Yet another person in Jesse Watters’ close circle has been hit by DOGE cuts—and his mom is not happy about it.
The conservative pundit revealed in a Thursday episode of Jesse Watters Primetime that his sister works at Johns Hopkins University, which announced that it would lay off over 2,000 staff in the U.S. and abroad due to the Trump administration’s efforts to slash government spending.
“I just saw some news that Trump took some grants away from Johns Hopkins, where my sister works,” Watters said. “Now, my mom’s upset. She’s texting me. It’s going to be a whole family thing, so we’ll have to deal with that over the weekend.”
University president Ronald Daniels announced last week that over $800 million in grants from the now-dismantled USAID had been terminated, affecting Jhpiego, the School of Public Health’s Center for Communication Programs, and the School of Medicine, according to The Johns Hopkins News-Letter.
The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, July 16, 2004. / Getty Images
“Because of these funding terminations, we are in the process of winding down USAID grant-related activities in Baltimore and internationally,” Daniels reportedly wrote in an email to the Johns Hopkins community.
Elon Musk and his lackeys at the Department of Government Efficiency went scorched earth on USAID, wiping out the humanitarian aid agency’s workforce over alleged corruption.
It’s not the first time that someone close to Watters got DOGE’d.
In a Feb. 19 broadcast of Fox News’ The Five, Watters said a close friend named Chris lost his job at the Pentagon after a DOGE purge.
“He texted me and said, ‘Jesse, this is not good. I’m upset. This is really sad,’” Watters recalled. “This guy is a veteran. So when you’re talking about DOGEing people, veterans should get priority. Because if you’re going to go out there and kill enemies and put your life on the line for this country, you shouldn’t be in the same category as people that are doing DEI.”
“I finally found one person I knew that got DOGE’d and it hit me in the heart,” he added.
That episode reportedly convinced President Donald Trump to rein in Musk.
According to The Atlantic, Trump asked his advisers if Watters’ sentiments struck a chord with MAGAworld. In the weeks that followed, Trump reportedly found no joy in how the DOGE cuts were playing out on television, with optics that included Republican lawmakers being confronted by angry constituents in town halls.
“As the Secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various Departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go,” the president later announced. “We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.’ The combination of them, Elon, DOGE, and other great people will be able to do things at a historic level.”
