Jesse Watters’ First Night in Tucker Carlson’s Slot Is Weirdly Stale and Snoozy

For years, Jesse Watters has signed off his various shows on Fox News with the cringe-inducing catchphrase “I’m Watters, and this is my world.” And as of Monday night, Fox News did indeed become Watters world. Watters — who cut his teeth as a minion to Bill O’Reilly — has officially taken over Fox’s coveted primetime 8 p.m. time slot.

Watters’ ascension takes place almost three months after Fox News unceremoniously fired right-wing kingmaker Tucker Carlson. After weeks of auditioning potential replacements, Fox rearranged their existing primetime lineup – sans Carlson – into a new schedule.

“I’m following in the footsteps of two true professionals in this time slot – 8:00– and I’ll continue the tradition of excellence,” Watters said at the opening of his hour.

But night one of Watters’ tenure as Fox’s headliner was notable only for how utterly ordinary it was. The network, which is struggling with a massive ratings slump in Carlson’s absence, is not bringing anything particularly new to their restructured lineup, just putting things that already exist in slots where they’ll hopefully be seen more.

Watters’ first episode was a banal collage of Fox’s current pet issues. He accused the Secret Service of covering up the identity of the individual who left a dime bag of cocaine in the White House. “We don’t want to get ourselves in trouble on the first night,” Watters joked while interviewing Jordan Belfort, an investor and the subject of the Martin Scorsese film The Wolf of Wall Street, as an expert regarding cocaine habits. Belfort alleged on air that in his view, Hunter Biden was the most likely the owner of the baggie.

The Bidens were not present in D.C. in the days surrounding the discovery of the drugs, and the Secret Service said it was unable to pinpoint a suspect amongst the hundreds of people who had access to the area.

Of course, it’s not an episode of Fox News if there isn’t some mention of former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) joined Watters to whine that Fauci may still be receiving a taxpayer-funded security detail despite having retired at the end of 2022. Fauci and his family had received several death threats during his tenure as director, and the doctor is the subject of several conspiracy theories regarding the pandemic.

Paul also took the time to echo false claims made over the weekend by presidential candidate RFK Jr., alleging that the Covid-19 virus was “ethnically targeted,” and that China was developing race-based bioweapons.

“I think there have been some studies of covid showing perhaps that it is more serious with certain ethnic races, but the problem is anytime you mention certain races, you are trapped into some sort of racial vortex, which is not a good place to go,” Paul said.

Watters proceeded to regurgitate a stale lineup of complaints about woke ice cream, woke hiking trails, fear-mongering about transgender individuals coming for your children. And while Carlson also regularly featured niche conservative outrage bait on his program (see the Green M&M), his appeal was largely couched in his ability to introduce and repackage grotesque slop into palatable concepts for Fox’s audience. Despite the new primetime host’s attempts, Watters is just bobbing for apples from Fox News’ outrage cycle ubiquitous across the network.

Yet while Carlson drew millions of views — and motivated Fox to reshape the network in his image — they may have concluded that the endless stream of conspiracies and racist dribble was not worth the near billion-dollar lawsuit payout.

Carlson was fired from the network shortly after Fox agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems a $787.5 million settlement that spared them a lengthy and embarrassing public litigation of the many lies Fox had told about them. Carlson’s private communications regarding the network’s coverage of the 2020 election featured heavily in the discovery phase of the lawsuit.

As the show wrapped, even Watters’s mom seemed to think that her son could do better. Mrs. Watters, who regularly texts or calls into the her son’s shows as part of an ongoing bit, advised her son not to “tumble into any conspiracy rabbit holes.”

“Let’s aim to have you keep your job,” she said. ”We do not want to lose you, and we want no lawsuits.”

More from Rolling Stone

• Trump Moans That Slew of Indictments 'Bothers' Him

• DeSantis Against Personal Attacks on Trump Despite Struggling Campaign

• Male GOP Senator Smears Pentagon Reimbursement Policy as 'Abortion Tourism'

Best of Rolling Stone

• The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign

• Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal

• The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence

Click here to read the full article.