “go in for the kill shot.” He walked them through how to approach Fauci and how to phrase their questions, focusing on a conspiracy theory about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Now you go in for the kill shot. The kill shot with an ambush, deadly, because he doesn’t see it coming,” Watters said at one point, according to a transcript and a nearly six-minute video clip. “This is when you say, ‘Dr. Fauci, you funded risky research at a sloppy Chinese lab, the same lab that sprung this pandemic on the world. You know why people don’t trust you, don’t you?’ Boom, he is dead. He is dead. He’s done.”
Watters — a regular commentator on the prime-time show The Five who made his name doing ambush-style interviews in a recurring segment on Bill O’Reilly’s former show — also told audiences to be respectful and “just make sure it’s legal.”
While it is clear from the full context of Watters’ remarks that he was not explicitly calling for violence, the viciousness of the chosen metaphor was striking, particularly…
