Remember that viral video of a kid supposedly taunting a Native American Vietnam vet? Yeah, it didn’t take long for people to realize there was more to the story.
Well, since the media and everyone else went on a rampage against him, the student identified himself as Nick Sandmann, a junior from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky. He attended the March for Life rally with other students.
Sandmann explained his side of the story as those in Hollywood and the media quietly delete their nasty and hateful tweets aimed at the high school kid.
From AP:
Videos posted of the confrontation drew wide criticism on social media. “I am being called every name in the book, including a racist, and I will not stand for this mob-like character assassination of my family’s name,” wrote Sandmann, who added that he and his parents have received death threats since video of Friday’s confrontation emerged.
Sandmann explained that the Black Hebrew Israelite movement started to shout slurs like “homophobe” and “incest kids” at the students, which led to the Covington Catholic High School kids to respond with their school chants.
When Nathan Phillips and Matcus Frejo heard the chants, they chose to confront the kids:
It was a haka — a war dance of New Zealand’s indigenous Maori culture, made famous by the country’s national rugby team. Frejo, who is also known as Chief Quese Imc, told the AP in a phone interview that he felt the students were mocking the dance.Phillips, an activist described by the Indian Country Today website as an Omaha elder and Vietnam War veteran, said in an interview with The Associated Press that he was trying to keep peace between the high school students and the religious group.He said he heard people chanting “Build that wall” or yelling, “Go back to the reservation.” At one point, he said, he sought to ascend to the Lincoln statue and “pray for our country.” Some students backed off, but one student wouldn’t let him move, he added.
However, Sandmann said he never heard anything like that coming from his fellow students and didn’t even know Phillips’s group was around:
“The protester everyone has seen in the video began playing his drum as he waded into the crowd, which parted for him. I did not see anyone try to block his path,” Sandmann wrote. “He locked eyes with me and approached me, coming within inches of my face. He played his drum the entire time he was in my face.”Sandmann said one of the Native American protesters yelled at them that they “stole our land” and they should “go back to Europe,” but that he never spoke to or interacted with Phillips. “To be honest, I was startled and confused as to why he had approached me.”He wrote that he “believed that by remaining motionless and calm, I was helping defuse the situation.”“I said a silent prayer that the situation would not get out of hand,” he wrote. He said the incident ended when the buses arrived and his teacher told him it was time to leave.Though many commenting on the internet were taken back by Sandmann staring at Philipps, the teen said he was “not intentionally making faces at the protestor. I did smile at one point because I wanted him to know that I was not going to become angry, intimidated or be provoked into a larger confrontation.” He said he had never encountered any kind of public protest before.
The Hill has more:
“The protestor everyone has seen in the video began playing his drum as he waded into the crowd, which parted for him,” Sandmann wrote. “I did not see anyone try to block his path. He locked eyes with me and approached me, coming within inches of my face. He played his drum the entire time he was in my face.””I never interacted with this protester,” he continued. “I did not speak to him. To be honest, I was startled and confused as to why he had approached me. We had already been yelled at by another group of protestors.”
This poor kid. The media, celebrities, and others went insane on Twitter after the edited video emerged. Mediaite reported that those people have now gone back to delete those nasty tweets:
New York Times opinion writer Kara Swisher, for instance, deleted one tweet saying she was thinking of “finding every one of these shitty kids and giving them a very large piece of my mind,” and other tweets throwing slurs like “Nazi” and “nationalist.” ABC chief political correspondent Scott Thurman deleted a tweet alleging students in MAGA hats were “mocking” and “taunting” a Native American in front of the Lincoln Memorial in D.C., asking in a new tweet if the new video changed minds about the kids.Anti-Trump activist Ed Krassenstein deleted a neutral tweet contemplating the intentions of Nick Sandmann, the young MAGA student accused of smirking at a Native American. His brother, Brian Krassenstein, deleted a tweet calling the students “bigoted.” The New Republic‘s Jeet Heer deleted a tweet arguing the MAGA hat-wearing teens were “racist.” CNN’s Bakari Sellers deleted a tweet suggesting the kids should be “punched in the face.”Hollywood’s Patton Oswalt deleted a tweet linking to another that doxxed the young teens, but left up subsequent retweets maintaining his opinion that they were at fault. CNN’s Ana Navarro deleted a tweet calling out the “Asswipe” parents of the students for teaching them “bigotry” and “racism.” She tweeted an additional post with the full, unedited video of the teens, maintaining her support for Native American vet Nathan Phillips.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY