Fox News Host Slammed for Questioning Whether Husbands Should Help Wives with This Common Errand

Fox News host Jesse Watters is getting backlash for his recent comments about former second gentleman Doug Emhoff completing a common household errand.

During a segment on Fox News Live, Watters, 46, discussed a clip of Emhoff grocery shopping with his wife, former Vice President Kamala Harris.

“What kind of husband goes grocery shopping with his wife?” Watters asked.

“A normal one?” one person commented on X, along with several others who criticized Watters for asking the question.

“What kind of husband does not?” another commenter said on X, while a further user joked, “This has to be a skit.”

Some husbands chimed in as well, with one writing on X, “My wife I shop together, frequently! So what is Watters’ issue?” Another said, “Dude needs to get out more. Heck, I do a lot of the grocery shopping since I love cooking and eating.”

This isn’t the first time Watters has received backlash for comments he’s made on a Fox broadcast.

Shortly after Harris entered the presidential race in July 2024, Watters made similarly controversial comments about masculinity in response to a “White Dudes for Harris” fundraising event, saying that he couldn’t understand why “any man would vote Democrat” because it’s “not the party of strength.”

“And to be a man and then vote for a woman just because she’s a woman is either childish — that person has mommy issues — or they are just trying to be accepted by other women,” Watters said, before adding the divisive line: “I heard the scientists say the other day that when a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman.”

In April 2022 he sparked controversy after he shared that he once “let the air out of” his now-wife Emma DiGiovine’s tires when he “was trying to get [her] to date” him.

“She couldn’t go anywhere. She needed a lift, I said, ‘Hey, you need a lift?’ She hopped right in the car,” Watters said during an episode of his panel series The Five.

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“Is that the first time you did it or did you use that before?” asked Jeanine Pirro about Watters’ tire-deflating strategy, to which he responded at the time, “Works like a charm.”

“It has a happy ending!” added Watters, who wed DiGiovine in December 2019. “We’re married!”

The moment subsequently went viral on social media, drawing a range of reactions and criticism. This prompted Watters to clarify in a later episode of the show that his comments about the incident had been “a joke” and he had “never deflated anyone’s tires.”  

Watters also received some criticism in July 2023 for comments he made after the Florida State Board of Education approved academic standards requiring middle schools to teach students that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

“This is historical fact that slaves did develop skills while they were enslaved and used those skills as blacksmiths, in agriculture, tailoring, in the shipping business, to then use to benefit themselves and their families once they were freed,” Watters said on The Five.

Stating that the issue was “not controversial,” Watters added that it “actually speaks to the resistance and the aptitude of the enslaved African Americans who were at the time able to better themselves and able to improve their situation despite brutal, brutal conditions.”