Summary
- Jesse Watters thanked Trump for “producing” Fox News content.
- The comment came during Trump’s Antifa violence roundtable Wednesday.
- The roundtable included far-right influencers and “independent journalists.”
The MAGA host's revelation only served to highlight the ongoing feedback loop between the president and the conservative cable behemoth, which typically involves Trump acting on what he sees on TV and then amplifying those actions on Fox News.
“The mainstream media has probably never heard of any of these people, and this is why this is such great programming,”
Watters gleefully exclaimed during Wednesday’s broadcast of The Five.
The president invited a who's who of right-wing activists and social media stars to speak to senior Trump administration officials and explain why Antifa, a leftist protest movement without an organizational structure, should be classified as a foreign terrorist organization. The event was almost specifically designed for Fox News and its MAGA audience.
Over the course of several hours, the president, Cabinet members and his invited guests all attempted to outdo each other with their attempts to paint Antifa as not only a highly violent threat to the American people, but more dangerous than international gangs and foreign terror groups.
“They are just as sophisticated as MS-13, as [Tren de Aragua], as ISIS, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them. They are just as dangerous,”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.
“They have an agenda to destroy us, just like the other terrorists we’ve dealt with for many, many years.”
The president boasted that "we took the freedom of speech away" from demonstrators, claiming that burning an American flag is tantamount to instigating a riot, in addition to implying that Antifa would be classified as a foreign terrorist organization and that "members" would face harsh penalties.
Many of the internet celebrities gathered around the table appeared to be competing to deliver the most bizarre soundbites, while the president used the occasion to further defend his use of American military forces to quell anti-immigration enforcement protests by focusing on the nebulous group known as Antifa.
“If you’ll remember, those were the people taking issue with the early versions of the Nazis. But it’s sort of difficult to position yourself as the good guys if you’re aligning yourself with the Nazis in your historical analogy,”
Holly Baxter observed.
Reacting to the off-the-wall roundtable during The Five, co-host Martha MacCallum brought up a federal judge blocking the president’s order to deploy other states’ National Guard troops to Portland, wondering if Trump would soon enact the Insurrection Act so he can mobilize more military in American cities.
After saying “we might have to see it” because
“Democrats are not doing their job,”
Watters then pivoted to applauding the president for producing content specifically aimed at the network’s viewers.
“It is funny to watch Trump be a Fox News producer,”
the MAGA star gushed.
“We wake up in the morning, and we look at the news, and you see Trump is holding an Antifa roundtable at the White House, and you just say thank you. Thank you, Donald Trump.”
How did mainstream outlets cover the event differently?
These outlets characterized the roundtable as a serious and necessary discussion to address the perceived threat of Antifa violence. Their coverage praised Trump’s leadership on law and order, pointing to the roundtable as a venue to expose leftist extremism.
Watters’ observation that Trump is a “Fox News producer” was included for humorous context, underscoring the tight alignment between Trump and Fox News messaging for their shared audience.
More critical coverage focused on the roundtable participants being far-right and called into question the appropriateness of the claim that “Antifa” constitutes a domestic terror threat. The event was characterized as a political stunt and the amplification of extremist views and misinformation was derided.