Jesse Watters Went After Garcia. It Did Not Land

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Jesse Watters went after Robert Garcia on his Fox show, and it did not land. Watters called Garcia petty and vindictive and reduced him to a gay guy with a grudge. He said Democrats' new majority would mean impeachment palooza, a stage for spectacle. It was a segment built on insults, not arguments. And it fell flat, because Garcia is not the caricature Watters tried to draw.

Let us be clear about what Watters actually said. He did not argue with Garcia's oversight agenda. He did not dispute the facts about the hearings Garcia is planning. He went after who Garcia is. A gay man. A Hispanic man. He treated those things as if they were the story, as if they explained something. They do not. They are what you reach for when you have no argument.

Garcia is about to chair the House Oversight Committee. That is the job Watters is really worried about. Garcia has already told Trump's people to lawyer up, and he is investigating Stephen Miller's role in the deportation machine. That is the work that matters, and Watters knows it. So he tried to turn the conversation into a joke about Garcia's identity instead. When the facts are bad for your side, make it personal.

The impeachment palooza line is worth a moment too. Watters warned that Democrats would stage a spectacle now that they hold the majority. But look at what they are actually doing. They are investigating a secretary of defense whose own party could not defend him. They are looking into a deportation machine that tears families apart. That is not a palooza. That is oversight, the job Congress is supposed to do.

The gay guy with a grudge line tells you more about Watters than it does about Garcia. It is the kind of line that gets laughs in a certain room, and it is also the kind of line that reveals what a show really is. Fox built its brand on this. Take a Democrat, reduce them to an identity, laugh. The problem is that the joke is tired. Voters just delivered a blue tsunami by listening to people like Garcia.

Garcia, for his part, did not take the bait. He kept doing his job. That is the difference between the two men. One of them spends his nights calling people names on television. The other is preparing to run the committee that holds this administration accountable. One of those things is a real job. The other is a show.

What happens next is that Watters will do it again, because this is what his show is. And Garcia will keep doing the work, because that is what his job is. The voters have already made their choice. They picked the man doing oversight over the man doing insults. Watters went after Garcia. It did not land. It will not land next time either.

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