A Fox News host drew fire from inside the network for suggesting that conservatives may be going too far in their efforts to immortalize far-right activist Charlie Kirk after he was brutally murdered earlier this week.
“Charlie Kirk was not a saint,” network mainstay Howard Kurtz said during a Sunday panel on his show, Media Buzz. “He said two years ago, it’s worth [it] to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so we can have the Second Amendment,” he went on, adding that “his murder makes this feel like a very dangerous time.”
Kirk, who was shot and killed at a Utah campus event on Wednesday, did indeed make those remarks at a Turning Point USA conference in April 2023, describing gun deaths as “a prudent deal” and “rational” if they allowed Americans “to protect our other God-given rights.”
Such remarks are characteristic of the reliably provocative rhetoric that the late far-right Christian activist used to build his name across a wide range of social issues. On his eponymous podcast and at campus events across the country, Kirk previously spoke of how “prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people,” how “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,” and how “we need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor.”
Kirk’s supporters, however, railed against Kurtz for suggesting that the activist’s track record wasn’t flawless.
“Leave it to Howie Kurtz,” wrote one user scoffed on X, prompting one of Kurt’z colleagues Greg Gutfeld to pile on.
“Maybe we can tune in next week for a clarification… oh wait,” Gutfeld quipped, a dig at Media Buzz airing its final episode Sunday following news of its cancellation.
The network announced last week that it is set to replace MediaBuzz with The Sunday Briefing, a new program hosted by Washington correspondents Jacqui Heinrich and Peter Doocy, Variety reported. Kurtz, 71, will remain a Fox News contributor.
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kirk’s assassination has been met with a spectacular outpouring of grief from supporters of the movement that had long treated him as a darling.
President Donald Trump has posthumously awarded the activist with the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Vice President JD Vance has described him as a “true friend” who “ran a good race,” while his widow Erika Kirk has pledged “the movement my husband built will not die,” and that her grief will “echo around the world like a battle cry.”
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