“Fox and Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade has apologized for killing homeless people with mental health issues.
“I was wrong to say they should receive lethal injections,” Kilmeade told Fox News on Sunday . “I apologize for that extremely regrettable remark. I am obviously aware that not all mentally ill homeless people act the way the perpetrator in North Carolina did and that so many homeless people deserve our empathy and compassion.”
Kilmeade made the shocking remarks during a segment on “Fox and Friends” on Wednesday. While Kilmeade and fellow co-hosts Ainsley Earhardt and Lawrence Jones were discussing the fatal shooting of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska while she was riding public transportation in North Carolina, they argued that the suspect, who has reportedly been diagnosed with schizophrenia, should never have been on the streets.
Jones said that because homeless and mentally ill people don’t want to get help, they should be in jail. Then Kilmeade slipped in.
“Or, uh, forced lethal injection. Or something,” Kilmeade said. “Just kill them.”
Kilmeade’s remarks immediately sparked backlash, including from California Governor Gavin Newsom, who wrote on social media, “Proverbs 21:13: Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.” Newsom has been criticized for his own policies on homelessness in California.
Fox News did not offer additional comment to HuffPost about the remarks.
Kilmeade has said questionable things in the past. Earlier this year, he said that undocumented immigrants do not deserve due process before being deported.
In 2022, Kilmeade questioned why Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation expert who was pregnant at the time, would lead the Disinformation Governance Council.
“Then we find out who’s responsible for it … Nina Jankowicz, who’s about eight and a half months pregnant, so I’m not sure how you get a job and then you just can’t do the job for three months,” Kilmeade said.
In 2012, he said that Fox News was hiring its female hosts by searching through the “Victoria’s Secret catalog” and asking, “Can any of these people talk?”
And in 2020, he said Nancy Pelosi is letting emotions “get the best of her.”
“No, but I won’t go into the gender, but she loses it emotionally at every public event,” Kilmeade said on air.
