‘I showed it to my kids,’ former CNN host reveals.
Brian Stelter once received “an actual potato” in the mail, the liberal journalist said over the weekend. The former CNN host, sometimes referred to as “Humpty Dumpty” or “Mr. Potato Head,” described showing the spud to his children in order to teach them a lesson about the evils of Fox News.
“I once had a potato mailed to me. It came in a FedEx box, it was an actual potato, and I showed it to my kids,” Stelter said. “It’s because that within the Fox [News] universe, I used to be called Humpty Dumpty, and from there, it became ‘Brian is a potato.’ … I guess in this case it’s a joke, but it’s also an insult.”
It wasn’t clear whether Stelter, 38, fully understood the motives behind the spud stunt. There were times during Stelter’s career at CNN when the network seemed to be in on the joke.
Stelter was one of the partisan hacks CNN fired in 2022 in an effort to restore dignity and credibility to the news network. Jeffrey Toobin, the legal analyst caught masturbating in front of colleagues on a Zoom call, was also fired. Stelter was best known for complaining about Fox News, which he has accused of setting a “honey trap” by dispatching a female intern to spy on him by feigning romantic interest.
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Dan Rather, the disgraced news anchor fired for airing a false report on George W. Bush’s military service records, frequently appeared as a guest on Stelter’s show, called Reliable Sources. Stelter often stressed the need for journalists to hold politicians accountable and wasn’t afraid to do so himself. In November 2019, for example, he devoted an entire segment to former president Donald Trump’s spelling errors.
