WATCH: Fox News host jokes about US military rape complex in Asia

Fox News journalist Jesse Watters has gone viral after joking about US military “wild animals” overdosing on testosterone and attacking women. 

Smiling wildly, Watters joked on live TV:

The guys that don’t need it [testosterone] are gonna take it — to triple boost. And then they’re gonna get out there, and women on base — you guys better be careful. Uh-huh!

Port calls — women, eh-he, in Asia — you better be careful. Because these guys are going to be wild animals and you better watch out!

Jesse Watters ‘scumbag’

The internet roundly denounced the vile comments, which were blatantly implying that rape is to be expected of US servicemen overseas. 

He’s talking about rape.
He’s laughing and joking and winking about women being prepared to be RAPED.

In a sane fucking world, this scumbag wouldn’t have a job today.

— Jo (@JoJoFromJerz) July 17, 2026

US-based British journalist and political commentator, Mehdi Hassan, lay the blame for this vile culture of normalised rape jokes at Rupert Murdoch’s door. Hassan commented in response:

A Fox host joking about US soldiers raping women.

Well done Rupert Murdoch, well done. https://t.co/VafIi9ytQB

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 16, 2026

Rupert Murdoch owns Fox, Sky, Talk TV and countless other branches of the right-wing corporate media sphere. Therefore, Murdoch is Watters’ top boss and the man ultimately responsible for deciding who goes on TV. It’s unsurprising that such a globally toxic media organisation would be ok with these views.

Although Murdoch takes some blame, it’s not all his. The US military itself is responsible for having permitted a culture that normalises sex trafficking and rape on a global scale. This was long before Murdoch.

Anti-war activist and political analyst Caitlin Johnstone stressed that this is not a hypothetical joke. Millions of women globally have already been sexually violated at the hands of US military actors and countless other imperialist armies throughout history. She mocked Jesse Watters’ vile jokes:

Ho ho, ha ha, watch out ladies you’re gonna get raped by US soldiers like untold millions of other women, ha ha, wocka wocka, comedy laugh laugh. https://t.co/GHm1kAiLRx

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) July 16, 2026

US history of militarised mass rape

Unfortunately, US soldiers don’t need extra testosterone or performance enhancers to commit crimes like rape and abduction. It’s already been horrifically common in the US military for many decades.

There are numerous documentaries about mixed-race children in Korea and Vietnam that are shunned by society. Many are about the children of rape by occupying US soldiers. These include:

• Relative Strangers
• Geographies of Kinshi
• K-Number
• South Korea’s Adoption Reckoning
• Given Away
• Korean Legacy

Okinawa in Japan, a notorious overseas US military base, regularly suffers US soldiers raping women and girls — some as young as 12. The BBC reported that in the year ending June 2025, there were at least four such cases confirmed. 

The soldier who abducted and raped a 12-year-old girl was given only five years in prison. Countless more go free.

This is not a recent occurrence nor the result of the post-War on Terror ‘Irregular Army’ of criminals, gangsters and racial supremacists documented by Matt Kennard. As far back as 1949, at the beginning of the US ‘Cold War’ occupation of many East Asian nations, Frank Gibney wrote of Okinawa:

For the past four years, poor, typhoon-swept Okinawa has dangled at what bitter Army men call ‘the logistical end of the line,’ and some of its commanders have been lax and inefficient. More than 15,000 U.S. troops, whose morale and discipline have probably been worse than that of any U.S. force in the world, have policed 600,000 natives who live in hopeless poverty. … In the six months ending last September, U.S. soldiers committed an appalling number of crimes-29 murders, 18 rapes, 16 robberies, 33 assaults.

This story has been true of essentially every East and South East Asian nation occupied by US troops. Most infamous, perhaps, is the suffering inflicted upon the young women and girls of the Philippines.

Sexual violence in the Philippines

The Global South-led, anti-imperialist feminism collective, Capire, has documented this atrocity. 

Journalist Jean Enriquez wrote about the so-called “comfort women” and the US military’s sexual exploits. Her article said:

There are a huge concentration of women who were trafficked from different parts of the Philippines to supply the demand of American soldiers for sexual entertainment. We have so many records of abuse from the soldiers, and racist treatment of the Filipinas around the military bases. These stories are deeply racist and very violent.

Enriquez referenced the connection between poverty amongst rural families and prostitution, highlighting the “daughters of farmers and fishers in the rural area”. 

The soldiers really feel entitled to women whenever they come here. But it’s important to say that there is still a visiting forces agreement in the Philippines with the United States, even if we kicked out the US military bases from 1991 to 1992. 

***

That is basically globalising prostitution, that is what trafficking is about. There’s a very strong connection among the pimps and traffickers here and the supplying to the demand of the US soldiers.

And let us not forget that West Asia has not been spared by the US military rape complex either. Five US soldiers were prosecuted, only after a guilt-ridden whistleblower stepped forward, following the Mahmoudiya massacre. There, US soldiers raped and murdered a 12-year-old girl too. The US is a truly evil empire.

Featured image via New York Magazine

By Cameron Baillie