Charles Krauthammer says he only has a few weeks to live: ‘This is the final verdict. My fight is over’

Fox News conservative commentator, best-selling author and Pulitzer-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer revealed in a letter on Friday that he only has “a few weeks to live” due to cancer.

Krauthammer has not been on Fox News since August of 2017 after undergoing surgery. He had said in a statement released in May that he was “finally getting back on track,” but shared in his Friday letter that a “secondary cancer” had spread after doctors successfully removed a tumor in his abdomen.

{mosads}“I have been uncharacteristically silent these past ten months,” the letter begins. “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.”

“In August of last year, I underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in my abdomen. That operation was thought to have been a success, but it caused a cascade of secondary complications which I have been fighting in hospital ever since,” he continued.

“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. 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,” the 68-year-old added.

“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 thanked his doctors, caregivers and “dear friends” for support and “a lifetime of memories” that he said sustained him “through these difficult months” before also thanking his colleagues, readers and viewers.

“I thank my colleagues, my readers, and my viewers, who have made my career possible and given consequence to my life’s work. I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking. I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation’s destiny,” he wrote.

“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.”

The former physician was permanently paralyzed from the waist down after a diving accident that occurred during his freshman year at Harvard Medical School at age 22. He still went on to graduate.

Krauthammer had been a nightly staple on “Special Report” and its “All-Star Panel” for more than a decade. He also won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1987 as a columnist for The Washington Post.

The Post also paid tribute to Krauthammer on Friday.

“A physician by training, Charles tells all of us, in a statement we publish today, that he accepts their verdict and will depart sadly but without regrets. He also asks us, and his friends at Fox News, not to embarrass him with flowery tributes. With difficulty, we will respect his request,” wrote the editorial board of the Post in a tribute published Friday.

“We know we speak for many of you when we say that nothing and no one can replace him,” it continues. “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.

“Like few others, he succeeded, week after week, Friday after Friday, year after year. His unsparing judgments were cheered by some readers while angering others. But few could disagree that he wrote a column of breathtaking range and intelligence and integrity.” 

Updated at 12:41 p.m.