Things didn’t go as planned for Fox News host Laura Ingraham at the end of a Monday night interview with New England Patriots tight end Ben Watson, causing the conservative primetime star to stumble when she realized her guest didn’t have the opinion she seemed to want of him.
Watson, who had just spent the majority of the segment defending New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees’ involvement with anti-LGBTQ group Focus on the Family, was then asked to react to Atlantic writer Jemele Hill’s call for elite black athletes to stop attending white-majority colleges—an article that has predictably sparked outrage on the right.
“When I saw the uproar over it, I read the article,” Watson told the Ingraham Angle host. “I agreed with her. She had some great points in that article there.”
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The pro athlete went on to note Hill’s article argued that historically black colleges and universities have struggled to compete financially with majority-white institutions since integration, possibly contributing to the large wealth gap between white and black families.
“What she was saying was simply we are trying to pump money and revenue into some of these communities that are still big disparities,” Watson added. “This may be a way to do it. Obviously, that’s in a vacuum for other factors to figure into that but when you read her argument, she lays it out very cleanly and it’s actually something that I agree with.”
Ingraham, meanwhile, was caught by surprise, likely figuring Watson would be on the same page as her and react in disgust to Hill’s argument.
“Well I think Duke would have not been thrilled about you’re not being there, but we will leave it at that,” she exclaimed. “College sports would certainly be a lot different today if we went down a color-coded way of figuring out college admissions. That’s like re-segregating the country! Why do we want that?!”
“No because segregation, as you know, is government-mandated,” Watson calmly responded. “This is not segregation. If you read the article…”
The Fox News host, however, wouldn’t let Watson finish his thought, rolling her eyes before cutting him off so she could end the interview.
“I read the article!” Ingraham declared. “I read the article. All right, we have to go.”
The Fox News primetime star exhibited restraint, however, compared to other times where she found herself in political disagreement with a pro athlete. “Shut up and dribble,” she infamously declared last year while discussing NBA star LeBron James’ vocal opposition to President Trump.
