Fox News Reporter Has Epic Twitter Meltdown After Daily Beast Reports on His Charlottesville Emails
Days after The Daily Beast reported that Fox News reporter Jon Decker chastised his colleagues for sounding like they were part of a “White Supremacist chat room” for defending President Trump’s Charlottesville remarks, one of the reporters on the receiving end of Decker’s wrath raged against one of the Beast writers behind the story.
As The Daily Beast reported [Ed. note: This author is also a Daily Beast contributor] last week, Fox News correspondent Doug McKelway claimed in internal emails that it was a lie that Trump defended white nationalists following Charlottesville. This eventually prompted Decker to scold McKelway and Fox News digital editor Cody Derespina, telling them they owed their colleagues “an apology” as they were “hurt and infuriated by your respective posts.”
While Fox News nor any of the participants have commented publicly on the leaked emails, McKelway took to Twitter Monday morning to lash out at one of the report’s writers — Daily Beast senior editor Andrew Kirell. And he decided the best method would be to attack Kirell’s guitar-playing ability. (Kirell is also a musician.)
Responding to Kirell’s pinned tweet of his song ‘Little Bird,’ McKelway wrote: “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.”
McKelway was far from done. Over the next hour or so, he fired off tweet after tweet mocking Kirell’s musicianship while also claiming that the editor comes from the “everybody gets a trophy generation” and that “this dude just plain sucks.” Kirell, meanwhile, pointed out that McKelway seemed like a “miserable person” to go out of his way to “find something unrelated to you to trash-talk” after the publication of his “damning” emails and that it wasn’t a “great look to lash out personally at someone reporting about a professional spat.”
Wow, Doug. You seem like a miserable person—bitter enough to go and find something unrelated to you to trash-talk. I’m well-aware of Biden’s checkered past on the topic. Doesn’t erase how damning your emails were. https://t.co/icGowMCPt8
— Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) April 29, 2019
If you want lessons in reporting, btw, I’m happy to offer those. That is something you seem to need some help with—despite your title. Not a great look to lash out personally at someone reporting about a professional spat, bud.
— Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) April 29, 2019
Gathering up a handful of McKelway’s tweets, Kirell noted that the Fox reporter was “having a full-blown meltdown” over the report by attacking his music.
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
“This is hilarious but also really, really sad,” Kirell added.
In the end, McKelway tried to brush off all his tweets in which he said he couldn’t “stand shitty guitar players” and comparing Kirell’s playing to a “near corpse” as nothing more than a bit of joking around.
“It was fun, Andy,” the Fox correspondent wrote. “Thanks for playing ball. Got to get to work. And for all you folks in Andrew world, don’t take it too seriously. Just pokin fun. Back soon.”
We reached out to Fox News for comment on McKelway’s unhinged tweetstorm but did not hear back prior to publication.
