Fox News Channel host Brian Kilmeade apologized on Sunday for advocating for the execution of mentally ill homeless people in a discussion on the network last week, saying his remark was “extremely callous.”

Kilmeade’s initial comment came on a “Fox & Friends” episode Wednesday and began getting widespread circulation online over the weekend. Kilmeade, a host of the morning show, was talking with co-hosts Lawrence Jones and Ainsley Earhardt about the Aug. 22 stabbing murder of Iryna Zarutska on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina.

A homeless and mentally ill man, Decarlos Brown Jr., was arrested for murder, and the case received extensive attention on Fox following the release of a security video of the stabbing.

Jones was talking on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday about public money spent on trying to help homeless people and suggested that those who didn’t accept services offered to them should be jailed.

“Or involuntary lethal injection, or something,” Kilmeade said. “Just kill ‘em.”

Earhardt interjected, “Why did it have to get to this point?” Kilmeade replied, “I will say this, we’re not voting for the right people.”

  • hume_lemmy@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    “I’m very sorry that all of you are so easily offended by interpreting my words exactly as they were said.”

  • Ironfist79@lemmy.world
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    I don’t buy their fake apologies. He said it, he meant it. When people show you who they are, believe them.

    • Cosmoooooooo@lemmy.world
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      You’d have to have ethics. Billionaire news stations just have billionaire opinions that they use talking heads like this nazi to spread. This is just what the rich class think: “Murder all homeless people! Now! No laws. No reality. Just murder.”

  • Nougat@fedia.io
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    The apology literally does not matter.

    The fact is, for all three of them - they felt perfectly comfortable saying that unhoused people and people with mental health issues should be murdered by the state. Without flinching. On a very popular national television show.

    And the network broadcast it. Not a single person involved in “Should we let this go to air?” went “Hold the fuck on.” The network hasn’t suspended anyone, hasn’t put the show on hold while they think about what they should be doing here, and so far as I know hasn’t said a fucking word about it.

    Yes, there are a lot of people condemning these statements, rightly so. Take serious notice of who isn’t. They’re okay with state-sponsored murder of people who have not committed any crime.

    I’ve said this before: If they come for you, you’re going. Fight like your life depends on it, because it does. Fight like all of our lives depend on it, because they do.

    Winter is coming.

    • snooggums@piefed.world
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      Point out Kirk showed division and promoted violence: firing

      Openly advocating the murder of mentally ill homeless people: keep your job as long as you issue a mandated ‘apology’

      Fuck this country.

    • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
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      “* They’re okay with state-sponsored murder of people who have not committed any crime.

      And thats why they keep trying to make being homeless or any activity that homeless people do illegal.

  • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
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    And yet he’s still employed after calling for The Final Solution on live TV.

    But god forbid someone remind others that Charlie Kirk was a fascist christian nationalist neo-nazi who praised and advocated for the murder of children and minorities. That would be wrong.

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    “Geez fine I’m sorry is that better? You want me to say ‘I don’t want to televise the killing of homeless veterans?’ Even though it would be rippin? God the left has no heart.”

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    I don’t want his fucking apology, I want him fired asap. The right are having anyone who criticized Kirk death fired. Well this hateful bullshit should get him fired too. I want website dedicated to getting everyone on that show fired.

    • logicbomb@lemmy.world
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      For that matter, why say it in the first place?

      It’s not like he was reading a bunch of statistics and came up with this as an informed opinion. No, out of nowhere he just decided that it was okay to murder millions of innocent Americans.

      This is not an opinion that a moral person can say, even accidentally.

      And he felt safe advocating for it on national television.

        • Cosmoooooooo@lemmy.world
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          Hundreds of thousands are just the first batch. Then they raise the rent, until there’s another hundred thousand for them to exterminate. Then they raise rent again. and again, and again. Historically, until the poor people kill them all.

    • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
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      Fox always does this. Say all the Big Lies or slander on primetime and repeat them loud and proud many times to reinforce the propaganda for maximum effect, then trot out the apologies/corrections in a quick, “I’m literally looking at a piece of paper to read this as a boring footnote” at midnight or as a tiny footnote on their website.

      Allows deniability that they lied/slandered (“we issued a correction/apology!” but keeps all the benefits of the lies and slander.

  • Professorozone@lemmy.world
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    Wasn’t there a guy on another network (MSNBC?) that was fired even AFTER he apologized for making Charlie Kirk remarks?

    • Jack_Burton@lemmy.ca
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      He was fired for saying hateful thoughts lead to hateful words which lead to hateful actions. That was all.

      Also a columnist from the Washington Post was fired for simply mentioning a real Kirk quote:

      Black women “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously."…

      “You have to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”

      I’ve noticed a bunch of these rags are saying her quote was “untrue” but it seems it was real, according to Snopes at least. Revisionist history at work in real time.

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        Yup, that’s the one. I forgot about that poor woman. The irony of her being fired for using his words, while he was honored for them.

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        Yes, but I can understand how it was offensive. He was saying that, hey you might face the consequences of your words as if being killed for speaking was ok. But he apologized for that and was still fired, while this guy literally said people should be killed for being mentally ill. Way worse. Apparently apologizing for horrible speech is ok on Fox News. You don’t even have to be sincere. Again the irony is HE’S mentally ill!

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    Wtf was going on with the Universe and last Wednesday in particular that made everybody act like they were living through a wild fever fueled nightmare?

    I definitely think he probably would have said that regardless, but the fact that last Wednesday in particular was just so jam packed with surreal what the fuck is actually happening moments. Was it some kind of secret right wing day of significance that didn’t go according to plan? Something in the air? Weird planetary alignments?

    That whole day kicked off with Russian drones “accidentally” going into Polish airspace right before midnight in Poland.

    This guy apparently lets his genocidal fantasy for undesirable populations slip on air, which ends up being too much for even Fox News to just brush off as casual commentary

    Then the House and Senate try to get Republicans to tell them wtf is in the Epstein/J.P. Morgan/Peter Thiel/Elon Musk files, but they are blocked.

    Then before anybody can even really notice that happened, Charlie Kirk is assassinated. Some old man in the crowd immediately screams he did it and tells the crowd to shoot him. He ends up hauled off in handcuffs with his pants around his ankles. It turns out he’s just a local well known right wing political agitator, who also slept on a cot in Ronald Reagan’s secretary of education’s hotel room at the '88 Republican National Convention? As he’s being hauled away with his pants down, the real killer jumps from a roof and escapes.

    Then some guy with a pellet gun is arrested and released.

    Then we finally end the night with Trump calling Kirk a martyr for free speech and Trump accusing the vitriol of the left (again the same day Fox News talks about executing homeless people) of being responsible for Kirk’s murder.

    We all go to bed with no clue wtf is actually happening before easing into the next day, which happens to be the anniversary of 9/11.

    Wtf was that day?

    • extremeboredom@lemmy.world
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      Thank you for recognizing this. I felt crazy but it really did seem like everything bumped up a notch last week.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      Not to mention there was a school shooting in Colorado, the state widely seen as the beginning of the wave of school shootings that haven’t ceased since.

    • Bonesince1997@lemmy.world
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      When you’re born into this world, you’re given a ticket to the freak show. If you’re born in America you get a front row seat. -George Carlin