Fox News’ Jesse Watters Gets Goofed By A Fake Photo Of A Shark Swimming In Houston Flooding

During a segment on The Five on Monday night, Fox News host Jesse Watters — best known for his simpering “man on the street” style pieces on the O’Reilly Factor and making a crude joke about Ivanka Trump — was reporting on the devastation in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. Much like our president, Watters seemed to take a certain amount of glee in discussing the catastrophic flooding in Houston, enthusiastically telling his audience, “I’ve seen some amazing things out there just looking at television over the weekend. Alligators on people’s back door steps. I saw a shark on a highway swimming in the water … like Sharknado.”

He continued, “The president was using the word ‘biblical.’ Well there’s some really weird biblical things that are going on down there in Houston. I can’t imagine how I would be experiencing that as a guy from the northeast but I think Texas has it figured out.” (Trump later retweeted The Five on Watters remarks on Harvey.)

Yeah, we can’t imagine how a guy like Jesse Watters would deal with extreme hardship and adversity either, but more importantly — did he just say he saw a dang shark on a highway? The photo in question Watters was referring to is an image that has been widely shared on Twitter. It’s also a fake.

https://twitter.com/Jeggit/status/902048241646280704

Despite getting retweeted over 60,000 times, the photo was quickly debunked by internet sleuths:

https://twitter.com/DianneG/status/902356505806163968

https://twitter.com/bafeldman/status/902284040501211136

https://twitter.com/DaveClark_AFP/status/902241826987319296

UPDATE: Watters has now tweeted an apology in regard to this matter: “Yesterday, I made a comment about a shark in the floodwaters in Texas. I sincerely apologize if I caused concern or alarm to anyone … The folks there and beyond are suffering unimaginable hardships. My heart goes out to them.”

(Via The Hill)