Unless you’ve been hiding in the woods the past few days you are probably aware of the hit job perpetrated by the mainstream media on the Covington Catholic High School teenagers.

“White Teens in Make America Great Again Hats Harass Elderly Native American Vietnam Veteran” was the headline run with by multiple media source from CNN to MSNBC. The problem with this narrative is that it’s 100% complete victim blaming bullshit. A simple viewing of the video footage available all over the internet reveals the exact opposite is true.

A lot happens at the nation’s capital on the weekend which is arguably the most productive time for activism, advocacy, and political demonstrations. On Saturday, January 19, 2019 in Washington DC there were multiple rallies taking place. Specifically there was an Indigenous People’s March, and a March for Life rally. Participants in these two events, a well-known Native American agitator named Nathan Phillips, and a teenage boy from Covington Catholic High School met face to face in an image that has been misconstrued to justify the vilest of threats, doxxing and campaign of harassment against innocent kids that I have ever seen.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

What can be observed by honestly watching the actual full video footage from different sources and angles reveals the truth. The primary video begins with a group of “Black Israelites” harassing everybody. They can be seen denigrating and insulting the Natives present, insulting their religions and being extremely confrontational and provocative.

When the “Black Israelites” spotted some teenagers from Covington Catholic wearing Make America Great Again hats waiting for their bus at the Lincoln Memorial, they begin hurling the vilest insults at them. They call the kids “crackers,” “racists,” and “faggots.” They accuse them of having lice and of being “dirty.” They insult the kids’ Catholic religion, and call their priests child molesters.

 

The video shows the Black Israelites going back and forth between antagonizing different people and then refocusing on the Convington kids, continually escalating their insults. Then they began a dehumanizing verbal attack on homosexual rights, and get this; the Catholic kids actually speak up in defense of gay rights.

After an hour of the non-stop verbal assault and vulgarity by the Black Israelites, the Covington kids begin singing and performing their school chants. One of the kids gets in front of his schoolmates and leads them in something that resembles a Maori Haka chant. Reports from the Covington students say they were trying to drown out the hateful insults from the Black Israelites.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere come Nathan Phillips and his crew strutting, marching and pounding drums as they walked between the two groups. They had left the Indigenous Peoples March and make their way up to the group of kids. You can see the students get pleasantly excited because as was stated later, they thought the Indians had come to sing and dance with them and so they joined in the song.

Then Phillips, a grown man starts getting in the faces of the kids, pounding his drum in what looks like an attempt to intimidate them. You can see a couple of the kids looking really uncomfortable with this invasion of their personal space. One child who we now know is Nick Sandmann can be seen standing near the center of the group wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat just before Phillips spots him, approaches him, gets uncomfortably close to his face while pounding his drum.

Let’s get this straight; Phillips, an adult man and reportedly a Vietnam Veteran approached the teenage boy and got in his face, banging on his drum.

Sandmann can be seen smiling uncomfortably, but not backing away or cowering, just standing silently. The rest of the kids continued to laugh and have fun with the situation. They’re kids and barely even know what’s happening. One of the students can be heard saying “I don’t even understand what’s going on right now,” because Phillips and his crew’s behavior was so odd and seemingly out of nowhere.

Another video from another angle close to the face-off shows a man from Phillips’ crew arguing with one of the students, telling the kids to “go back to Europe,” “this is not your land,” in an F-bomb laden diatribe. At this point Sandmann can be seen turning to his schoolmate, making a motion for him to stop debating with the vulgar racist and to pay attention to Phillips’ drumming.

 

Then the mainstream media publishes a deceptively edited version of the video and starts the false narrative: “White Teens in Make America Great Again Hats Harass Elderly Native American Vietnam Veteran.”

And they wonder why they are called Fake News.

Meanwhile, these students have had death threats and all form of vile and disgusting attacks, and calls from leftwing celebrities and verified bullies for their school to be shot up, for the kids to be “fired upon,” for the kids to be burned to death in a fire and on and on causing the school to remain closed on Tuesday due to safety concerns.

Of course once it became obvious that the story was a complete lie and some of the students began to look like they were lawyering up for the libel suit of the century, some of these celebrities retracted their statements, and published disingenuous, too little too late apologies. Many others have decided to double down because they need this story to be true so they can continue their fantasy that Trump supporters are all violent racists chomping at the bit to lynch a person of color.   

This, students is why we cannot and should not trust the media. We must always be skeptical of any outrage story that seems to fit a political narrative too perfectly until all the facts come out. Personally, I like to take 24 to 48 hours after the initial reports before speaking publicly on the matter.