A male called into MSNBC’s The Cycle this afternoon and claimed to be U.S. Staff Sgt. Michael Boyd and stationed at the US Embassy in Ukraine. However, once host Krystal Ball asked him what he saw, he said that he saw the plane get shot down from a blast of wind that came from Howard Stern’s rear-end. Ball ignored the caller’s report and continued questioning, not cutting off the guest. The Stern fan then said that Ball was a dumb—. At that point, Ball ended the interview and went to a commercial break. When she returned, she said the guest was “obviously not actually an eyewitness.” As Erik Wemple of the Washington Post noted, the hoax should have been evident. The Embassy that the caller claimed to be at is about 475 miles away from Torez, where the plane crashed. Making the hoax all the more noteworthy is that it was billed as an “eyewitness exclusive” on a bottom chyron throughout the interview.
