Jesse Watters no solo se ganó el horario más importante de la cadena conservadora más vista de EE.UU., también se ganó la atención —y las críticas— del país. Su ascenso no fue limpio: marcado por la sombra de Bill O’Reilly, quien cayó en desgracia por denuncias de acoso, Watters también protagonizó su propio escándalo amoroso con una joven interna, lo que le costó su primer matrimonio. Hoy, con micrófono en mano, está dispuesto a reescribir su historia en horario estelar.

Jesse Watters, the renowned conservative political commentator and news anchor, will take over Tucker Carlson’s prime time slot on Fox News. 

Watters, 44, is a seasoned Fox News veteran – having worked at the network since he graduated college in 2001 and slowly making his way up the ranks. He’s also married not one, but two, of his female colleagues during his 22 year tenure.

His current show, Jesse Watters Primetime, which only began airing last year, currently boasts an average of about 2.6 million viewers a night, while his long-running Saturday show, Watters’ World, drew in 1.9 million viewers before being pulled in 2022.

Watters, whose rise can be traced back to his days as a production assistant on the O’Reilly Factor when he was just 24, when he gained notoriety as a dogged man-on-the street correspondent.

A combination of quippy, ambush-style interviews and charisma saw Watters’ O’Reilly Segment, years later, become a full-blown weekly series airing every Saturday, nearly a decade-and-a-half into his O’Reilly tenure.

The father-of-four will now take over as Fox News’ new main main – running the show  during the 8pm EST slot.

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His permanent primetime show Jesse Watters Primetime debuted on January 24,. 2022 – and in June 2023, Fox News announced Watters would be named permanent host of the networks 8pm EST hour

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Jesse with his second wife, Emma. She worked on his Fox show when they started dating. He proposed to her after his divorce from his first wife was finalized in 2019

During his long tenure, he also featured on the Fox News show Outnumbered, and was a co-host on the roundtable series The Five.

His permanent primetime show Jesse Watters Primetime debuted on January 24, 2022  – and in June 2023, Fox News announced Watters would be named permanent host of the networks 8pm EST hour.

The Philadelphia-born political commentator went to Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and graduated with a Bachelor’s in History before starting his work with Fox News.

Watters married Noelle Inguagiato in 2009 – and the pair had twin daughters together. Noelle also hosted a short lived fashion and style show on Fox News titled iMag in 2011.

They met at Fox in 2002, and Noelle worked as a style guide on The O’Reilly Factor and was an anchor for Outnumbered – two shows Jesse worked on.

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Watters married Noelle Inguagiato in 2009 – and the pair had twin daughters together

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Jesse and his first wife, Noelle

But just nine years after their wedding, she filed for divorce, after Watters admitted having an affair with a producer on his show, Emma DiGiovine.

Emma, from Cranford, New Jersey, joined Fox News in 2015 and eventually became an associate producer for Watters’ World.

But after the couple told Fox News’ HR department about their relationship, Emma was moved on to Laura Ingraham’s The Ingraham Angle.

Watters recently revealed that he actually let all of the air out of the tires of Emma’s car so he could give her a ride home when he was trying to date her. He said the tactic ‘works like a charm.’

She stopped working at Fox News in 2018.

Watters proposed to Emma in August 2019, after his divorce with his first wife was finalized.

At the time, Donald Trump offered his congratulations on Twitter.

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Emma, from Cranford, New Jersey, joined Fox News in 2015 and eventually became an associate producer for Watters’ World. She married Jesse in 2019

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Watters proposed to Emma in August 2019, after his divorce with his first wife was finalized

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Jesse and his wife Emma, with three of his children. His fourth child was born in April 2023

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The couple share their family life on social media. They have two kids together, one son and one daughter, making Jesse a father-of-four

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Jesse and his first wife, and their two twin daughters

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Jesse and Emma pictured in February 2019

Watters and his wife Emma now share loving photos of their life on social media – including their holidays with Watters’ two older children and the son and daughter they share together.

Watters has also drawn criticism over his years at Fox. When doing a segment from Manhattan’s Chinatown in 2016, he asked Asian people offensive questions – including whether they knew Karate, which is a Japanese term, or if they bowed when saying hello.

He also wrote a book, How I Saved the World, which was published in 2021 and became a New York Times bestseller.

He’s now taking over Tucker Carlson’s slot – after the popular host was ousted in April.

Carlson’s ouster came days after Fox were forced the fork over a historic $787million settlement to a voting hardware firm over claims the anchor and other network hosts spread lies about its machines during the 2020 election.

The suit was filed back in March 2021 – at the height of Carlson’s success – and specifically singled out statements made on air by the TV talker, as well as Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo.

During discovery for the case, multiple text messages sent by Carlson to colleagues over the course of the 2020 election were made public, reportedly embarrassing the network to no end

Sent to colleagues such as Laura Ingraham, they revealed how Carlson secretly despised Donald Trump behind the scenes – despite praising the then-president, whose win helped propel his success, in public.

One sent on November 5 of that year – days after Joe Biden was declared victorious – seemed to show Carlson realizing a Trump loss could spell trouble for the network, given how heavily he had leaned on the politician over the past several years.

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Jesse is a pro-Trump political commentator. He is pictured here with the former president in 2017

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The Philadelphia-born political commentator went to Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and graduated with a Bachelor’s in History before starting his work with Fox News

‘He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong,’ Carlson wrote about Trump in one of many startling text messages obtained by the voting firm – which claimed in court that the correspondence served as proof he knowingly spreading false information.

On November 17, Carlson griped about attorney and frequent Fox guest Sidney Powell for pushing the voter fraud conspiracy – despite seemingly agreeing with the theory himself several times on the air.

‘Sidney Powell is lying. F***ing bitch,’ he wrote.

A day later, in a message to Ingraham, Carlson elaborated, ‘Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.’

Then, after the insurrection on January 6, Carlson took aim at the ex-president himself, saying he could not wait for him to be out of office – and more importantly, out of news headlines

‘We are very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,’ Carlson wrote in one message. ‘I truly can’t wait.’

He added: ‘I hate him passionately.’

The messages, attorneys hired by the Toronto based voting firm said, served as proof that Carlson and others knowingly spread false information that their machines played a part in Biden’s win.

After a jury was selected, and after Fox had promised a high-powered, bitter court battle, the network inexplicably backed down, agreeing to fork over the largest civil settlement in history.