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Fox News host Jesse Watters went on a tangent about the recent White Dudes for Harris call, suggesting that men who vote for a woman candidate based on her gender are “childish”, have “mommy issues” or are only “trying to be accepted by other women” – much to the surprise of his co-hosts.
On Tuesday’s episode of The Five, Watters criticized the recent Zoom call made up of thousands of white men, including celebrities and lawmakers, calling it a “struggle session for pale, hairy, flabby California artists.” Watters heavily mocked The White Dudes for Harris fundraiser, which took place on Monday. He jokingly suggested the white men who support Democratic campaigns are not doing so for policy reasons but instead trying appease women.
“It was basically saying ‘If you want to be accepted by women you should vote for a woman’,” Watters said.
The Fox News host went a step further, satirically hypothesizing why the men on the Zoom call were supporting Harris’s presidential campaign.
“To be a man and then vote for a woman just because she’s a woman is either childish, that person has mommy issues or they’re just trying to be accepted by other women,” Watters said.
Co-host Dana Perino interjected, “What?” before Watters continued.
“And I heard the scientists say the other day when a man votes for a woman he actually transitions into a woman,” Watters said sarcastically.
Perino retorted back in the same tone, “Oh is that right?”
The White Dudes for Harris fundraiser was organized by men who want to break the mold of their demographic’s traditional voting patterns. Actors Mark Ruffalo, Josh Gad, Mark Hamill and Jeff Bridges joined lawmakers like Pete Buttigieg and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper on the call to help raise money for Harris’s campaign. In total, it brought in $4 million.
Traditionally, white men vote Republican. One Pew Research Center study found that 40 percent of white men voted for Biden in the 2020 election but only 32 percent for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
Much of the call focused on the capability of white men to change the narrative and vote for policies they agree with in the Democratic Party – regardless of the candidate’s sex or gender.
Although Watters’s commentary was mostly exaggerated, there seemed to be a hint of honesty in the undertone.
“I don’t see why any man would vote Democrat, it’s not the party of virtue, security, it’s not the party of strength, it’s definitely not the party of family,” Watters said at one point.
Co-host Jeanine Piro echoed some of Watters’s argument, claiming the group of white men is voting for Harris because of “white guilt” but poked fun at Watters’s point about men transitioning into women because they vote for a woman. Drawing on her own experience running for U.S. Senate and New York Attorney General, Piro told Watters, “The men who voted for me didn’t turn into women.”
Watters clarified that his comment was directed toward men who vote for a woman only because she is a woman.
A Fox News spokesperson told the Huffington Post that “Anyone who watched the full segment can obviously tell that he [Watters] was joking which was also made clear later in the discussion.”
