Fox News hosts expressed dismay Monday at reports that ex-President Donald Trump could be indicted in connection to hush-money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign.
"They better not put my president in prison," host Jesse Watters said on Monday's edition of "The Five."
Watters argued that Trump "represents 74 million Americans," referencing Trump's popular vote count in the 2020 presidential election. "And if he's the nominee, you're putting 74 million votes in prison. And that's how I see it."
Watters then took aim at Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney spearheading the probe, saying that the prosecutor is not doing an adequate job of handling crime in New York.
"He's emptying the prison — what, to make room for Trump?" Watters said. "No one else is getting charged with anything."
Watters added that he felt Bragg's motivations in launching the investigation of Trump were misplaced.
"The guy wants to make a name for himself, obviously, because he wants to be … the first prosecutor to throw cuffs on Trump. That'll get you elected pretty much governor in the state of New York. That's what he's after," he said.
This isn't the first time Republicans have accused Bragg of having a weak or politically motivated case. Florida governor Ron DeSantis, while telling reporters that he would not get involved in Trump's potential extradition, said he had "no interest in getting involved in some type of manufactured circus by some Soros DA. He's trying to do a political spectacle … I've got real issues I've got to deal with here in the state of Florida."
Trump also took aim at Bragg in a series of lengthy posts made to Truth Social this past weekend, calling him a "racist, Soros-backed" D.A. and accusing him of allowing violent criminals to go free.
Fox host Greg Gutfeld argued during Monday's segment that he didn't want to "live in a world where paying porn actresses hush money is considered a crime."
"That's sexist," he continued. "You pay for the sex and you pay for them not to talk about it."
Gutfeld alleged that Bragg was purposefully waiting for an opportune time to indict Trump to "guarantee that Trump gets the nomination."
"Since Morning Joe and CNN aren't giving Trump the free media … which effectively drowned out all of his competition [in 2016], this will have the same outcome," he said. "And then this is happening at the same time that they are announcing that they are going to arrest 1,000 more people [for] January 6. What does that sound like to you?" he added. "It sounds like they are going after Donald Trump, Trump supporters, Trump voters — the 77 million people that they hate."
"And if you are a New Yorker and you're ambivalent about politics and don't even care about Trump," he continued, "you should be pissed because [Bragg] is downgrading crimes that ruined your city while spending all this time upgrading one crime as a full-time vocation."
