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FOX News host Brian Kilmeade apologized for comments calling for homeless people to receive lethal injections during a live broadcast of FOX & Friends this week.
Kilmeade was discussing the incident in which Decarlos Brown Jr., a schizophrenic homeless man, fatally stabbed Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a North Carolina train and claimed mentally ill and homeless people should be more aggressively detained and forcibly treated, "or involuntary injection or something," adding, "Just kill 'em."
"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 said while apologizing on Sunday (September 14) via FOX News.
Kilmeade's comments were amid amid President Donald Trump's crackdown on visible homelessness, having ordered that service providers receiving federal funding must focus on locking up individuals with drug or mental health challenges, which has been criticized by homeless service providers as demonizing the homeless. Trump, who has deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C. and announced plans to do so in Memphis, has long criticized the United States' homelessness rate, having publicly argued that public streets aren't safe.
"Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens," Trump said in his July 24 executive order. "The federal government and the states have spent tens of billions of dollars on failed programs that address homelessness but not its root causes, leaving other citizens vulnerable to public safety threats."