‘LET ME GO’

NewsNation Awkwardly Falls for Reporter’s Twitter Prank

NewsNation was running a segment on a story about reporter Ken Klippenstein when a tweet from him sent the segment spinning.

NewsNation erroneously told viewers Thursday that a reporter for The Intercept who authored a recent article on a UFO whistleblower was no longer with the outlet, apparently falling for the reporter’s cheeky tweet saying that The Intercept “let me go”—a tweet that was followed up a minute later with another that read, “...and do a newsletter occasionally” on Substack. As anchor Elizabeth Vargas was discussing reporter Ken Klippenstein’s story, she said on air: “We just got news that about half an hour ago, the reporter who wrote that article for The Intercept was fired.” Later on in the segment, though, Vargas did acknowledge that the situation was murky. “Obviously this is breaking and it’s unclear exactly what happened at The Intercept or with this reporter,” she said. On Twitter, Klippenstein responded to the report with: “Looks like the UFO show @NewsNation…is going to have to issue another correction!” Klippenstein has a history of pranking unknowing targets on Twitter, now known as X. In June, 2021, he convinced Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz and conservative commentators Matt Schlapp and Dinesh D'Souza into retweeting an image of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, thanking him for his service. Klippenstein had tweeted them asking for a RT in honor of his fake “veteran” grandpa.

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