Controversial host Jesse Watters will take over Tucker Carlson’s former weekday prime-time spot on Fox News, according to a Monday announcement from the network. According to Fox News, Laura Ingraham will host at 7 p.m., followed by Watters at 8, Sean Hannity at 9, and Greg Gutfeld at 10.

Following the $787.5 million settlement Fox struck with Dominion Voting Systems to end a defamation complaint regarding the airing of Donald Trump’s statements about voter fraud in the 2020 election, Carlson was dismissed in April.

According to Fox, the termination had nothing to do with the agreement. Carlson is silent on the matter.

The Dominion settlement “showed the punitive costs of following Trump’s base too far into the fever swamps,” Puck media writer Dylan Byers wrote last week.

Watters is a controversialist in the vein of Carlson, albeit perhaps less centered on far-right politics, frequently provoking the media with harsh, inappropriate, or even possibly racist remarks.

He caused controversy in 2016 for a piece that he said was “tongue-in-cheek” but that then-mayor Bill de Blasio termed “vile, racist behavior.” The segment was taped in Chinatown in New York City.

Watters advised the public to “ambush” Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s senior scientific adviser, in December 2021 and “go in for the kill shot.”

Fauci, who received death threats throughout the coronavirus pandemic, said Watters should be fired.

Fox said it was “more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions to Dr Fauci about gain-of-function research”.

Watters, who is also a co-host of The Five, received the 7 p.m. prime time position less than a month later. He presently occupies this time slot in the middle of the weeknight schedule.

Last week, Watters referred to those without homes as “bags of flesh mutating on the sidewalk” in a piece when she bemoaned San Francisco’s persistent homelessness.

He also referred to San Francisco as a “fentanyl caliphate” that allowed homeless people to “rape, rob, and steal” in an anti-Muslim slur.