Fox News Calls Caramel Cake ‘Too Gay’

Fox News Channel host Jesse Watters sparked controversy during a bizarre on-air moment tied to National Fudge Day (soft caramel) by joking that a fudge cake would be “too gay” for the attending Vice President JD Vance. He appears to have been referencing a crude slur against gay people in the English-speaking world.

Specifically, at the end of an episode of the talk show “The Five,” Watters handed Vance a pickle cake and quipped: “I actually wanted to bake a fudge cake, because today is National Fudge Day, Mr. Vice President, but I thought that would be too gay, so I made a pickle cake instead.” Vance laughed before thanking the host for the cake.

The word “Fudge” on its own isn’t a direct label for gay men, but it sits at the center of a well-known, demeaning slur in English: “Fudge Packer” (that is, Fudge-packer). The term emerged at the end of the 1970s and the early 1980s in the United States and Britain as homophobic slang. The logic behind it is a crude, graphic comparison between the thick, sticky, brown fudge mass that is often pressed into molds or packed into boxes and anal sex between men. In English, the expression is a severe insult.

Criticism on Social Media

On social media, the phrase drew sharp criticism. Fox News has been accused of trying to rehabilitate queerphobic slurs. Many mocked the choice to replace the fudge cake with an even “gayer” pastry. One user wrote: “The idea that ‘Fudge’ is too gay for national television, but a pickle cake gets a pass. Because pickles, of course, aren’t all shaped like penises.”

The fudge remark isn’t Watters’s first foray into controversy. In July 2024, he claimed on his Fox News program that “scientists say a man who chooses a woman basically becomes a woman”—around the time it was revealed that Kamala Harris would run for president against Donald Trump. Earlier this year, the Fox News host, while laying out his self-styled “rules for men,” said: “One of the reasons you don’t drink from a straw is the way your lips purse. That is very feminine.”

The Fox News Channel isn’t a traditional news outlet but the leading mouthpiece for the conservative movement in the United States. The channel wields huge power within the Republican Party and often helps determine which topics conservatives deem important. Time and again, the network has leaned into anti-queer rhetoric. For example, a rainbow LEGO set was criticized as “racist,” or LGBTI acceptance in California was blamed for wildfires.