Jesse Watters said on The Five that he did not feel great about Republicans' chances in the midterm elections hours before polls closed in hotly contested states. He said he felt like he was about to play a game he knew he was going to lose, and added that losing the Senate would mean getting hurt.
Watters on The Five
Watters said, "I don’t feel great," and then spelled out the stakes: "I feel like I’m about to play a game that I know I’m going to lose; I’m just trying not to get hurt." He followed that with, "And getting hurt would mean you lose the Senate."
He also said, "And right now the Senate is very much in play, and it’s making me angry." In the same segment, he said, "But I knew this was coming; everybody knew this was coming," before asking, "How bad is it going to be?"
Election Day stops
On Election Day, Watters said he woke up, voted and started the day in a good mood because people at the polling station knew him and wanted photos. He said they told him that a lot of their people had come out that morning and were listening to what he was saying.
He later described a trip to a local tire store, where a guy behind the counter told him he had to work all day and had not voted yet. Greg Gutfeld replied, "Also, he doesn’t have a photo ID." Watters then said he had two white contractors at his house who had not voted yet, and that he wanted them to leave and go vote.
8-11pm on election night
Watters said the day’s mixed encounters changed how he read the race. He said the polling-station reaction left him upbeat, but the tire-store worker and the contractors made him nervous about turnout. He also said that if Trump were on the ballot, those contractors would have already voted.
He said he was not too thrilled about having to be on the air from 8-11pm on election night. The broadcast window meant he would be on television while the results were still unfolding, after he had already said the Senate was very much in play and asked how bad the night would be.
Brad Gerstner's account of Jesse Watters on Musk's one SpaceX share pledge sits in the same broader conversation around Watters' on-air remarks, but this segment was about Republican prospects before the vote count settled.
