Jesse Watters calls latest Trump indictment ‘political war crime’ on Fox News
Fox News host Jesse Watters on Tuesday compared the recent special counsel indictment of Donald Trump for allegedly trying to tamper with the 2020 election results to a war crime on the order of atomic bombing or germ warfare.
“This is overkill,” Mr Watters said in a segment on Tuesday. “This is political germ warfare. These are political war crimes. It’s an atrocity. It’s like not just dropping one atomic bomb, you drop 15 dozen.”
On Tuesday, the former president was hit with four federal charges alleging he knew he had lost the presidential election, but continued attempting to mobilise his supporters, fake electors, and lawsuits to challenge the results anyway and cling onto power.
The Trump 2024 campaign responded to the indictment by comparing the US to Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, declaring that Mr Trump “will not be deterred by disgraceful and unprecedented political targeting”.
Later in his show, Mr Watters not so much refuted the various charges against Mr Trump, but rather said they shouldn’t be considered significant crimes.
“It’s a crime for a government official to make a false statement when they knew that it was false,” he said on Tuesday. “That would be everyone in the government...I don’t know how you can charge that.”
On the charge of witness tampering, Mr Watters responded, “You’re saying the Democrats never talked to any witness before they testified in front of a congressional hearing?”
Tuesday’s charges are the third time Mr Trump has faced serious criminal charges since leaving office.
He’s also been indicted for allegedly hoarding and mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House, and for allegedly conspiring to falsify business records relating to women who claimed during the 2016 presidential campaign to have had affairs with Mr Trump.
Tuesday’s charges mark the first time he’s been criminally prosecuted for his conduct in office.
Mr Trump was impeached twice over his actions in the White House, once for an attempt to pressure the president of Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, and the second time over the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. He was acquitted both times in the Senate.
The former president faces the prospect of yet another potential looming indictment in Georgia, a state where Mr Trump was recorded during the 2020 election pressuring top officials to “find” him enough votes to reverse his loss in the state to Joe Biden.
