Given that white evangelicals have spent the last decade largely ignoring the sexual abuse being perpetrated by their pastors and politicians and even calling such allegations a hoax, it’s no wonder they’d celebrate sexually abusive pundits as well.
According to 2025 data from Public Religion Research Institute, “White Americans are the most likely to say they most trust Fox News,” and white evangelical Protestants trust Fox News more than any other religious group PRRI measured, at nearly twice the rate of all Americans.
And according to cable news ratings this summer, the top two-rated shows on cable TV are The Five and Jesse Watters Primetime, both Fox News shows hosted by Jesse Watters.
After graduating from Trinity College, Watters began working as a production assistant at Fox News in 2002. The next year, he worked in production for The O’Reilly Factor and soon began providing comedic relief segments for O’Reilly.
Bill O’Reilly
That is, at least, segments white conservatives found to be funny. Asian Americans didn’t appreciate him strolling through New York City’s Chinatown and asking them if they knew how to do karate, or had their watch stolen, or if he should bow to them. Journalist Amanda Terkel didn’t appreciate Watters stalking her car for two hours while she was on vacation. Watters later admitted he “ambushed her because O’Reilly told me to get her.”
But in the years since Fox News fired O’Reilly after The New York Times reported O’Reilly had settled five sexual harassment and abuse lawsuits, Watters has continued to rise to the top of the conservative-dominated world of Fox News. And with his rise, along came years of his own allegedly sexually coercive and misogynistic comments, which according to the ratings, white evangelicals don’t seem to mind.
‘Guys are going to be wild animals’
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, on March 19, 2026. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images)
The latest controversy spreading online has to do with Watters’ response to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s announcement this month about checking the testosterone levels of soldiers.
“The guys that don’t need it are going to take it to triple boost,” Watters said on the July 16 episode of The Five. “And then they’re going to get out there. And women on base, you guys better be careful.”
Then he added through a laugh, “Port calls? Women in Asia? You better be careful because these guys are going to be wild animals. And you better watch out.”
Why would a man who jokes about men in the U.S. military raping women be so popular among conservative Christians? Are they simply so used to hearing him talk like this that they don’t notice it anymore? Or do they not care?
Stalking women
Journalist Amanda Terkel isn’t the only woman Watters has stalked. He openly admits to stalking an associate producer on his show while he was married to someone else.
“When I was trying to get Emma to date me, first thing I did, I let the air out of her tires,” Watters admitted on air in April 2022. “She couldn’t go anywhere. She needed a lift.” Then out of nowhere popped Watters. He continued: “And I said, ‘Hey, you need a lift?’ She got right in the car.”
When Watters’ ex-wife found out about it, she filed for divorce. And in typical white evangelical fashion, Fox News continued to let Jesse Watters have power, while transferring his employee to a different location, The Ingraham Angle.
Eventually, Watters convinced the woman he stalked to marry him.
Sexualizing women on his show
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
It’s no wonder then that some women in Congress would hesitate to go on Watters’ shows. When someone mentioned to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that “Jessie Watters would like to invite you on his show,” Ocasio-Cortez said, “That’s nice.”
When the interviewer continued asking her about it, she added, “Um, he’s accused me of …” before stopping to consider what she wanted to say.
Then she continued: “He has sexualized me on his show. He’s sexually harassed me on his show. He’s engaged in horrific, sexually exploitative rhetoric.”
When the interviewer said, “That’s not true, Congresswoman,” Ocasio-Cortez shot back, “It is true, because he accused me of wanting to quote-unquote sleep with Stephen Miller. So why don’t you tell me what you think is acceptable to tell a woman? Thank you.”
She later shared the video of the interaction on X and said, “You can either be a pervert or ask me to be on your little show. Not both. Good luck!”
Being a pervert
If Ocasio-Cortez’s accusation of Watters being a “pervert” is unfair, why is he so often making sex jokes on his shows? It’s not simply a comment or two over the years. It’s an overwhelming number of sexual comments. And many of these jokes don’t involve consent.
While discussing the accusations that former Rep. Eric Swalwell exposed himself in the car to interns, Watters joked, “Don’t just whip it out. Allegedly he was just whipping it out in a car in broad daylight in front of the intern.” For Watters, however, the problem was simply a matter of timing. He continued, “Like, that’s not the moment you do it. It has to be done in the moment of maybe some passion.”
When is it ever appropriate for a boss to expose himself to his female employee or intern?
“When is it ever appropriate for a boss to expose himself to his female employee or intern?”
In March 2026, when an airline began providing “lie-flat economy seating,” Watters said it’s “about sex, obviously. Once you lay down flat anything could happen. Stranger, spouse, doesn’t matter. You get drinks, you lay down flat, I’m just saying.”
