Brian Stelter Gets Brilliantly Self-Owned Twice, Over Trump, Trump Jr and Mr. Potato Head

Today was just not Brian Stelter’s day.

First the CNN’s [Un]”Reliable Sources” guy tried to dunk all over President Donald Trump with a misleading and false tweet, trying to perpetrate the “Trump said the virus was a hoax” hoax but thinking he was being cagey enough with this language to get away with it.

It was one year ago today when Trump infamously used the word "hoax" to downplay the coronavirus. The virus was silently spreading across the country, but he gave his fans license to dismiss the threat. pic.twitter.com/i5Y2ul1APY

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 28, 2021

Notice how he said “used the word.” He’s trying to deceive, while trying to skirt being an out-and-out liar. But unfortunately, since he apparently never listened to the speech and doesn’t know what was said, he ends up being completely false anyway. Of course Trump did use the word, but in describing the Democrats lies about the administration’s virus response as a “hoax” not the virus itself. The speech did NOT give supporters license to dismiss the threat, indeed Trump says in that very speech how we have to take it seriously and at that point, he’d already appointed a task force to deal with it, declared it a public health emergency, activated the CDC and cut travel with China.

Not only was Stelter being misleading, but unfortunately he gets busted on the subject by CNN’s fact check on Joe Biden trying to spread that same lie. Whoops.

?????? pic.twitter.com/EJw9976d0W

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 28, 2021

During his CPAC speech, Trump, Jr trolled Stelter referencing the story of the day about Hasbro allegedly wanting to remove the “Mr” from Mr. Potato Head. “If Hasbro really wanted a gender-neutral Mr. Potato Head so badly, they should just slap a picture of CNN’s Brian Stelter on the cover of their next potato.” He used the nickname some of Stelter’s critics have given him.

Then Stelter performed a glorious self-own during a segment on his show.

.@brianstelter said he came up with some “really cunning responses” to @DonaldJTrumpJr mocking him that he thought could go viral, but then he said he “stopped” and didn’t post anything. (He then decided to talk about it on Natl TV)

“There’s no time for potato heads.” 😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/qhr0dWeirz

— Cameron Cawthorne (@Cam_Cawthorne) February 28, 2021

He told people how Trump had attacked him as a “gender-neutral potato head” and that he was trying to think of “cutting responses” and “clever ways to reply.” But then he said, he stopped, concluding it was “just another distraction” of Trump, Jr. trying to bait him in the “culture war” and it “doesn’t matter.” “There’s too much real news going on. There’s no time for potato heads.”

Um, Brian? You just responded. You took a segment on your show to say you weren’t going to respond. Not only that, but you publicized that you are called potato head to even more people (although, granted, CNN’s audience is rather limited). Talk about a brilliant self-own going right over his head. And he works for CNN, so when is he actually reporting real news? If he cared about real news they would have covered the Cuomo scandal last year.

Trump, Jr’s response was perfect when he saw the self-own.