{"id":424226,"date":"2025-09-14T17:40:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T17:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/424226\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T17:40:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T17:40:14","slug":"fox-news-host-apologizes-for-extremely-callous-remarks-on-unhoused-people-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/424226\/","title":{"rendered":"Fox News host apologizes for \u2018extremely callous\u2019 remarks on unhoused people | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fox News<\/a> host Brian Kilmeade apologized on Sunday for saying days earlier that people who are experiencing homelessness<\/a> and mental illnesses should be executed \u2013 remarks that prompted calls for him to be fired.<\/p>\n

The host said his comments on Wednesday were \u201cextremely callous\u201d.<\/p>\n

Kilmeade\u2019s about-face came amid a climate in which people across the US are either being fired from or disciplined<\/a> at their jobs amid a coordinated effort to clamp down on commentary that is critical about Turning Point USA\u2019s executive director, Charlie Kirk, who was shot to death<\/a> at an event in Utah on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Mere hours before the conservative political activist was killed, while on the rightwing Fox News program Fox & Friends, Kilmeade and two other hosts were discussing the killing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska<\/a>, a Ukrainian woman who was fatally stabbed on a commuter train in North Carolina in August.<\/p>\n

The man charged with killing Zarutska at random in Charlotte had reportedly been diagnosed with schizophrenia and had 14 prior criminal arrests. Surveillance video of the Zarutska\u2019s killing went viral online.<\/p>\n

During the Fox and Friends appearance on Wednesday discussing Zarutska\u2019s death, co-host Lawrence Jones said unhoused people with mental illness should either accept the publicly funded programs to help in their situation or be jailed.<\/p>\n

\u201cInvoluntary lethal injection or something,\u201d Kilmeade responded to Jones. \u201cJust kill \u2019em.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kilmeade faced widespread backlash for his comments. Among those to respond was California\u2019s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom<\/a>, who on social media posted a biblical verse reading: \u201cWhoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Sunday morning, during an appearance with Jones on Fox & Friends Weekends, Kilmeade apologized for his idea of killing those who are unhoused and mentally ill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrongly said they should get lethal injections\u201d on Wednesday, Kilmeade said. \u201cI apologize for that extremely callous remark. I am obviously aware that not all mentally ill, homeless people act as the perpetrator did in North Carolina<\/a> \u2013 and that so many homeless people deserve our empathy and compassion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike others<\/a> who were deemed to have made offensive comments about Kirk\u2019s death, Kilmeade remained employed by Fox News.<\/p>\n

His professional fate struck a sharp contrast with Dowd, a veteran political analyst fired<\/a> by MSNBC for suggesting on air that Kirk\u2019s far-right rhetoric may have contributed to the violence that killed him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions,\u201d Dowd said. \u201cYou can\u2019t stop with these sort of awful thats you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The network and Dowd each separately issued apologies. But in a Substack article<\/a> published on Friday, Dowd said he had been victimized by a \u201crightwing media mob\u201d and that words he spoke before knowing Kirk had been the target of a shooting were misconstrued.<\/p>\n

\u201cKilmeade is advocating for extrajudicial killings on FOX, yet Matthew Dowd was fired by MSNBC [for] pointing out Charlie Kirk\u2019s dangerous rhetoric,\u201d author Shannon Watts said on X<\/a>. \u201cThis moral asymmetry in the media and online is destroying democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zarutska\u2019s killing has become an inflection point for Republicans, who are blaming Democratic policies in certain US cities for such crimes.<\/p>\n

Studies show that people experiencing homelessness are more likely to be victims<\/a> of violent crime than perpetrators. And other studies<\/a> have shown that mental illness is not a predictor of future violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fox News host Brian Kilmeade apologized on Sunday for saying days earlier that people who are experiencing homelessness…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-424226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115203881315837288","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}