Jesse Watters backtracks, says ‘sorry’ after Newsom hits Fox with $787M defamation suit

Gavin Newsom’s hard stance against what he calls defamation continues as he refuses to accept a half-apology.

During the height of the LA protests, when Donald Trump deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops, the already fractured relationship between the California governor and the President deteriorated further. In his usual duplicitous manner, Trump took interviews with the press, and the very next day, Variety reported him saying of the governor that he “called to tell him, got to do a better job, he’s doing a bad job. Causing a lot of death and a lot of potential death.”

Newsom, for his part, took to X to immediately refute the claim, stating directly that the President hadn’t called him on the day the National Guard was deployed. Newsom added that he hadn’t even received a voicemail from the President. The day the two actually spoke was two days before Trump’s deployment of the National Guard, reportedly for 16 minutes, and it was their disagreement that ultimately led Trump to use the National Guard to intimidate the protesters.

Jesse Watters, however, went on Fox News immediately after this dispute, claiming he had proof that the two had spoken on the day Trump claimed. Watters played a clip of Trump repeating the claim and ran a graphic at the bottom of the screen that read, “Gavin Lied About Trump’s Call.”

Fox News has a questionable history when it comes to fact-checking its stories. During its backing of Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was rigged, Dominion Voting Systems sued the network for defamation and was awarded $787.5 million in damages. Now, Gov. Newsom has followed suit, filing his own $787 million defamation lawsuit.

But considering Trump recently stirred up controversy with his contentious lawsuit against Paramount, which ended in a settlement some Democrats are calling a “bribe,” Gov. Newsom has made clear that his case is different. He stated his lawsuit is not as “transactional” and that he would drop it if Fox News issued an on-air apology and a formal retraction.

That clarification is important because politicians suing journalists is not exactly a trend worth encouraging, so you’d think Fox News would jump at the chance to put the matter to rest. But that’s not exactly what Watters had in mind. He instead wanted to acknowledge the mistake without accepting any accountability.

“We thought the dispute was about whether there had been a call at all — not when,” Watters said, continuing to bumble through his half-apology. “We thought that the governor was clear when he said, without qualification, that there was no call. Now Newsom’s telling us what was in his head when he wrote the tweet. He didn’t deceive anybody on purpose, so I’m sorry. He wasn’t lying. He was just confusing and unclear. Next time, Governor, why don’t you just say what you mean?”

The show also invited Newsom on air, which he declined. He also rejected the “apology.” A spokesman for the governor reportedly summed up the response: “See you in court.”