Watters has a weird fascination with masculinity.
Amanda Terkel stalking
In 2009, on assignment for
The O'Reilly Factor, Watters and his cameraman followed journalist Amanda Terkel in her car for two hours while she drove to
Winchester, Virginia, for vacation, and then accosted her to ask her questions about an article she wrote that was critical of
Bill O'Reilly.
Seven years later, at the
White House Correspondents Dinner journalists' reception,
The Huffington Post's
Ryan Grim approached Watters with his phone camera running and asked him to walk over to Terkel and apologize. Watters at first said he would apologize and then said he would not, adding, "I ambushed her because O'Reilly told me to get her because she said some bad shit." Video of the incident shows Watters then grabbing Grim's phone and throwing it on the floor, and later grabbing it again and putting it in his pocket. Eventually, the two got into a shoving match, as Grim attempted to recover his phone. Watters later commented on the incident on
The O'Reilly Factor, stating, "I was at this party trying to enjoy myself. This guy came up to me. He starts putting it in my face."
Terkel wrote that Watters' response was "surprising", considering that "Watters' way of confronting his subjects is to thrust cameras in their faces unexpectedly and pepper them with aggressive questions."
...
In October 2016, Watters was criticized for a segment of
Watters' World that was widely considered
racist toward
Asian Americans. In New York City's
Chinatown, Watters asked
Chinese Americans if they knew
karate (a
Japanese martial art), if he should bow before he greets them, or if their watches were stolen. Throughout the segment, the 1974 song "
Kung Fu Fighting" plays in the background, and the interviews are interspersed with references to
martial arts and clips of Watters getting a foot massage and playing with
nunchucks.
...
After viewing footage of Ivanka Trump speaking on a panel about female entrepreneurship, Watters commented, "So I don't really get what's going on here, but I really liked how she was speaking into that microphone," as he parodied holding the microphone as a
phallic symbol. Watters denied his comment was sexual
...
In July 2020, Jesse Watters praised the
conspiracy theory QAnon during his show, saying: "they've also uncovered a lot of great stuff when it comes to
Epstein and it comes to the
deep state. I never saw Q as dangerous as
antifa."
...
He married Noelle Inguagiato in 2009 and they have twin daughters. Noelle filed for divorce in 2018 after Watters admitted to an affair with a producer on his show, Emma DiGiovine. In March 2019, Inguagiato and Watters' divorce was finalized. Watters announced his engagement to DiGiovine in August 2019, and they married that December.