Conservative intellectual giant, Pulitzer Prize winner, and Harvard-educated psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer passed away at the age of 68 on Thursday.
Krauthammer’s passing was expected after he wrote a heartbreaking letter in his column on June 8 informing the public that he had cancer. He wrote:
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.
Krauthammer, who was also an influential Fox News contributor, was widely respected for his honesty, grace, and exuding class.
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of our colleague and friend, Charles Krauthammer,” Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott said in a statement. “A gifted doctor and brilliant political commentator, Charles was a guiding voice throughout his time with FOX News and we were incredibly fortunate to showcase his extraordinary talent on our programs. He was an inspiration to all of us and will be greatly missed. Our thoughts and prayers are with his beloved wife Robyn and his son Daniel.”
Despite his tragic passing, The Washington Post‘s Adam Bernstein attacked him in Krauthammer’s obituary, appearing to blame him for the Iraq war in the opening line of his obituary:
Charles Krauthammer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist and intellectual provocateur who championed the muscular foreign policy of neoconservatism that helped lay the ideological groundwork for the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, died June 21 at 68.
Calling Krauthammer, whose calm and non-confrontational demeanor defined him, a “provocateur,” was completely inaccurate, to say the least.