One of the best-known anchors on Fox News has suggested killing people as a way to end the country’s homelessness crisis.
“Involuntary lethal injection, or something,” Brian Kilmeade told viewers of the network’s flagship talk show, Fox & Friends in a clip that resurfaced on Saturday. “Just kill them,” he added for clarity.
Kilmeade’s shocking comments met with little surprise from co-hosts Ainsley Earhardt and Lawrence Jones, who in fact appeared to agree, with Earhardt adding: “Yeah, Brian, why did it have to get to this point?”
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This rhetoric is part of a larger focus on homelessness from the right. There are an estimated 800,000 people currently homeless in the United States. President Donald Trump launched a police takeover of the nation’s capital in part to curb what he perceives as a crime wave and aesthetic decline driven by Washington, D.C.’s homeless population.
Kilmeade and his colleagues were speaking in reference to the tragic Aug. 22 murder of 23-year-old Ukrainian Iryna Zarutska in North Carolina. The killing, allegedly carried out by Decarlos Brown Jr., has ignited a ferocious, racially charged campaign among the far-right, given Zarutska was white and Brown is Black.
Brown has an extensive criminal history and a known diagnosis of schizophrenia, and has already told the courts that the crime was carried out by a “material” implanted in his body by nefarious forces. He’s understood to have been homeless at the time of the attack.
Zarutska’s killing has prompted fierce rhetoric from Trump himself.
“The ANIMAL who so violently killed the beautiful young lady from Ukraine, who came to America searching for peace and safety, should be given a ‘Quick’ (there is no doubt!) Trial, and only awarded THE DEATH PENALTY,” the president said on Truth Social.
“There can be no other option!!!” he added.
White House deputy chief Stephen Miller has also seized on the case as a sign of what the Trump administration maintains is an epidemic of violence in Democrat-run urban centers.
“The Democrat Party is terrorizing the American people,” he told Fox News. “The Democrat policies of catch and release for barbarians and savages is truly an act of terror on against the American people.”
Kilmeade’s comments this week have been met with mounting backlash as a clip of the exchange went viral.
“Call me crazy, [Brian Kilmeade], but don’t you think we are better than euthanizing homeless people?” Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell wrote on X. “Sure, lock up violent criminals. But when did we forget the Bible’s story of the weary traveler?”
