A Fox News correspondent admonished his colleagues this week over comments that he said sounded like they came from a "white supremacist chat room," according to leaked internal emails obtained by The Hill on Friday.
Fox News Radio's White House correspondent Jon Decker scolded his colleagues in an email thread, first published by the website FTVLive, as they discussed coverage of former Vice President Joe Biden
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Biden released a video centering on the Charlottesville, Va., "Unite the Right" rally in 2017, where white nationalists rallied against the removal of Confederate statues and clashed violently with counterprotesters. Biden slammed President Trump
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“Putting this 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 reporter Doug McKelway wrote in the email chain, before quoting Winston Churchill: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
Fox News editor Cody Derespina responded minutes later, quoting a man named Jarrod Kuhn, who had been interviewed at the riots and argued at the time that he was there "to protest the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue" and preserve history.
"Adding to your point: 21-year-old Jarrod Kuhn was photographed at the Friday night rally, which he said he attended to protest the removal of the Lee statue," Derespina wrote, sharing comments Kuhn had made at the time about why he had traveled to Charlottesville.
Decker responded in the thread minutes later: “I really don’t understand the point you are making. Jarrod Kuhn was one of those individuals in Charlottesville holding a tiki torch while the mob chanted ‘Jews will not replace us.' "
In another email hours later, the White House correspondent wrote that "invoking Churchill to what happened in Charlottesville is rather offensive. Reminder: Churchill helped defeat the Nazis."
“Based upon the slew of emails that I’ve received today, both of you should send an apology to your Fox News colleagues — many of whom are hurt and infuriated by your respective posts," he continued.
"Your posts read like something you’d read on a White Supremacist chat room," Decker concluded.
A Fox News spokeswoman declined to comment when asked by The Hill about the emails.
The 2017 riots in Charlottesville resulted in the death of one counterprotester. Two state police officers also died in a helicopter crash near the city while responding to the riots.
A subsequent rally in 2018 was sparsely attended by right-wing protesters while counterprotesters arrived in large numbers.