Fox News host Jesse Watters suggested Thursday that Black people should prioritize reproducing if they want more seats in Congress.
“I did some research on the Blacks, as Judge Jeanine so eloquently would say, the solution to [House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s] problem, this gay Obama, is baby making,” Watters said on Fox News’ “The Five.”
“Blacks, for 150 years, have only represented 10 to 15 percent of the American population, Ok? That’s not that much. So if they wanna have more seats, they gotta get in between the sheets,” he said.
Watters’ claim came in response to Democrats, such as Jeffries, expressing outrage at Republicans’ efforts to redraw congressional districts in their favor, otherwise known as gerrymandering.
President Donald Trump has directed Republican-led states to redraw their maps to help them pick up more seats in Congress. That effort, combined with a recent Supreme Court ruling, essentially allows states to redraw maps to eliminate Black majority districts.
Ultimately, the move could benefit Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections as well as future presidential elections.
Some Democratic lawmakers have pushed back and ordered their own states to redistrict to favor the Democratic Party in the midterms.
But “The Five” co-host Greg Gutfeld criticized the Democrats for making politically-motivated decisions, rather than making decisions that benefit their voters.
Co-host and former congressman Harold Ford Jr., who is Black, disputed the assertions from Watters and Gutfeld.
“I’m not arguing for more Black congressmen,” Ford said. “I’m arguing, just don’t draw districts that advantage a party.”
Watters, invoking his familiar sarcastic tone, replied to Ford, “No, you’re just discriminating against whites. That was an all-Black district; we want to be in that district.”
Ford condemned Trump for breaking precedent by ordering states to redistrict in the middle of the decade, rather than at the start of it, after the U.S. Census is completed.
Some states, such as Florida and Tennessee, have proposed congressional maps that would eliminate Democratic-led districts.
In Florida, a proposed map would shrink the number of Democratic districts from seven to four. In Tennessee, a proposed map would eliminate the lone Democratic-led district and carve up a semi-conservative district to make it even more Republican.
“One of the districts they just re-drew in Tennessee, that was my old congressional district,” Ford told his co-hosts. “I’m not crying about it. Look, I’m a grown-up. But I’ll tell you this, you better be a grown-up when Democrats do the same thing as Republicans.”
Before the Supreme Court ruling, the states would have been less likely to win a legal challenge because Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibited states from diluting the votes of racial minorities.
But now, states have more leeway to do so, because the Supreme Court re-interpreted Section 2 so that there must be a deliberate intent to dilute the votes of racial minorities for a map to be unconstitutional.
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