Jesse Watters said the quiet part out loud Wednesday when he thanked Donald Trump for serving as a “Fox News producer” due to the president convening an “Antifa violence roundtable” that featured a slew of far-right influencers and “independent journalists.”
“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 MAGA host’s admission just further exposed the continuous feedback loop that exists between the president and the conservative cable giant, which generally features Trump being influenced by what he sees on his television and then taking actions that Fox News then amplifies.
In an event that was made almost explicitly for Fox News and its MAGA audience, the president invited a who’s who of right-wing activists and social media personalities to address senior Trump administration officials and explain why Antifa, a leftist protest movement with no organizational structure, should be designated as a foreign terrorist organization.
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.”
Besides suggesting that Antifa could be designated a foreign terrorist organization and “members” would be subjected to severe sanctions, the president also boasted that “we took the freedom of speech away” from protesters, arguing that burning an American flag is equivalent to inciting a riot.
While the president took the opportunity to further justify his use of American military troops to tamp down anti-immigration enforcement protests by targeting the nebulous blob known as Antifa, many of the internet personalities sitting around the table seemed to be in a competition over who could deliver the most unhinged soundbites.
Brandi Kruse, a former local news correspondent turned MAGA podcaster, declared that she used to “suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” but after undergoing a political conversion, “I’m happier, I’m more healthy, I think I’m even a bit more attractive.”
Meanwhile, ultra-right host and “Pizzagate” conspiracist Jack Posobiec raised eyebrows when he linked today’s Antifa protesters to political groups in the Weimar Republic who opposed the rise of the Nazi Party, all while suggesting that those anti-fascists were the bad guys.
“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,” The Independent’s 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.”
Adding that “this is the best,” Watters went on to name-check a number of the “reporters” that were in attendance at the Trump-run event, which included Andy Ngo, Katie Daviscourt and Nick Sortor, who was recently arrested during a Portland protest. The District Attorney decided against continuing the charges against Sortor.
“They’re like guests on our shows,” he concluded. “The mainstream media has probably never heard of any of these people, and this is why this is such great programming.”
