“Just Kill Them.” Casual Cruelty, Broadcast at Dawn

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

There are moments when the mask doesn’t just slip—it shatters, and what spills out is the raw, unvarnished cruelty that has always been there, hiding beneath the surface. That moment came this morning on Fox & Friends. Under the bright lights of America’s most-watched morning show, Brian Kilmeade leaned into the camera, with all the casualness of a man ordering coffee, and suggested that the answer to homelessness and mental illness might be “involuntary lethal injection.”

“Just kill them.” He said.

And the most chilling part was not merely that he said it—it was the silence that followed. His co-hosts didn’t gasp. They didn’t stop the conversation. They didn’t even pause. They simply let it pass, as though exterminating the most vulnerable people in our society were just another talking point, another segment to move through before tossing to the weather.

Video courtesy of Aaron Rupar

This is not a slip of the tongue. This is not a joke gone awry. This is beyond horrifying. Fox News has crossed the threshold from fearmongering to full-blown fascist rhetoric. Brian Kilmeade’s casual invocation of euthanasia for the homeless is not just dehumanizing—it is genocidal thinking. Let’s not soften what he said. Let’s not pretend it was hyperbole. We are talking about Americans. Veterans. Trauma survivors. Survivors of abuse. Children who aged out of foster care. Men and women battling schizophrenia, PTSD, bipolar disorder—people failed again and again by the institutions that were supposed to protect them. Instead of housing, instead of healthcare, instead of compassion, Kilmeade’s “solution” was state-sanctioned execution. That isn’t commentary. That isn’t “pro-life.” That is the language of fascism—broadcast into living rooms before breakfast.

And this is how atrocities begin. Not with camps. Not with mass graves. But with words. With “jokes” and “suggestions” that treat human lives as disposable. With a normalization of cruelty so casual, so unremarkable, that it barely causes a ripple. The Nazis didn’t begin with gas chambers. They began with propaganda. They began with rhetoric that painted the vulnerable as burdens, as drains, as unworthy. They began with media figures who smirked as they suggested that extermination might be the answer. When someone in 2025 can sit on a national morning show and casually float the same poison, we should not treat it as entertainment. We should hear it for what it is: a siren, screaming warning.

And here is the grotesque irony: for a week now, the right has pointed fingers at people like me, accusing us of stoking violence, of celebrating death, of glorifying bloodshed. None of it was true. No one I know cheered violence. No one on my side called for killing. Meanwhile, I have spent days reading messages threatening my life, telling me I’m next, promising me violence. And yet, on Fox News, a man with a national platform can suggest killing the homeless because they have no address—and his colleagues smile politely and move on.

Don’t you dare tell me I’m the one glorifying violence. Don’t you dare project your sickness onto us while you broadcast extermination as policy.

The hypocrisy is staggering. This is the party that calls itself pro-life. The party that drapes itself in Christian faith, insisting every unborn life is sacred. But when faced with people already living, already suffering—people messy, inconvenient, visible—they abandon all that sanctity. Suddenly life is conditional. Suddenly morality evaporates. Suddenly the “pro-life” crowd is perfectly fine entertaining death as public policy. What a grotesque inversion of their supposed values. What a damning exposure of their hollow core.

And do not tell me this was hyperbole. Words matter. Words become policy. Words seep into laws, into policing, into the way society decides who is worth saving and who is expendable. Somewhere, someone watching Kilmeade heard those words and felt affirmed in their darkest thoughts. Somewhere, someone already dehumanizing the homeless just got permission. That’s the danger. That’s the horror. That’s the responsibility Fox refuses to own.

Kilmeade should be fired. He won’t be. Fox won’t draw that line. Because drawing that line would mean admitting they still have one. It would mean principles. It would mean boundaries. And Fox has none. They will keep him, because cruelty drives ratings, because outrage keeps their viewers hooked, because in the ecosystem they’ve built, compassion is weakness and fascism is just good television.

And where is the outrage? Where are the Republicans demanding accountability? Where are the op-eds, the church leaders, the “family values” crowd? Silent. Utterly silent. Because outrage, for them, is not a conviction—it’s a weapon. A weapon deployed only against enemies, never against themselves. If a liberal posted something half as extreme about Charlie Kirk, they’d be screaming for firings, boycotts, congressional hearings. But when it’s one of their own calling for lethal injection of the mentally ill, they shrug. They minimize. They pretend it didn’t happen. And that silence is complicity.

We cannot let it pass. We cannot normalize this. Because this is not just another offensive Fox segment. This is not just more culture-war garbage. This is genocidal rhetoric, plain and simple. This is the suggestion that people who are inconvenient, who are suffering, who are already cast aside, can be eliminated. If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention. If you are not terrified, you have lost sight of what civilization is supposed to mean. Because once we accept the idea that some lives are disposable, we are all disposable.

This morning’s cruelty was not politics—it was a line in the sand. Not between left and right, not between liberal and conservative, but between humanity and inhumanity. Between compassion and barbarism. Between democracy and fascism. Anyone who excuses it, who minimizes it, who stays silent, has chosen their side.

Brian Kilmeade said it out loud: “Just kill them.” His colleagues didn’t blink. His party won’t call for his resignation. His network will protect him. But the rest of us cannot look away. Because this is how atrocities begin—with a smirk, a “suggestion,” and a silence that swallows it whole.

So, let’s be clear: when cruelty dares to speak in daylight, the only answer is outrage from people like us… loud enough, relentless enough, and human enough to shut it the fuck down.

And with that, today’s song:

I love you guys!

Stay strong, stay safe, and stay relentless.

💙 Jo