It was all laughs and mutual reinforcement when Fox News host Jesse Watters appeared on Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s podcast to promote his book back in July 2021.
“I appreciate all you do, Jesse. Great show, people should tune in and watch it,” Crenshaw told him at the end of the chat in which they had vigorously agreed on the horrors of cancel culture and the problems with Joe Biden. At one point, the Texas Republican chided Watters for missing his Fourth of July party. (“I’m coming next year,” Watters replied.)
But the budding friendship appears to have ended badly this week. In a series of Instagram posts this week, the congressman lambasted Watters for a Tuesday segment in which the host glibly implied that lawmakers with healthy stock portfolios achieved them through insider trading.
Among the politicians Watters highlighted: Crenshaw.
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“If you’re gonna accuse me of literal corruption, get your facts straight and man up and come accuse me to my face,” Crenshaw wrote this week in a public Instagram Story that has since vanished. “I’m sitting here trying to feed my 3 month old and this dirt bag millionaire at Fox is accusing me of being a criminal with zero evidence.”
Watters mentioned Crenshaw by name only once — and showed his picture — in the two-minute-long segment about how “politicians crushed the market last year.” But although Crenshaw was the 25th person listed in a graph of stock performance created by a group that tracks congressional trading, he was listed sixth in the graphic shown during the “Jesse Watters Primetime” segment.
End of carouselCrenshaw took issue with Watters’ suggestion that representatives performed well in the stock market because they had “inside information” on the companies they were trading. “Ladies and gentleman, this is what corruption looks like,” Watters told viewers at the end of the segment.
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In his posts, Crenshaw called Watters a “hack” and a “clown” who was “desperate for clickbait,” using several expletives. Crenshaw noted that he has only $10,000 invested in the stock market and hadn’t made trades in over a year.
He then offered a broader critique of Watters, who has hosted Fox’s 8 p.m. slot since July.
“Watters is a tool, making millions to push conspiracies on tv and bash veterans like me who are barely a fraction of his net worth,” he wrote. He also took some pointed sideswipes at Watters’s personal life.
Fox News has not commented on the matter, and Crenshaw’s office did not immediately return a call from The Washington Post.
Fox News remains hugely popular with Republican audiences, and it is uncommon for a GOP lawmaker to challenge one of its influential conservative opinion hosts — especially in such personal and vitriolic terms.
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Crenshaw also told his Instagram followers that a planned appearance on Wednesday afternoon on Fox had been canceled. While the congressman drew a connection (“Guess I hurt their feelings,” he wrote), a network source with knowledge of the situation said the cancellation of a scheduled interview on the Fox Business Network was unrelated to his comments about Watters.
Watters, who has called for congressional representatives to be banned from trading stocks, and has highlighted the issue previously on his show, did not mention Crenshaw’s criticism on his Wednesday night program and has not commented on the matter.
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