Fox News’ Jesse Watters has come under fire in recent days over a recent interview with a masked man who claims to be an “Antifa whistleblower,” with media observers and critics speculating that the guest also posed as an ex-Mexican Mafia member for a 2023 segment.
While online speculation has gone into overdrive that the two men are the same guy, and many have even claimed the man who purportedly shot Osama bin Laden was the person behind the mask, it seems highly unlikely that this is the case.
A Fox News spokesperson told The Independent that the person behind the mask in the two interviews was not Robert O’Neill, the former SEAL Team Six member who was part of the bin Laden raid in 2011 and also a former Fox News contributor. The network also confirmed that the guests in the two separate interviews are not the same person.
Ramon “Mundo” Mendoza – the masked former Mexican Mafia hitman whom Watters brought on in December 2023 to discuss the prison stabbing of Derek Chauvin – has written multiple books and sat down for extensive interviews about his time in La eMe, a notorious Mexican prison gang and organized crime outfit.
Whenever he has been photographed or sat down for a taped interview, Mendoza has donned a black ski mask similar to the one he wore for his on-air conversation with Watters. Additionally, he exhibits the same slight Hispanic accent and speech cadence in his other interviews, such as a 90-minute discussion – alongside former Mexican Mafia member Rene “Boxer” Enriquez – with the popular YouTube channel Soft White Underbelly this past February.
In fact, Mendoza has been a fairly prominent figure for decades now. The 75-year-old appeared to first draw notice for a 1982 one-on-one interview with ex-FBI Director Clarence Kelly for a television special. Appearing unmasked during the nearly hour-long conversation, Mendoza discussed with Kelly what he needed to do to prove himself to other prison inmates and what it actually meant to be a hitman.
Mendoza, who became a government informant after leaving the Mexican Mafia, has been quoted by newspapers and media outlets as an expert on La eMe since at least the early 1990s, with the Los Angeles Times turning to him on a frequent basis.
Mendoza, who says he joined La eMe while serving time in San Quentin state prison during the early 1970s, was also the basis of one of the primary characters in the 1992 film American Me, which is a fictionalized account of the rise of the Mexican Mafia in the California penal system from the 1950s through the 1980s.
Besides authoring several books about his life story and how La eMe has exploited the prison system, he is also the subject of the 2018 film Hitman Mundo, which is based on his 2012 memoir Mexican Mafia: Gang of Gangs – From Altar Boy to Hitman.
Still, despite Mendoza’s decades of notoriety, his passing resemblance to a masked man that Watters spoke with last week led to widespread allegations that the Fox News star had dressed up the same guy to pose as both a hitman-turned-informant and a former Antifa member who now denounces the leftist protest movement.
Bringing on a man merely named “Eric,” who wore a green baseball cap and a black bandana that covered most of his face, Watters said that his guest was part of Antifa for 10 years and was disguising himself “to protect his life.”
Throughout the interview, which was aimed mainly at portraying the anti-fascist political movement as extremely violent amid the ongoing anti-ICE demonstrations in Portland, Watters kept probing Eric about “what kind of violence were you guys getting into” and whether that included “explosives and vandalism.”
At one point in the discussion, Eric revealed that he stopped identifying with Antifa around 2014 or 2015 after being involved for roughly a decade, having previously stated that he had joined the movement “around ninth grade.” Therefore, this would likely place his current age somewhere in the mid-30s, or about 40 years younger than Mendoza.
Days after Watters’ Thursday interview with “Eric,” a social media post by researcher Juliet Jeske – who runs the account Decoding Fox News – sparked a flood of speculation that Watters had turned to the same guy to pose as both the “antifa whistleblower” and Mendoza.
Jeske’s comparison of the two interviews came after the Watters’ segment on Antifa prompted a number of anti-Trump influencers – notably Rick Wilson and MeidasTouch founder Brett Meiselas – to suggest that Fox News had dressed up a “production intern” to portray the so-called whistleblower
“Last week Jesse Watters spoke to man named Eric who claimed he was formerly a member of antifa. Two years ago Watters interviewed Ramon ‘Mundo’ Mendoza, a former Mexican Mafia member. Some folks thought the men looked similar. This is a side by side comparison,” she posted on Monday, sharing a two-minute mash-up clip from the two interviews.
While agreeing with others – such as MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski – that Mendoza’s “Mexican accent needs work” and that it “waned in the short segment,” Jeske made a point of noting that she was not definitively stating that the two guests were the same person.
“Again please find the language where I said it’s definitely the same person. Not only will you not find it in the tweet you won’t find it in my comments on any platform. I merely present the clips side by side because so many people thought it looked suspicious,” Jeske responded to the X account Rogue Potus Staff, who accused her of “pushing a lie.”
Though other journalists, such as investigative reporter Jacqueline Sweet, expressed caution to others about blindly believing the two men are the same person, a number of prominent progressive personalities jumped on board and embraced the likelihood that this was all a hoax.
“This is just stunning. First off, I just want you to start to contemplate the idea that someone from the Mexican Mafia would go on to Jesse Watters’ program,” The Majority Report host Sam Seder said during a lengthy Monday segment devoted to the subject. “Also, imagine you’re a member of antifa… and you’re out there and you’re like, ‘Hmm, I want to get my message out. Who do I go to? Oh, Jesse Watters, of course, because I know I can trust these guys at Fox News with any information that would maybe tie me to antifa right now.’”
Amid the Zapruder film-type analysis over the similarities between the two guests’ eyes and speaking styles, online conspiracy theories began percolating about the “real” identity of the Antifa soldier/Mexican gang hitman.
“Some conspiracy theorists suggested that the man was former Navy SEAL and Osama Bin Laden killer Robert J. O’Neill, pointing to O’Neill’s similar eyes and former position as a contributor at Fox News,” Mediaite noted. “Others theorized without evidence that the masked man was Hollywood star Michael Rapaport or professional wrestler Jon Moxley.”
