How Many Kids Does Jesse Watters Have?

The Short Answer

Jesse Watters is 48 years old — born on July 9, 1978. That makes Jesse Watters one of the most-searched public figures for age-related questions, with fans regularly looking up birthday and family details.

Jesse Watters: Early Life and Background

Jesse Bailey Watters (born July 9, 1978) is an American conservative political commentator and television program host on the Fox News cable television network. Earlier in his media career, he frequently appeared on The O'Reilly Factor, the political talk show hosted by commentator/moderator Bill O'Reilly. Watters came to be recognized for his man-on-the-street interviews, featured in theThe O'Reilly Factor segment "Watters' World", which became its own show in 2015. In January 2017, Watters' World became a weekly television show; and in April 2017, he became a co-host of the roundtable series The Five. In January 2022, Watters became the host of his own program, Jesse Watters Primetime, on Fox News.

Watters' first book, How I Saved the World, was published by HarperCollins. His second book, Get It Together: Troubling Tales from the Liberal Fringe, was published by Broadside Books in March 2024.

Early life and education

Watters was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is the son of Stephen Hapgood Watters, a teacher, and child psychologist Anne Purvis, daughter of Morton Bailey Jr., publisher of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. His maternal great-grandfather, also named Morton Bailey, was the publisher of the prominent longtime magazine The Saturday Evening Post; his maternal great-great-grandfather was Morton Shelley Bailey, a lawyer, politician, state senator, and district judge in Colorado who later served as an associate justice on the Colorado Supreme Court.

Watters' paternal grandfather, Franklin Benjamin Watters, was a cardiologist at the Veterans Administration Hospital at Newington, Connecticut, and a professor at the University of Connecticut Medical Dental School. Watters is also the cousin of ballet dancer Harper Watters and the nephew of longtime current New Hampshire state senator David H. Watters, a Democrat, serving in the upper chamber of the state Senate.

Watters has Irish ancestry on his father's side and is named after his mother's great-grandfather, Jesse Andrew Burnett, an associate chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court. Watters grew up in the Germantown neighborhood of Upper Northwest Philadelphia and later moved to the East Falls neighborhood of the city's Lower Northwest. He attended the William Penn Charter School through his junior year of secondary school before relocating again from Pennsylvania to Long Island, New York. In 2001, he graduated from Trinity College with a Bachelor of Arts in history.

Career and Rise to Fame

After graduating from Trinity College, Watters was employed as a production assistant at the Fox News studio in New York City. In 2003, he moved to the production staff of The O'Reilly Factor, and in 2004, Watters began to appear on air in segments of O'Reilly's show. Watters had also appeared as a co-host on the Fox News Channel show Outnumbered. On November 20, 2015, Watters debuted his own monthly Fox News program, Watters' World.

During his time on The O'Reilly Factor and Watters' World, Watters was characterized as an "ambush journalist", having chased down former NPR CEO Vivian Schiller. In response to this, Watters has said, "I try to make it enjoyable for the person I'm interviewing. We always come away from the interview all smiles, for the most part. And it's always fun to come back and look at the footage and say, 'Oh my gosh, what just happened?'"

In January 2017, Watters' World became a weekly show, airing Saturdays at 8 p.m. ET. In April 2017, Watters became a co-host of the roundtable series The Five. In April 2021, HarperCollins announced the publication of Watters' first book, How I Saved the World, which was published on July 6. The book debuted at number one on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for the week ending July 10, 2021.

Watters' World aired its final episode in January 2022. After being one of several rotating fill-in hosts in the network's 7 p.m. time slot, it was announced on January 10, 2022, that Watters would become the permanent host of a new primetime show, titled Jesse Watters Primetime, which debuted on January 24, 2022. Watters continued to co-host The Five at 5 p.m.

In June 2023, following the firing of controversial fellow conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, Fox News announced Watters as the permanent host of the network's 8 p.m. ET hour. In January 2024, he claimed to viewers, without evidence, that pop singer Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce's relationship was part of a "psyop" directed by the United States Department of Defense. In July 2024, he said that he "heard the scientists say the other day that when a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman."

Amanda Terkel stalking

Age and Birthday Details

Jesse Watters was born on July 9, 1978.

As of 2026, Jesse Watters is 48 years old.

Birthday milestones for public figures like Jesse Watters routinely trend on social media, which is why "how old is" questions generate such consistent search demand.

Personal Life and Family

In 2009, while working on The O'Reilly Factor, Watters and his cameraman followed journalist Amanda Terkel in her car for two hours while she drove to Winchester, Virginia, for vacation, and then asked her several questions about an article she had written beforehand that was critical of Bill O'Reilly.

In May 2016, while at the White House Correspondents Dinner journalists' reception, The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim approached Watters while recording and asked him to apologize to Terkel. Watters at first said he would apologize, before then saying he wouldn't, adding, "I ambushed her because O'Reilly told me to get her because she said some bad shit." Video of the incident shows Watters then grabbing Grim's phone and throwing it on the floor, later grabbing it again and putting it in his pocket. The two reporters ended up in a shoving match as Grim attempted to recover his phone.

Watters would later comment on the incident while on The O'Reilly Factor, stating, "I was at this party trying to enjoy myself. This guy came up to me. He starts putting it in my face." Terkel later wrote that Watters's response was "surprising", considering that "Watters' way of confronting his subjects is to thrust cameras in their faces unexpectedly and pepper them with aggressive questions."

Chinatown segment

In October 2016, Watters was criticized for a segment of Watters' World that was widely considered racist toward Asian Americans. While in New York City's Chinatown, Watters asked Chinese Americans whether they knew karate (a Japanese martial art), whether he should bow before greeting them, or if their watches had been stolen. Throughout the segment, the 1974 song "Kung Fu Fighting" plays in the background, and the interviews are interspersed with references to martial arts and clips of Watters getting a foot massage and playing with nunchucks.

Bill De Blasio, the then-mayor of New York City, denounced Watters's segment as "vile, racist behavior" that "has no place in our city". Numerous other lawmakers and journalists, including US Senator Mazie Hirono and US Representative Judy Chu, also condemned Watters. The segment was also criticized by the Asian American Journalists Association, which issued a statement saying, "We should be far beyond tired, racist stereotypes and targeting an ethnic group for humiliation and objectification on the basis of their race."

Recent Years

On October 5, 2016, Watters tweeted what Variety's Will Thorne called a "non-apology" about the segment. In the two tweets, Watters stated that "My man-on-the-street interviews are meant to be taken as tongue-in-cheek and I regret if anyone found offense.... As a political humorist, the Chinatown segment was intended to be a light piece, as all Watters' World segments are."

John Podesta comments

In January 2017, Watters faulted John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, for the theft of Podesta's emails by Russian hackers, saying, "What happened was John Podesta gave his password to a hacker. And guess what his password was. 'Password.' It's a true story. His password was 'password.'" The fact-checking website PolitiFact rated Watters' claim as "False".

Ivanka Trump comments

In April 2017, two days after joining The Five as co-host, Watters made an on-air comment about Ivanka Trump (the daughter of President Donald Trump) that was criticized as lewd. After viewing video footage of Ms. Trump speaking on a panel about female entrepreneurship, Watters commented, "So I don't really get what's going on here, but I really liked how she was speaking into that microphone", as he parodied holding the microphone as a phallic symbol.

Watters denied his comment was sexual, saying in a statement: "During the break we were commenting on Ivanka's voice and how it was low and steady and resonates like a smooth jazz radio DJ ... This was in no way a joke about anything else." In response to the criticism, Watters was not on the show for two days that week.

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