Fox News’ Doug McKelway Rages Against Daily Beast Editor in Response to Story on Him Defending Charlottesville Marchers

Fox News correspondent Doug McKelway had a meltdown on Twitter today while responding to a Daily Beast reporter who wrote a story on leaked internal emails showing McKelway defending white nationalists who marched in the 2017 Charlottesville rally.

The 64-year-old general assignment reporter for Fox News tweeted a series of insults at Daily Beast senior editor Andrew Kirell this morning, primarily attacking the reporter — who independently releases music — for his guitar playing abilities.

“Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. Really? You’re proud of this?” McKelway wrote in response to one of Kirell’s music videos posted several months ago.

“Tell you what. I’ll give you a free guitar lesson if you report that Joe Biden voted to re-instate Robert E. Lee’s citizenship,” he added, before admitting that he can’t play guitar. “I’ll even throw in a harmonica lesson.”

Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. Really? You’re proud of this? Tell you what. I’ll give you a free guitar lesson if you report that Joe Biden voted to re-instate Robert E. Lee’s citizenship. I’ll even throw in a harmonica lesson.
I don’t play, but from available evidence, neither do you

— Doug McKelway (@dougmckelway) April 29, 2019

Last week, Kirell published a story that included internal Fox News email showing McKelway defend President Donald Trump‘s comments about supposedly “very fine people” marching with white nationalists in Charlottesville. McKelway claimed that his “live interview” in 2017 at the time of rally featured “good people on both sides.”

Kirell replied to McKelway’s “full-blown meltdown” by calling it “hilarious but also really, really sad.”

The Fox News reporter from this story: https://t.co/icGowMCPt8 … is having a full-blown meltdown over the reporting, by attacking my… music? This is hilarious but also really, really sad. pic.twitter.com/GzwJHSw5Ve

— Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) April 29, 2019

But McKelway’s implosion was not finished, as he went on to describe Kirell’s music as “sheer mediocrity”

“A mediocrity endemic to the ‘everybody gets a trophy generation,'” he added. “This dude just plain sucks. And hes (sic) completely unaware of it.”

After Kirell joked about offering McKelway lessons on reporting and advising him to not “lash out personally at someone reporting about a professional spat,” the Fox News reporter became increasingly unhinged.

“And the harmonica? I’ve seen it played better as a defacto heart monitor shoved into the gaping, dentureless maw of a near corpse in hospice care,” McKelway wrote. “In and out and in and out until it stops. But yours never stops.”

McKelway finished his tirade with a comment about “shitty guitar players” and then attempted to play it off like he was “just pokin fun” the whole time.

“It was fun, Andy. Thanks for playing ball,” he wrote. “Got to get to work. And for all you folks in Andrew world, don’t take it too seriously.”

In McKelway’s leaked defense of the white nationalists marchers infamous for killing an anti-racist protester and chanting “Jews will not replace,” McKelway was criticizing Vice President Joe Biden‘s campaign ad that invokes Trump’s “both sides” comments by saying, “Biden statement out there, next to Trump’s original presser, and a live interview I did in C-ville with ‘good people on both sides.'”

Fox News Radio’s White House correspondent Jon Decker responded to McKelway’s defense of Unite the Right rally-goers by saying his “posts read like something you’d read on a White Supremacist chat room.”

Mediaite reached out to Fox News for comment but the network did not provide a statement on their reporter’s Twitter implosion.

[image via screengrab]

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!