HLN anchor Yasmin Vossoughian thought she was interviewing a supporter of whistleblower Edward Snowden. However, she ended up receiving an impassioned defense of Edward Scissorhands instead.
Vossoughian interviewed comedian Jon Hendren, known by his Twitter handle @fart, for over three minutes on Wednesday, Jezebel reported. The anchor asked questions about Snowden, but she only got answers about Scissorhands.
"He's been isolated for so long," Hendren remarked after being asked if Twitter should shut down Snowden's new Twitter account. "He's got valid things to say. We should listen to what he says."
Vossoughian noted that some people accuse Snowden of harming U.S. security by revealing information about the NSA's spying techniques.
Hendren admitted the main character of Tim Burton's 1990 film could hurt someone with his scissorhands.
“Well, you know, to say that he couldn’t harm somebody with what he did -- he could, absolutely, he could," he said. "But to cast him out, to make him invalid in society simply because he has scissors for hands -- I mean, that’s strange. People didn’t get scared until he started sculpting shrubs into dinosaur shapes and whatnot."
Vossoughian followed up with a question about Snowden living in Russia.
"Casting him out is just completely wrong," Hendren replied. "We're treating him like an animal, somebody who should be quarantined and put away. Just because he was created on top of a mountain by Vincent Price, and incomplete, with scissors for hands and no heart. Edward Scissorhands is a complete hero to me."
Vossoughian continued to press the topic. "But what about the choice he made to live in a country like Russia?" she asked.
“I mean, where else is he going to go? You know?” Hendren responded. “We cast him out. We got scared when he poked a hole in a waterbed with his scissor fingers. That was just unreasonable of us.”
Jezebel described the interview as an "Olympic-level troll."
Following the interview, Hendren tweeted: "In all sincerity, I really did believe we were talking about Edward Scissorhands."
Watch video, uploaded to YouTube, below:
