Fox News host Jesse Watters had one job. Tell the world about the cold-blooded killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agents. But he couldn’t even do that. Watters chose to deliver a character assassination instead and called it reporting.
On Jan. 7, the 37-year-old Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good was shot dead by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. According to the GOP narrative, he shot her three times in the face in self-defence, something directly contradicted by multiple videos of the incident.
The right is trying to portray Good as the villain and ICE as the victim. Unfortunately for them, the Republican idea of villainous isn’t universal. In a desperate attempt to block any sympathy for Good, Fox News host Jesse Watters delivered the news with a shameful script.
Before telling viewers what actually happened, he turned Good into a bundle of identity markers his audience has been trained to distrust.
Jesse Watters used identity as a disqualifier for empathy
Watters introduced her as a “self-proclaimed poet,” someone with pronouns in her bio, a woman with a lesbian partner, and a so-called “disruptor.” None of that explains why she’s dead. But all of it explains why Watters wanted his audience not to care. Watters framed Good’s death through identity, not evidence.
Her sexual orientation was irrelevant. Her social media bio was irrelevant. Whether she held a law degree was irrelevant. But to Watters, these details were the point. By the time he moved on to the shooting itself, the moral sorting had already happened. Viewers were told explicitly and implicitly that this was not someone they were supposed to sympathize with.
It was a verdict disguised as a news segment
Jesse Watters then presented his false account of the shooting. He asserted that Good “gunned” her car at an ICE agent, and the agent was struck. In line with the DHS’s narrative, Watters claimed that the vehicle was used as a weapon and the shooting was a split-second act of self-defense.
To bolster the story, he leaned heavily on statements from Kristi Noem, who labeled the incident “domestic terrorism.” That phrase alone transformed a chaotic encounter into ideological violence. And, shamefully, a dead woman into a threat.
We can all see with our own eyes that Ross wasn’t injured by the vehicle. Yet, Watters treated that as a settled fact. There was no caveat. Just a verdict that suits the right wing.
Social media is repulsed by Watters
The backlash was swift. Former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger called Watters “evil.” Others were blunter, calling the segment repulsive, ghoulish, and morally corroded. One comment cut to the heart of it:
“He wants to make sure that his audience knows that even though she was a white woman and a mother, she was one of the other team, and they aren’t supposed to feel sorry for her.”
Watters wasn’t reporting what happened – he was telling his viewers they shouldn’t care. By the time he described the shooting, the victim had already been disqualified from empathy. That’s the function of profiling masquerading as reporting. It makes death feel deserved without ever saying so outright.
Published: Jan 9, 2026 05:44 am