Jesse Watters
Role at the time: Fox News host, co-host of "The Five"
Statement summary
On the September 15 broadcast of Fox News's "The Five," Jesse Watters questioned why Macklemore's "free Palestine" remark was being treated as hate speech, saying that's all he heard Macklemore say and he did not think it qualified. He then said Robert Kraft was within his rights to bar Macklemore from his venue regardless, comparing it to how he would remove anyone annoying or political from his own hypothetical tour.
“So what did he say that was bad? He said, free Palestine? Is that all? Okay, all I heard was free Palestine. I don't think that's hate speech... You know, if Rob Kraft doesn't want you there, he owns the venue, you're gone, who cares? Who cares?! If Greg's on my tour and he's spouting off and annoying me, I'm giving him the boot. I don't even care if it's political. If he even looks at me the wrong way if I take him on tour, he is gone.”
Mediaite's report on the Tuesday, September 15, 2026 broadcast of Fox News's "The Five," quoting Watters directly. The Fox News episode itself is paywalled on foxnews.com with no free clip. Quotation independently corroborated: HasanAbi replayed the same clip with matching wording on a September 17, 2026 YouTube video, and Watters's remarks were also reported by Yahoo Entertainment, TVInsider and HuffPost with consistent quotations.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
Watters takes two materially different positions on the two parts of that. On the speech itself, he rejects the "hate speech" characterization and says he heard nothing objectionable, which favors Macklemore. On the removal, he does not criticize it at all; he affirmatively defends Kraft's prerogative to exclude Macklemore from the venue regardless of the reason, comparing it to ejecting anyone who annoys him. That is a defense of the conduct under scrutiny, not a condemnation of it. The closest competing label is condemns, since several outlets framed this as Watters "defending" Macklemore; that framing describes only the first half of the clip. It loses because the second half is an explicit shrug at the removal itself ("who cares?"), which is not a criticism of Kraft's action. “Mixed or conditional” is used because the two positions are about different components of the same conduct under scrutiny and are not reconciled in the clip.