Two months earlier, he talked on air about a dream he had of his wife dressed up as a maid. Watters said, “She had the little dust thing like that, I smothered myself in dust, and she covered every inch of my dirty body.”
In December 2025, Watters said, “I don’t know what kind of porn that you watch, Gillian, but, you know, you need to get help.”
That same month, when Dana Perino mentioned her romance novel, Watters commented, “It looks really good, as long as there’s sex.” Then he asked, “Is there sex?” And when she told him it alludes to sex, he concluded, “OK, that’s enough. That’s all I need.”
Apparently, December was a busy month for him because he also said during a story about Sabrina Carpenter, “She looks kind of naughty. Is she naughty?”
When Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie, appeared on Jesse Watters Primetime in September 2025, Watters asked her, “What is it like being married to such a sexual matador?”
He also said that month: “Every man, deep down, thinks he can flip a woman. A woman that hates men or a lesbian — he thinks, after a few drinks, game on.”
“Get off our back, Carley,” he said on July 9, 2025. “We don’t want to wear a condom, and we don’t want to drink your girly drinks.”
When Vice President Kamala Harris was running for president in August 2024, Watters imagined the generals being with her in the Situation Room and “(having) their way with her,” and then added while smiling, “Not in a sexual way.”
On March 6, 2024, while discussing a controversy about a photo depicting a U.S. Navy sailor who grabbed a woman he didn’t know and kissed her without obtaining consent, Watters asked, “How do they know that’s non-consensual? To me, that woman looks like she wants it and she wants it bad.”
“Something about the way you say genitals, Judge. Just rolls right off your tongue.”
On Oct. 5 2023, he told Judge Jeanine Pirro on air, “Something about the way you say genitals, Judge. Just rolls right off your tongue.”
In an episode that aired June 7, 2023, he spoke about a woman and said: “I get my private security guards to go over to her house on a Thursday afternoon at 3:00 to see what she’s up to. Maybe I find her at the mall. Maybe she’s at TGI Fridays throwing back cocktails. Maybe I have footage of her trying on blouses at Anne Taylor.”
He’s joked that “women are in their prime in their late teens,” and claimed, “High school girls, all women basically, want conservative men.”
And in 2017, he was put on leave after playing a video of Ivanka Trump and then mentioning with a smile how he “really liked how she was speaking into the microphone.” Evaluating the way women hold microphones up to their mouths is a common critique from conservative Christian men. It’s a comment I often heard from white evangelical men during the 20 years I led worship when they complained about getting sexually aroused during worship by it.
Projecting his perversion onto women
Despite years of constantly making very inappropriate comments toward his coworkers, employees or guests, Watters has the nerve to project his public obsession with sex onto women, claiming women in journalism trade sex for stories “all the time.”
And just like Ocasio-Cortez, women are disgusted by it.
Elisa Lees Munoz, executive director of the International Women’s Media Foundation, said: “It is totally beyond the pale. It’s such a trope, it’s so tired. … I don’t think it’s any different than any other way that professional women are maligned in any profession, which is that a woman can’t possibly do her job well if she’s not also using her body to get ahead.”
To the contrary, Carolyn McGourty Supple of Press Forward suggested: “Women journalists are more likely to be sexually harassed by their sources and face verbal abuse and threats online. This is what drives female journalists around the world to leave the field when they are already underrepresented in the press.”
Toni Van Pelt of the National Organization for Women agreed: “These types of misogynistic stereotypes are an insult to female journalists and are part of the reason that women still face disparities across every professional industry.”
Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson said, “Fox continues to reward idiocy and misogyny — over women. This is insane.”
And Fox News contributor Julie Roginsky added, “Of course, in his mind, female journalists must resort to feminine wiles to get the scoop, because it can’t be possible that women can actually break stories because of their tenacity and brain power.”
White evangelical consistency
On one hand, many may wonder why white evangelicals are being hypocritical. They claim to care about a moral decay happening in our nation. And yet, their top political shows are being hosted by a man who uses his power to stalk and sexualize women.
But none of this about Jesse Watters should be surprising. He’s been talking like this for decades.
So white evangelicals promoting Watters to the top of their list of most-watched political pundits shouldn’t surprise us either. They’re not being hypocritical in the men they promote. They’re actually being remarkably consistent. As we’ve already seen in their coverups of sexual abuse among their pastors and in their enthusiastic support for Trump, they’ve been flocking to predators for decades.
Rick Pidcock
Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and is the author of a forthcoming book, Weapons of Worship: How the Songs of Evangelicalism Form the Soundtrack of Extremism. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.