Charles Krauthammer Reveals He Has Weeks to Live, 'I Leave This Life With No Regrets'
Fox News contributor and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer announced on Friday that his doctors are saying he has weeks to live.
Krauthammer, who was a fixture of FNC’s “Special Report” and other programs, left nearly a year ago for surgery to treat an undisclosed medical condition.
In a letter to his colleagues, friends and viewers, Krauthammer, 68, revealed that the surgery was to remove a cancerous tumor in his stomach.
“I have been uncharacteristically silent these past ten months,” the letter began. “I had thought that silence would soon be coming to an end, but I’m afraid I must tell you now that fate has decided on a different course for me.”
Though Krauthammer and his doctors were hopeful he was on the road to recovery, recent tests showed cancer has returned.
“There was no sign of it as recently as a month ago, which means it is aggressive and spreading rapidly,” he wrote. “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.”
During his first year of as a student at Harvard Medical School, the then 22-year-old suffered a diving accident that left him a quadriplegic. Nonetheless, he completed his schooling in 1975, earning his doctorate in psychiatry.
“After medical school, he became chief psychiatry resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he studied depression and published ground-breaking findings in top medical journals,” Fox News reported.
In 1978, he shifted into the world of politics, serving in the Carter administration, working as a speech writer for Vice President Walter Mondale.
Krauthammer would go on to become a political columnist, writing for The New Republic, Time and finally The Washington Post.
The writer was also a regular on the PBS show “Inside Washington” from 1990 to 2013, and he joined Fox News over a decade ago.
In 1987, he won the Pulitzer Prize for political commentary for his work at The Post.
Charles Krauthammer is a monumental thinker who will go down in history as a key force in the revivification of philosophical and practical conservatism. This is absolutely tragic. https://t.co/bptHVyroED
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 8, 2018
The paper’s editorial board honored Krauthammer in a piece on Friday (the day his weekly columns would run), writing, “We know we speak for many of you when we say that nothing and no one can replace him.
“Charles wrote for the right reasons. Lord knows — and presidents, from right to left, can attest — he didn’t seek invitations to White House dinners or other badges of approval from the powerful. He sought, rather, to provoke us to think, to enlarge our understanding, at times to make us laugh.”
Fox News related that “viewers will undoubtedly miss Krauthammer’s formidable intellect and ability to analyze politics and politicians with a cerebral wit and keen charm. As the dean of ‘The Fox News All Stars,’ the panel of pundits who break down headlines and events nightly on Fox News Channel’s top-rated ‘Special Report,’ Krauthammer could be counted on to make viewers think, question and even chuckle.”
“Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace paid tribute to his colleague on Friday, saying, “I want you to know I love you.”
"There is so much to say about Charles Krauthammer."
Chris Wallace responds to the news that Fox News analyst Charles Krauthammer has released a letter revealing that he has weeks to live. https://t.co/DvQty021V0 pic.twitter.com/mditJO8l2N
— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 8, 2018
Krauthammer concluded his letter, “I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation’s destiny.
“I leave this life with no regrets. 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.”
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