Fox News Cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski Killed in Ukraine

BUCK: We have some very sad news to bring to you from Fox News folks right now. Cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski was killed outside Kiev, Ukraine. There’s a story right now on FoxNews.com about him. He was beloved by all of his colleagues, family. Thoughts and prayers go out to him. There’s also a Fox News correspondent who we know has been hospitalized who was injured right now, and we have not gotten…

Clay, you work at Fox. Is there any update on the condition of Benjamin Hall, who was with Zakrzewski? Unfortunately, we know Zakrzewski has died as a result of wounds. Do we know anything about Benjamin Hall? A lot of folks listening know him from not only his incredible Ukraine coverage recently, but also the years he spent as a foreign correspondent doing amazing work over at Fox.

CLAY: No, not official, Buck. The emails come out from Suzanne Scott, who runs Fox News, and Fox News is not a big place. You know this, Buck. I mean, it really does — and it’s a cliche, but it does — feel in many ways like a family at Fox News, ’cause people draw very close together when you’re sort of in the midst of the universe in media that we’re in right now where there’s kind of a constant drumbeat of attack on Fox News.

So it is very much of a family, and it’s a crushing blow to Fox News to lose this cameraman and also be dealing with this incident. It’s a significant injury, is what I’ve been told, and he’s been hospitalized. And certainly for all their families, we want them to know that we’re thinking about ’em, and I know many of you are as well.

As you mentioned, Buck, you’ve been watching and consuming their content, their reporting for a long time, and I think this is also representative of… I think a lot of people out there understand this. When Rush died, when we talked about the one-year anniversary recently, there were a lot of people out there who chose to use that as a way to attack he and his family.

And, frankly, it was disgusting. And this happened as well when the news came out about the death. A woman named Susan Glasser, who is your prototypical blue check left-wing journo, as you would call them, Buck, tweeted out —

BUCK: New Yorker writer. Not an obscure journo.

CLAY: Yeah, not obscure at all. She tweeted:

CLAY: For that to be your immediate reaction this morning, when you hear that somebody has died on the job trying to cover the situation in Ukraine, frankly, Susan Glasser should be ashamed of herself, and her employer should be ashamed of itself. And, by the way, I would say the same thing if a New Yorker journalist had died in Ukraine and the first thing that somebody from conservative media did was attack that.

Social media in general can be dehumanizing. But when someone dies and your first thought is to attack them or their employer or… I just… Man, I just don’t get it, Buck.

BUCK: I think a lot of people on the left are emotionally and psychologically broken and really wounded in a way where they can’t put aside their politics in the service of just basic humanity and decency in any given moment.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: They really are just completely… You see this, and it’s celebrated. You see this, honestly, evil that people will spew online in a moment where you’re just your basic humanity should be all that matters and that should be the only sentiment, only thought you have.

And you have leftists who say, “Well, how can I score political points, turn this immediate tragedy into an opportunity to lash out to someone who has nothing to do with this situation?” It just… By the way, I believe that there will be no action taken against her ’cause leftists who attack people on the right — no matter how grotesque it is, even if they’re slapped down for a moment — is never any real consequence.

CLAY: And you guys all know it because you saw the way that many people gleefully reacted when Rush died a year ago. The number of blue checkmark losers who were gleeful when Rush died… I know it shouldn’t surprise me because I’ve seen it happen so often. But I remember scrolling through and looking on the trending line, and people can agree or disagree with you and I, Buck, on a variety of different subjects every day.

But I think they also recognize, look, you and I would sit down and have a meal or a beer or whatever — if you could have a beer, you could have a gluten-free beer — with anybody who might disagree with us. I’m not claiming that people who disagree with me on a regular basis are Satan incarnate, and there are a lot of people out there who believe that you and me are Satan incarnate and would be willing to say it.

I’ve said this before. When I got covid twice, my first thought was, “I’m probably gonna be fine statistically.” My second thought was, “I can’t die from covid or with covid, ’cause I can’t allow the people who hate me to be able to spend a full day bragging about the fact that I died,” right? It’s probably gonna happen at some point, I hope I make ’em late for a while, but this is the world we live in.

BUCK: We’d like to think we live in a country where something like a war that is obviously harming a lot of innocent people and a lot of civilians are dying and terrible things are happening over there, that there would be a greater seriousness in the political discourse. But look what we talked about in the last hour. Calling Tucker Carlson a traitor, or in the case of Susan Glasser using a real tragedy as an opportunity to try to take a cheap shot at someone.

Again, what they’re saying isn’t even vaguely true, either. But what we realize, whether it’s the Russia collusion stuff about Trump or it’s about any number of things at covid, they don’t care. The truth doesn’t matter to the left anymore. It’s just about power. It’s about what will work, what serves their purposes in the moment. And it’s why, Clay, we have to keep on fighting here. If nothing else, I feel like we show up every day and try to tell people what we believe to be true.

CLAY: And we’re willing to tell you if we get something wrong, which is actually pretty rare in the world of media. We’re gonna keep trying to be voices for sanity in an insane world, but certainly thoughts and prayers for both of those men’s families as they are dealing with an incredible difficulty in their lives right now.