Actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell went off on Fox News host Jesse Watters in a now viral TikTok post after she described an encounter she had with a production crew outside of a theater in New York where she was performing. O’Donnell, who was doing a performance of her autobiographical, one-woman show, Common Knowledge, at the Daryl Roth Theatre, stated that a Fox News team positioned itself to intercept her as she got out of her vehicle.
The actress stated in the caption for the video, “Today a Fox crew was waiting for me to exit the car – they ran in mass screaming JESSE WATTERS WANTS TO TALK TO U – so what ? – I have no desire to talk to him or fox (we lie to Americans) ‘news’ – so say what u need and go the f**k away.” She was clearly not thrilled about the interaction.
In the video post, which was recorded while she was getting her hair worked on, O’Donnell addressed the situation directly. “So here’s what I want to say to Jesse Watters and his gang of unruly reporter yellers at the theater today,” she said at the beginning of the video. “No, I don’t want to speak or answer a question from Jesse Watters.”
“I’ve never watched Jesse Watters, and I don’t ever care to. Okay? I’ve read enough about what he said about women and who he is and how his career began on the Bill O’Reilly show, of all places,” O’Donnell continued in the video. O’Donnell, who recently came back to the United States after becoming a citizen of Ireland to escape the country after President Donald Trump was elected, told Watters to stay out of her “orbit,” according to a report from Trending News Politics.
The video gained additional traction in mid-August as O’Donnell started a four-night run as a guest host of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. During her opening monologue, she referred to President Trump as “Mango Mussolini” before insinuating that the president was watching the show, which is something that is highly unlikely given how much Trump dislikes both O’Donnell and the show’s actual host, Jimmy Kimmel, with many conservatives believing the actress is desperate for attention and relevance.
A report from Entertainment Week covering the reemergence of the video took an opportunity to slam Watters as being sexist for comments he’s made in the past about women in politics. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) referred to the Fox News host as a “pervert” and claimed he had “sexualized” her on his program.
“He has sexualized me on his show,” Ocasio-Cortez went on to say about Watters. “He’s sexually harassed me on his show. He’s engaged in horrific, sexually exploitative rhetoric.” Watters also got ripped in 2024 for comments he said about former Vice President Kamala Harris. “We don’t know who she is. We don’t know what she believes,” he said during an episode of The Five.
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“She’s going to get paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her,” Watters continued. On another episode of the show, Watters explained his comments, saying they did not have any sexual connotations. “People are misconstruing my comments to mean something inappropriate,” he said, adding, “I wasn’t suggesting anything of a sexual nature.”
“I was expressing my opinion that VP Harris’s current leadership style could be an issue if elected,” Watters explained. Other conservatives have suggested the attacks on Watters are an attempt to get him canceled or removed from Fox News to silence one of the most popular pundits on the network. Alas, their efforts, as of this writing, have been in vain.
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video