Fox News host Jesse Watters is facing backlash after comparing the way Vice President Kamala Harris and Georgia County District Attorney Fani Willis speak, HuffPost reports.
During a segment of Jesse Watters Primetime on Sept. 2, the host accused Harris of “code-switching” or using a different accent before showing an edited compilation of the Vice President delivering speeches in Detroit and Pittsburgh over the 2024 Labor Day weekend.
In an incomplete narrative of Harris’ upbringing, Watters highlighted how the Democratic presidential nominee was raised by her Indian mother in Canada and then compared her dialect to that of Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis.
“Kamala was raised by an Indian mother in Canada,” he said. “But now she sounds like Fani Willis.”
In her 2019 memoir, The Truths We Hold, Harris wrote that she was born in Oakland, California, to her Indian mother and Jamaican father. Her family then moved to Montreal when she was 12 after her mother accepted a job working for the city.
As social media caught wind of Watters’ remarks, users slammed him for promoting racist attacks about tones and Black culture by way of mocking and comparing the way Harris and Willis, who brought an indictment against former president Donald Trump for his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential vote in Georgia.
“They can’t attack her on her education, her career, or her record, so they’re going with straight-up racism,” @sarahbcalif wrote.
@weisselbergers said, “Jesse was raised by a liberal mother in Philadelphia, but now he sounds like Nathan Bedford Forrest.”
Former White House aide to the Bill Clinton administration, Keith Boykin, said Watters’ remarks just point out the ignorance of the network.
“I grew up next to a cornfield in a mostly white community in Missouri but spent weekends and summers with my Black cousins in the city of St. Louis,” he wrote on X. “Fox News continues to display its ignorance about the bifurcated reality of life for many Black people in America.”
The comments came just one day before White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre checked fellow Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy after he questioned Harris’s alleged Southern accent, claiming the VP sounded different during the rallies.
Both Harris and Willis have been the target of attacks from opposing critics and conservative networks. In February 2024, Watters called the DA a “liar” and pressed her disqualification from the case after claiming the attorney lied about her relationship with special counsel Nathan Wade, according to Fox News.
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