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.”

  • Ironfist79@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

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

  • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    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.

  • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
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    1 month ago

    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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      1 month ago

      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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      1 month ago

      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.

    • Bone@lemmy.world
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      30 days ago

      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

  • QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    This is a guy who said who stated ”We (America) need to keep the bloodlines pure” sixteen years ago on tv. I don’t believe he is sincere

  • masterofn001@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    Just like JD Vance and his techbros have said.

    Oh and charlie kirk. Lovable, sweet, truly good guy, charlie kirk. Had this to say:

    We shouldn’t put up with it. They should be in mental institutions, put them in mental asylums, or give them, you know, a meal or some shelter. Treat them humanely, but get them off the streets. Enough. Okay? The vagrancy, the defecation, the drug usage, the sexual assaults, you know, look, the streets are not your home. Okay? We have to have order. You have to, clean up the filth, okay? Enough. The humane thing to do is to put them somewhere that is not on the streets.

    • testfactor@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      There’s a lot of reasons to dislike Charlie Kirk, but that quote is kinda reasonable?

      We should take better care of people with severe mental illnesses. Sometimes that means they should be compelled into treatment. It’s not a good thing that someone struggling with severe mental illness is just left out on the street, and many will not seek help due to those self-same illnesses. A person with schizophrenia is extremely likely to flee from help due to the intense paranoia.

      It is the humane thing to do to get them off the streets and into a place where they can be taken care of. And while asylums have a pretty grotesque history, it’s one of the worst legacies of the Reagan administration that they were done away with. Massive reform was needed, and a better structure for making sure people weren’t just locked away indefinitely. More oversight and regulation, no question. But the solution we went with of just turning them all out on the street to live in tents is a huge injustice to them.

      • tgcoldrockn@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Its not reasonable by any stretch. It is coming from a place of intense selfishness: “These pointless creatures are in my way.” vs “Lets lift these fellow humans who have fallen by the wayside.”

        • testfactor@lemmy.world
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          30 days ago

          I mean, where something is coming from isn’t necessarily tied to its reasonableness.

          If I was a huge advocate for government funding for health initiatives, that’s still reasonable, even if it’s driven from a place of hating fat people.

          It might make me a bad person if I believed that, but it doesn’t mean I’m pushing for bad policy.

      • masterofn001@lemmy.ca
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        30 days ago

        He calls them filth.

        Whatever he said, that’s how he thought of them.

        Filthy people with mental disorders.

        That’s how morally narrow minded he was.

    • Cosmoooooooo@lemmy.world
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      Just a reminder that Reagan closed all the mental institutions.

      This not only put the mentally ill on the street with no treatment available, but it made it so that clearly narcissistic, sociopathic rich people would never, ever see the inside of a mental facility. You know, for planning and advocating mass murder openly on air. Stuff like that.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Hm, isn’t this part of the Nazi platform? Didn’t they go after trans and the disabled first?

    I’m surprised a mouthpiece on state media is being made to apologize. I just figured this was in their plans for Gilead.

  • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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    30 days ago

    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.

  • Professorozone@lemmy.world
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    30 days ago

    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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      30 days ago

      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.

      • Professorozone@lemmy.world
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        29 days ago

        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.

      • Professorozone@lemmy.world
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        29 days ago

        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!

  • hume_lemmy@lemmy.ca
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    29 days ago

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

  • KiloGex@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    And then he was fired, right? Just like all of the people who got fired for saying Charlie Kirk wasn’t a nice guy. Right?

  • Cosmoooooooo@lemmy.world
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    He’s just apologizing for saying it “On Air”. He’ll continue to go around and do rallies and speaking engagements almost exactly like the other nazi propagandists, like Pierced Kirk. He’ll continue to say it in private events until the correct nazi political climate is right for him to re-energize his homeless murder program for hundreds of thousands of people.