After the judge presiding over the Kyle Rittenhouse trial banned MSNBC from entering the courthouse on Thursday, Fox News host Jesse Watters actually came to the defense of his cable-news rival.
Well, sort of.
Earlier in the day, Judge Bruce Schroeder, who has roundly criticized the media throughout the tense court proceedings, announced that Kenosha Police had briefly apprehended James G. Morrison, a man who claimed to be an MSNBC producer. Morrison was pulled over for running a red light while supposedly trailing the bus transporting the jury, with police alleging he was trying to photograph jurors.
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“I have instructed that no one from MSNBC will be permitted in this building for the duration of this trial,” Schroeder bellowed. “This is a very serious matter. And I don’t know what the ultimate truth of it is.”
NBC News would later acknowledge that Morrison was a freelancer for the network but denied that he ever “photographed or intended to photograph.” While saying the network regrets the incident, an NBC News spokesperson added that Morrison also “never contacted or intended to contact the jurors during deliberations.”
Immediately following the announcement, Fox News took great joy in blasting MSNBC while praising the judge’s decision, of course. Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner, for example, said the network’s actions were akin to “chilling free speech” while former Trump spokesperson-turned-Fox-host Kayleigh McEnany claimed MSNBC has “been so poorly behaved.”
During Thursday’s broadcast of The Five, however, Watters noted that Morrison’s actions during a blockbuster trial was actually quite common for the news business.
The Fox host insisted the situation was only “serious because he got caught.” He also speculated that Morrison was “probably a stringer who’s trying to land an exclusive” for NBC’s Today show.
“All big networks do that,” continued the Fox star who built his career by stalking liberal reporters and activists on-camera. “They have a bunch of people all over Kenosha trying to identify a juror and get that great access because the first juror interview is going to be the interview no matter how it shakes out.”
The conservative TV talker’s defense of MSNBC, however, ended there.
Watters first offered some criticism of Morrison for running a red light, stating that he could have caused a “dangerous traffic situation” and endangered the jurors in the bus.
He then claimed the MSNBC had “sparked the riots” because of “the way they misreported” the Jacob Blake shooting, and further blasted the network for reporting the August 2020 protests in Kenosha were “mostly peaceful” while flames were “shooting up in the sky.” (It was actually CNN that was mocked last year for airing a “fiery but mostly peaceful” graphic during the Kenosha protests.)
“And then smearing this defendant as a white supremacist and now endangering the lives of the jury,” he concluded. “If you could just take MSNBC out of this entire last year in Kenosha, we would have a much more peaceful and safer place!”
