Fox News host Jesse Watters landed in hot water Thursday night after he pressured cohost Harold Ford, Jr. to wear a “White Dudes for Harris” hat on air. Watters insisted he wouldn’t wear the hat himself because “I don’t want to mess up my hair” and “I’m not for Harris” before he handed it to Ford and asked, “You are white, right? You’re white. So you’re half?”
After Ford demurred, cohost Jeanine Pirro interjected, “Here’s the thing. They coined the MAGA hats as extreme. And you couldn’t go into a restaurant, you’d get thrown out of places. They banned them. And suddenly, they’re behind these camouflage caps. You got a veteran who faked his rank, and you got a chameleon who now want their own MAGA hats.”
Ford served in the House of Representatives from 1997 to 2007 and was one of the more popular politicians to come out of Memphis, Tennessee. Both his father, Harold Ford, Sr., and his mother Dorothy Bowles Ford, are Black.
Ford is a member of Memphis’ prominent Ford family, who are well-known in the city due to their thriving funeral business and decades of civil rights activism. He ran for Congress after his father opted against seeking a 12th term in 1996 while still a student in law school. He took office at age 26.
Watters’ questioning of Ford has been harshly condemned online. Essayist Goldie Taylor tweeted, “Harold Ford is *not* biracial. Watters engages in racist pyrotechnics on the regular. No other major network would allow this.”
X user @humbleNow56 wrote on the platform, “This made me extremely angry and Watters owes Harold Ford Jr. a least an apology and frankly deserves to be humbled. This is the exact same kind of demeaning behavior and attitude that I watched my grandfather deal with in my childhood.”
CeCe_23Spalding added, “I have been into politics since 1998. At one point, Harold Ford Jr. was viewed as a potential first Black POTUS before POTUS BO. I’m pleased that he’s on team Harris, but is constantly being disrespected on Fox? What happened to him? I am shocked and appalled by this!”
You can watch the exchange between Watters and Ford in the video above.
