In a rare moment of clarity on a network known for circling the wagons around right-wing figures, Fox News host Howard Kurtz broke ranks during a Sunday panel discussion and pushed back on the emerging MAGA narrative trying to canonize right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk in the wake of his killing.
While some on the right have rushed to frame Kirk as a martyr, Kurtz wasn’t buying the sanitized version of the conservative firebrand. “Charlie Kirk was not a saint,” he said bluntly, calling out the selective memory that often follows political tragedy.
Kurtz’s comments came as the panel veered into the predictably partisan blame game over Kirk’s death, with some conservatives pointing fingers at the left. “Politicizing this by blaming the left or liberal lunatics for the actions of someone who’s obviously insane,” Kurtz said, calling out the reflexive spin.
But conservative reporter Sarah Bedford doubled down on the MAGA narrative, saying the shooter “was a person who was radicalized by a leftist ideology.” She added, “The left does have a radicalization problem.”
Kurtz, however, stayed focused on the bigger picture. He reminded the panel that Kirk’s rhetoric had often been incendiary and far from the sainthood his allies were now invoking. “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,” Kurtz said — quoting Kirk’s own unapologetic stance on gun violence.
Fellow panelist Charlie Gasparino jumped in to defend Kirk, admitting he hadn’t heard that specific quote but insisted, “He’s pretty mainstream, Charlie Kirk.” Gasparino went on to gripe that in progressive media, Kirk is seen as “a fringe character who is hateful and divisive and everything else.”
Kurtz, staying measured but firm, replied: “Which is not to say, you know, he or anybody has a perfect record.”
The exchange was a rare crack in the usually unified front among right-leaning media figures, who often go to great lengths to defend their own, even in the face of clear contradictions. By calling out the lionization of Kirk, Kurtz did what few on Fox News have dared to do: inject a little truth into the myth-making machine.
Whether his comments will be remembered — or buried under a mountain of spin — remains to be seen. But for a brief moment on Fox News, reality got a word in.
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