BRIAN KILMEADE AND THE BANALITY OF CRUELTY

On the morning of September 10, 2025, Brian Kilmeade peeled back the thin veneer of banter that usually defines Fox & Friends and revealed something raw, ugly, and chilling. Between the weather and the outrage-of-the-day, he casually proposed what can only be described as a death sentence for America’s most vulnerable — not with anger, but with the offhand tone of someone suggesting a new brand of coffee. It was a moment that stripped away the pretense and showed Fox’s morning mascot for what he truly is: the smiling face of cruelty, normalized for mass consumption.

THE CHEERFUL FACE OF AUTHORITARIANISM

Kilmeade has always been Fox’s golden retriever — affable, loyal, incapable of depth but reliable as a fetcher of talking points. He is not a thinker, not a provocateur, not even a wit. He is background noise in khakis. But on this particular morning, the noise turned sinister. Asked what to do about homeless people with mental illness, he broke character, let the tail stop wagging, and dropped the line that will define him forever: “Or involuntary lethal injection… or something. Just kill ’em.”

THE BANAL DELIVERY OF BARBARISM

What makes the moment so dangerous is not only what he said, but how he said it. No raised voice, no dramatic flourish — just a flat interjection delivered like it was common sense. That’s the true danger of Kilmeade’s cruelty: it arrives disguised as normal, slipped in between weather updates and pumpkin spice chatter. Even his co-hosts didn’t recoil. Lawrence Jones muttered “yeah.” Ainsley Earhardt tried to pivot. And just like that, state violence against the poor was treated as another bullet point in the morning rundown.

HISTORY’S SHADOWS

This is not a new script. The Nazis began their Aktion T4 program the same way, under the guise of “efficiency” and “public safety,” euthanizing the mentally ill before escalating to genocide. American eugenicists sterilized the poor and the “unfit” in the name of progress. Authoritarians from Duterte in the Philippines to Bolsonaro in Brazil have used similar rhetoric to sanction violence against the vulnerable. Kilmeade may not realize it, but he was speaking fluent eliminationism, the dialect of regimes we pretend to despise.

THE MOCKERY HE DESERVES

Brian Kilmeade deserves to be scorned, ridiculed, and forever shackled to the words he spit out. He should never again be introduced as a TV host without the addendum: the man who casually endorsed euthanasia for the homeless. His reputation is branded now, whether he likes it or not: Brian “Just Kill ’Em” Kilmeade, Fox’s cheerful executioner.

THE DANGER OF LETTING IT SLIDE

Fox wants this to blow over. They will ignore it, stonewall it, maybe eventually spin it as a “joke” that landed poorly. But that is exactly how cruelty becomes policy: when audiences shrug, when advertisers stay silent, when the powerful decide that killing the poor is just another opinion in the marketplace of ideas. To let Kilmeade’s words slide is to accept that television hosts can casually propose extermination without consequence.

WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR SCORN

Scorn isn’t enough on its own — it has to sting. Play the clip. Share his words. Tag the advertisers who bankroll Fox & Friends and ask them if they stand by a host who suggested euthanizing the homeless. Call out the silence from Fox leadership. Keep Brian “Just Kill ’Em” Kilmeade’s name chained to that phrase until it drags him down like an anchor. Because cruelty thrives on forgetfulness — and the only antidote is memory sharpened into action.

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