Fox News presenter Jesse Watters drew flak from an unexpected quarter on Wednesday after he referred to former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the first Black American to hold that role, as a “DEI hire.”

The host of Primetime was discussing Jean-Pierre’s surprise announcement that she has left the Democratic Party and written a new book explaining that decision, titled Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines.

Referring to Jean-Pierre disparagingly as “Binder” throughout the segment, seemingly because she carried a binder of notes to her briefing sessions with reporters during her tenure in the Biden administration, Watters was scathing.

“Binder spent two years lying from a podium and now she wants to tell us the truth?” he scoffed, going on to suggest she had only ever been hired as part of the diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] hiring practices that Trump has since made it his personal mission to eradicate.


Jesse Watters hosting his Fox News show on Wednesday June 4 2025 (Fox News/X)

“Look at the name of the book: Inside a Broken White House. Now she’s telling us the White House was broken?” Watters continued.

“Wait a second, who else wrote a book about this? Yeah, Tapper. Binder’s now DEI Tapper. I wonder who got paid more.”

A clip of the Fox pundit’s comments shared on X by the ever-prolific Acyn was leapt on by veteran actor Michael McKean, best known to audiences as Chuck McGill in Better Call Saul (2015-2022) and, before that, hapless heavy metal band frontman David St Hubbins in This Is Spinal Tap (1984).

“In all fairness, Jesse is a simpleton and a blazing a**hole,” McKean responded, a sentiment shared by a number of other commentators reacting to the video.

Other recent controversies on Watters’ show have included rapper Kid Rock claiming that “ugly a** liberal women” are the reason for America’s declining birthrate and the host himself declaring that “everyone knows” that wearing a Chicago Bulls cap is a signifier that the wearer belongs to the notorious Central American criminal gang MS-13.

Over the weekend, Watters joked that all of Sports Illustrated’s swimwear models were obese in the Biden era because of political correctness considerations.


Karine Jean-Pierre in her former role as Joe Biden’s White House press secretary (Getty)

Jean-Pierre’s book follows hot on the heels of Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, in which the CNN and Axios journalists lift the lid on the final year of Joe Biden’s presidency and the alleged effort to cover up the 46th commander-in-chief’s declining health by his closest aides.

President Donald Trump ordered an investigation into that affair on Wednesday.