In February 2026, an image of a purported X post from Fox News host Jesse Watters circulated online. In the post, Watters supposedly suggested that victims of the late financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein needed to move on with their lives.
"They're all adults now," the alleged post read. "The past is the past. The healthiest thing one can do is have a good laugh about it."
Snopes readers wrote in, looking to find out whether Watters made that post. We found no evidence that he did. A spokesperson for Fox News confirmed it was fake.
The post was dated Feb. 15. No such post appeared on Watters' X account. Searching Google (including a reverse image search), Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo similarly turned up no results.
If Watters had posted such a statement — even if he later deleted it — news outlets likely would have documented it, given its content. For instance, when hosts of the Fox News show "The Five" made crude remarks about Epstein on Feb. 12 (which included Watters describing Epstein as someone who "helps people with their problems; sometimes those problems are 'you need a girl,'" and Greg Gutfeld calling Epstein a "sex rabbi") the left-leaning watchdog organization Media Matters posted the clip on its website.
The fake X post was likely an attempt to capitalize off of what Watters and other Fox hosts said about Epstein on "The Five," with the goal of making money from social media platforms by going viral.
Epstein was charged with sex trafficking minors before he died by suicide in his jail cell in 2019.
Snopes has reported on numerous claims related to the U.S. government's release of documents on Epstein in late 2025 and early 2026. Among them, we've found fake, AI-generated images of President Donald Trump in a room of blindfolded girls and of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries dining with Epstein.