Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer reveals he has just weeks to live
Pulitzer Prize-winning political analyst and Fox News personality, Charles Krauthammer, in a heartbreaking letter on Friday, revealed that he has just a few weeks to live as he is in the final stages of battling terminal cancer, reports state.
The 68-year-old conservative commentator, who gave up a successful career in psychiatry to join politics, is reportedly battling an abdominal tumor and subsequent complications from it for nearly a year. He has been missing from Fox News' 'Special Report' and the channel was awaiting his return to the popular evening show.
Krauthammer, in a letter addressed to his colleagues, friends and viewers, informed that his fight with the malicious cancer was over.
"I have been uncharacteristically silent these past ten months. 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," the letter stated.
“However, recent tests have revealed that the cancer has returned," Krauthammer wrote. "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 graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1975 despite an accident in his first year that left him a quadriplegic. After practicing medicine for a few years, he ventured into politics and became a prominent conservative columnist over the years.
The executive chairman of Fox News and its parent company, 21st Century Fox, Rupert Murdoch, also released a statement and said that the political analyst has been a giant of journalism and played a crucial role in making the channel a success.
Murdoch said: "Charles has been a profound source of personal and intellectual inspiration for all of us at Fox News. 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."
"His words, his ideas, his dignity and his integrity will resonate within our society and within me for many, many years to come," Murdoch added.
Reports state that Krauthammer, after medical school, became chief psychiatry resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he studied depression and published ground-breaking findings in key medical journals. He later joined the Carter administration in 1978 and directed planning in psychiatric research; Krauthammer also served as a speechwriter for Vice President Walter Mondale.
He eventually forayed into journalism and wrote columns as a political analyst for top publications like Time magazine, The New Republic and the Washington Post. He eventually was awarded the prestigious Pulitzer in journalism for his weekly political commentary.
Krauthammer, in his emotional letter, said that he is "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,” Krauthammer wrote. “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."
Vike President Mike Pence also wrote a tribute to Krauthammer, saying he greatly admired him, and appreciated his "wit and wisdom."
"Karen and I were saddened to learn that Charles @krauthammer, a man we greatly admire, is nearing the end of his extraordinary life. His wit, his wisdom, and his tireless defense of Western values have made an indelible mark on the minds of millions of Americans," Pence wrote on Twitter.