Fox Host Jesse Watters Backs Away From QAnon Compliments

Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Bush visit "The Five" at Fox News Studios on November 13, 2017 in New York City. *** Local Caption *** Jenna Bush Hager; Barbara Bush
NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 13: Jesse Watters host of "The Five" interviews Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Bush during "The Five" at Fox News Studios on November 13, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)
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Fox News host Jesse Watters on Sunday night walked back his praise of QAnon, after initially giving kudos to the fringe conspiracy theory for uncovering a lot of “great stuff.”

“While discussing the double standard of big tech censorship, I mentioned the conspiracy group QAnon, which I don’t support or believe in. My comments should not be mistaken for giving credence to this fringe platform,” Watters said in a statement to Mediaite.

During an interview Saturday with President Trump’s son, Eric Trump, Watters discussed Twitter’s recent move to boot thousands of QAnon-related accounts from the platform.

“Twitter’s basically just cracked down, eliminated about 7,000 accounts, 150,000 other, 100,000 accounts are now in the crosshairs,” Watters said Saturday. “Do you think that this is an attempt to kind of interfere in an election? Because, you know, Q can do some crazy stuff, with the pizza stuff and the Wayfair stuff, but they’ve also uncovered a lot of great stuff when it comes to Epstein and when it comes to the deep state. I never saw Q as as dangerous as Antifa, but Antifa gets to run wild on the internet.”

The QAnon conspiracy can take on different meanings. But its adherents generally believe President Trump is being undermined from within his own administration by a shadowy “deep state.” The conspiracy has also alleged that Trump’s political foes are pedophiles or even cannibals. Some of the conspiracy’s supporters believe a person who goes by “Q” is leaving a trail of breadcrumbs and clues for their followers.

Twitter recently cracked down on 7,000 QAnon-related accounts, telling TPM: “We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm. In line with this approach, this week we are taking further action on so-called ‘QAnon’ activity across the service.”

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