A white-tie state dinner meant to repair frayed Anglo-American ties produced an unexpected sideshow last week when Fox News host Jesse Watters was hustled away from Queen Camilla after cracking a joke about gun violence in the nation’s capital.
The encounter unfolded on Tuesday, April 28, 2026, during formal introductions at the White House, where President Trump and first lady Melania Trump welcomed King Charles III and Queen Camilla for a banquet capping the second day of a four-day state visit. Watters recounted the moment the next day on Wednesday’s episode of “The Five,” visibly cringing as his co-hosts pressed him for details.
The 78-year-old queen had toured the South Lawn the day before, where the White House recently unveiled a beehive shaped like the executive mansion itself. Watters, making small talk in the receiving line, asked her how the visit had gone. She told him it had been smooth — “It was very good. No one got stung.”
Then came the line that ended the conversation.
The Joke That Crossed the Line
“Well, you know, it was Washington D.C., you know, if the bees don’t get you, the guns will,” Watters said he told the queen, according to his own account on the air.
A royal handler intervened almost instantly. “And then this woman just starts pulling me away from them,” Watters told his stunned colleagues. “I don’t know what I was saying. Ugh. I started mumbling.”
Co-host Dana Perino reacted with audible disbelief — “You said that? To the queen?!” — while Greg Gutfeld, who also attended the dinner, dismissed it as “classic Jesse.” Emily Compagno and Harold Ford Jr. had opened the segment by praising the Fox contingent for cleaning up well.
The timing of the quip made it especially fraught. Three days earlier, a gunman had charged a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton, allegedly planning to kill Trump and Cabinet officials. And gun violence has become a politically charged subject in the District, where Trump seized control of the local police force in August 2025 and deployed the National Guard, calling it “liberation day in D.C.” Gun violence in the District actually reached a 30-year low in 2024, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.
A Frosty Reception From the King
Watters’ evening had begun on a rocky note. He told viewers he and his wife, Emma, were briefly held at security after he listed her birthday incorrectly on the entry paperwork. A guard reassured him that “every member of Fox screwed up their paperwork.” Inside, anchor Bret Baier admitted he had also bungled his wife’s birthday, and Gutfeld confessed he had misspelled his wife Elena Moussa’s name.
Once through the receiving line, Watters fared no better with the 77-year-old monarch. King Charles, he said, had no clue who he was. Watters offered his credentials — “I’m on Fox and I have two shows” — and received a dry, very British reply: “Well, they must really love you here.”
Gutfeld’s exchange with the king carried a similar flavor. He recounted that Trump introduced him by boasting he had “the No. 1 show on late night,” prompting Charles to ask where, exactly, this late-night show aired. Told it was on Fox, the king replied simply, “I see. It’s on Fox. Very good.” Gutfeld then joked that he “took off with Camilla. Yeah, just to horse around” — a quip Watters predicted would keep him off the next guest list.
A Visit Steeped in Symbolism
The four-day trip marked Charles’s first visit to the United States as monarch and the first state visit by any British sovereign since 2007. Framed around the 250th anniversary of American independence, it was widely seen as an effort to rescue the “special relationship” after a string of transatlantic disagreements between London and the Trump administration over the war in Iran.
On Tuesday, Charles delivered an address to a joint meeting of Congress that drew strong reviews. Standing beside the king before the state dinner, Trump conceded he was “very jealous” of the reception, telling reporters Charles had “made a great speech.”
The visit also leaned into the royal family’s centuries-old beekeeping tradition. The newly expanded White House beehives — including a structure modeled on the mansion — gave the queen a soft-focus photo opportunity on Day 1 that the Watters exchange briefly threatened to overshadow.
Beyond the capital, the royal itinerary included stops in New York and Virginia. A garden party at the British ambassador’s residence on Monday evening had kicked off the social calendar, and the couple departed Thursday afternoon after a final day in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.
Watters, for his part, leaned into the embarrassment online, posting on X: “I ALMOST got THROWN OUT of the Royal State Dinner.” Gutfeld offered his own postscript on “The Five,” suggesting the night might be a one-off. “It was my first state dinner, it might be my last,” he said. “They’re still investigating the incident in the men’s room.”