Fox News host Brian Kilmeade’s call to execute mentally ill people was a mask-off moment

Last week, while discussing an August incident in which an unhoused and mentally ill man stabbed and killed a Ukrainian refugee on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade casually floated the idea that mentally ill homeless people should be executed if they refuse treatment for their illness. After the clip went viral over the weekend, he apologized Sunday — but it hardly made what he said any less disquieting.

According to The Associated Press, the man arrested in the killing had been previously diagnosed with schizophrenia, and his mother said she sought his involuntary psychiatric commitment this year after he became violent at home.

One of Kilmeade’s “Fox and Friends” co-hosts, Lawrence Jones, said during the discussion that mentally ill homeless people who refuse treatment should be “locked up.”

Then Kilmeade chimed in, “Or involuntary lethal injection, or something. Just kill ’em.”

Remarkably, Kilmeade’s colleagues did not appear fazed by his remark. In fact, co-host Ainsley Earhardt seemingly took his proposal seriously as she asked, “Yeah, Brian, why did it have to get to this point?”

Kilmeade replied, “I will say this, we’re not voting for the right people.”

After the video clip went viral over the weekend and elicited critical comments from left-leaning media figures and Democratic political figures, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Kilmeade issued an apology Sunday. He said that on Wednesday, “We were discussing the murder of Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte and how to stop these kinds of attacks by homeless, mentally ill assailants, including institutionalizing or jailing such people so they cannot attack again.”

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“Now, during that discussion, I wrongly said they should get lethal injections,” Kilmeade continued. “I 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 and that so many homeless people deserve our empathy and compassion.”

Kilmeade’s apology is inadequate on multiple levels. His remarks weren’t just “callous” — they were morally wrong. It isn’t merely mean-spirited to call for the murder of mentally ill people for declining treatment; it’s a bid to have the state violate basic human rights. And his apology for calling for executions is notably qualified: He said “not all mentally ill, homeless people” act as the perpetrator did and that “many” homeless people deserve empathy — which seems to leave open the possibility that some people, including perhaps this perpetrator, should be killed despite — or because of — their illness and dysfunction.

The non-reaction of Kilmeade’s colleagues at the time illustrates how contiguous Kilmeade’s comment was with general right-wing attitudes toward the unhoused and the mentally ill. What Kilmeade said wasn’t an aberration; it was a mask-off moment. It’s not surprising that proponents of a political ideology that sums up people’s worthiness through their economic output and blames poverty on the poor would look at a mentally ill homeless person and see nothing redeemable. It isn’t surprising that a movement that wants to cut off aid to some of the most vulnerable members of our society would look at the homeless and the mentally ill and see only inefficiency — or intolerable burden.

What happened in Charlotte was horrific, and it is a profound failure when a society is unable to properly treat someone with a track record of violence and mental illness, as the suspect had in this case, and protect the public from him. The solution is not to go around executing the most acutely vulnerable people in our society but to find an ethical and systematic way to ensure they aren’t dangers to themselves or to other people. That course of action, however, requires accepting as a premise that they are humans and inherently deserving of our attention.

Kilmeade’s initial comment was appalling — and it’s a good thing that he felt obligated to reflect on the meaning of what he said. But the limited nature of his apology seems to suggest that he stands more by the original meaning than any empathetic person should.