On his now-removed Twitter account, Fox News reporter Doug McKelway has suggested that Bernie Sanders embraces authoritarianism; wrote that Joe Biden is shamelessly seeking the acceptance of “racial identity politics hucksters”; and passed along the “observation” from a woman he knows that Elizabeth Warren “sounds like a scold.” Still, Fox’s “news” division has been dispatching McKelway to cover the Democratic presidential primary. 

McKelway works in Fox News’ Washington, D.C., bureau and is part of the network’s purported “news” side. Over the years, the network has made a farcical show of touting the division as journalistically credible and separate from its “opinion” side. As Media Matters documented last year, McKelway has frequently used Twitter to push right-wing tropes, including attacking the scientific consensus on climate change and writing that "entitlements [are] looming like a giant ponzi scheme.” He also directed his ire at Democratic presidential candidates he covers for Fox. 

McKelway tweeted of Sen. Warren: “Having made my living in a profession where voice is of huge importance, I pass this observation along. A strong, smart, tough, successful woman who I know remarked of @SenWarren’s Presidential announcement speech, ‘She sounds like a scold.’” 

McKelway wrote of former Vice President Biden after he “urged Americans to tackle a ‘white man's culture’ dating back centuries that has allowed violence against women to perpetuate”: “Shameless pivot by a very old white man seeking acceptance by racial identity politics hucksters who define the party he belongs to.” 

And McKelway said of Sen. Sanders: “This is the single most important moment of @SenSanders town hall. He evaded answering @marthamaccallum question that’s at the root of socialism. ‘Good for thee, but not for me.’ Stripped of it’s guises, Socialism is at its core authoritarian.” 

He also complained about former presidential candidate Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, tweeting: “Her greatest liability is not her politics but something most viewers are only subliminally aware of - her voice. Harkens back to the school marm scold. Best watched with the volume turned off.” 

Those tweets are now gone as McKelway appears to have taken down his Twitter account. (His Fox News biography page still links to his now-defunct account.) 

Despite McKelway’s distaste for candidates in the Democratic presidential field, Fox’s “news” division has frequently dispatched him to cover the presidential race. His recent reports include such headlines as “Some high-profile Democrats express concern with presidential field”; “Has the Democratic Party moved so far left that even Obama wouldn't win 2020 nomination?”; and “Moderate Democrats express increasing concern that Elizabeth Warren is too liberal to beat President Trump.” 

McKelway previously drew notice when one of his own colleagues criticized him. The Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani and Andrew Kirell reported last year that in an email sent to some staff members, McKelway tried to defend President Donald Trump’s remark that there were “very fine people on both sides” following the August 2017 neo-Nazi Unite the Right rally and resulting counter-protests. After then-Digital Senior Editor Cody Derespina agreed with McKelway, Fox News Radio White House correspondent Jon Decker responded by writing that they both sounded “like a White Supremacist chat room.”