In October, Jesse Watters took to the streets of New York’s Chinatown to ask Asians incisive questions like “Do you know karate?” and “Do they call Chinese food in China just ‘food’?”
The segment aired on “Watters World,” which is like The Daily Show if The Daily Show was conservative, wasn’t funny, and was targeted at Bill O’Reilly’s septuagenarian audience. It was racist and insulting and was immediately called out as such by people from across the political spectrum. Watters, who probably has a frat paddle mounted somewhere in his house, responded by basically saying “U Mad?” After spending over a day retweeting people telling him he was not racist (not true) and funny (also not true), he did not apologize:
As a political humorist, the Chinatown segment was intended to be a light piece, as all Watters World segments are.
— Jesse Watters (@jessebwatters) October 5, 2016
My man-on-the-street interviews are meant to be taken as tongue-in-cheek and I regret if anyone found offense.
— Jesse Watters (@jessebwatters) October 5, 2016
A month later, Watters pretended to be a big boy reporter and made an ass of himself.
But Watters only fails up, so he has been rewarded with an interview with the president of the United States of America. The choice of Watters is not surprising. He can’t be expected to ask tough questions, so the interview will be a total puff piece, which the administration badly needs.
This ultimately says two things about the Trump administration. One is that they’re so desperate to avoid even the semblance of a difficult question that they’re looking far down Fox’s bench. And the second is that they don’t care about Asian people or being associated with racists—but we already knew that.