Charles Krauthammer, a Fox News contributor and Washington Post columnist, announced in a note to readers on Friday that he’s been told by doctors he has only weeks to live.
Krauthammer, a veteran political analyst who appeared regularly on Bret Baier’s Special Report news show, said that his cancer has returned following surgery in August 2017 to remove a tumor in his abdomen.
“It was a long and hard fight with many setbacks, but I was steadily, if slowly, overcoming each obstacle along the way and gradually making my way back to health,” he wrote in a letter published on the Post’s website. “However, recent tests have revealed that the cancer has returned. There was no sign of it as recently as a month ago, which means it is aggressive and spreading rapidly. My doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live. This is the final verdict. My fight is over.”
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Baier has continually updated concerned viewers about Krauthammer’s condition and shared a letter from him on air in February. At the time, Baier said, “Charles, we miss you and your voice on the big issues facing us every night. We continue to hope and pray for your speedy recovery.”
“I leave this life with no regrets,” Krauthammer wrote in the letter. “It was a wonderful life — full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.”
His colleague, Chris Wallace, said on air from Singapore that he cried when Baier told him 10 days ago about Krauthammer’s turn for the worst.
Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of Fox News parent company 21st Century Fox, released a statement about Krauthammer. “Charles has been a profound source of personal and intellectual inspiration for all of us at Fox News,” he said. “His always principled stand on the most important issues of our time has been a guiding star in an often turbulent world, a world that has too many superficial thinkers vulnerable to the ebb and flow of fashion, and a world that, unfortunately has only one Charles Krauthammer.”
Murdoch continued: “His words, his ideas, his dignity and his integrity will resonate within our society and within me for many, many years to come.”
