Fox News host Jesse Watters did his best to minimize the bombshell news about the James Comey memo yesterday by pretending it's little more than a joke. Unfortunately for Watters, Fox anchor Bret Baier set him straight.

Baier visited The Five at its opening to discuss yesterday’s bombshell, via The New York Times, that fired FBI Director James Comey had written a contemporaneous memo noting that Donald Trump had suggested Comey not investigate the just-fired Michael Flynn.

The news was so explosive that not a single Republican member of Congress was willing to talk to Fox News about it on Special Report yesterday.

But Watters tried to dismiss the whole thing as little more than a joke. (Transcript via Media Matters)

WATTERS: Bret, I want to put a little Watters World spin on this story. […] If I went out tomorrow on the street and I asked ten people who James Comey was, I’d probably maybe get three, maybe four, who knew, depending on the neighborhood. This is a scandal with no video, with no audio, with no sex, with no money, with no dead bodies. It’s a boring scandal. No one knows the deputy AG’s name, no one can pronounce the Russian defense minister’s name. 

GREG GUTFELD: I can. 

WATTERS: There’s memos, and which memo, and who sent what memo to who. No one is emotionally invested or can even understand this story, it’s a process story now. Do we think we’re losing sight of what the rest of the country thinks and feels about something like this?

No, Baier did not think so. He agreed that “a large section of the country” would “like Washington to work on something else.” But, he added, “It is a big story” with potentially very serious consequences.

So Watters changed the subject to the IRS “scandal” during the Obama administration.

But Baiers was not deterred. He said that some of the stories coming out “are describing a White House that is in a tough spot and is in a chaotic moment.”

Translation: Not even Fox News can dig Trump out of this.

As I was writing up this post, news just broke that former FBI Director James Mueller has been appointed Special Counsel in the Russia investigation. Memo to Watters: This is not the kind of development for a matter nobody cares about.

Watch Watters suggest we should all shrug off the Russia investigation below, from the May 16, 2017 The Five.