|
 Krauthammer was a fixture on the Fox News Channel as well as on
editorial pages of the Washington Post and other U.S.
newspapers.
His work had been curtailed since having an abdominal tumor
removed last August and in an open letter on June 8 he said
doctors told him that he had only a few weeks to live due to a
recurrence of the cancer. "This is the final verdict," he wrote.
"My fight is over."
Less than a month earlier, Krauthammer had told a Fox colleague
that the worst appeared to be behind him.
The cause of death was cancer of the small intestine, his son,
Daniel Krauthammer, told the Post.
Krauthammer, who in 1972 was left paralyzed from the neck down
after a swimming pool accident while attending Harvard Medical
School, was known for a dour expression, wry humor and sharp
intellect.
He was a regular on Fox's weeknight show "Special Report," and
also wrote a column that was syndicated to hundreds of
newspapers.
"We are deeply saddened by the loss of our colleague and friend
... 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," Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News, said in a
statement.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would sorely miss
Krauthammer's "friendship and his wise counsel."
"His pen functioned like a lighthouse, helping all of us see
more clearly and reason more thoroughly through the most
important issues that our nation faced," McConnell said in a
statement.
Krauthammer gave mixed reviews to President Donald Trump,
questioning his "loud and bombastic" approach to the job and
calling him a charlatan while praising actions such as
withdrawing from the Paris climate accord and nominating Neil
Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
He had been a leading critic of President Barack Obama and what
Krauthammer perceived as his "social democratic agenda," while
supporting George W. Bush's intervention in the Middle East. He
also liked President Ronald Reagan's stand against communism and
popularized the term "Reagan Doctrine" to describe it.
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Krauthammer was born in New York City on March 13, 1950, and grew up
there and in Montreal, Canada. During his 14-month recovery from the
diving accident, Krauthammer kept up his studies from his hospital
bed and graduated on schedule from medical school in 1975. He then
worked as a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, also
studying manic depression.
In 1978, Krauthammer moved to Washington to work in psychiatric
research for the administration of Jimmy Carter, who he later would
call a failed president, and drifted away from psychiatry. He became
a speechwriter for Carter's vice president, Walter Mondale, before
writing opinion pieces for The New Republic and Time magazine.
He joined the Washington Post and won the Pulitzer Prize for
commentary in 1987. In 2006, the Financial Times named him the most
influential commentator in the United States.
"I leave this life with no regrets," Krauthammer wrote in his
farewell statement. "It was a wonderful life ... I am sad to leave
but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I
intended."
In a Fox News special about his life, Krauthammer said he never
dwelled on the day he hit the bottom of a swimming pool with his
head, severing his spinal cord.
"I made one promise to myself on day one - I was not going to allow
it to alter my life," he said. "On the big things in life, the
direction of my life, what I was going to do, that wouldn't change
at all."
Besides his son, Krauthammer is survived by his wife, Robyn, who he
met while studying at Oxford before medical school.
(Writing by Bill Trott, additional reporting by Eric Beech, editing
by G Crosse)
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