After being threatened, Doxxed, and called every name in the book, the High School Junior at the center of it all has released a statement about what REALLY happened.
And if you compare his statements to the videos, his account is pretty accurate.
If you were offline for the weekend, and missed it, there was a pro-life Rally in DC. As usual, a lot of people attended that rally. Unsurprisingly, many of those supporting the Pro-Life position wore MAGA hats.
After the rally, they broke into groups and did some sightseeing, which took this group to the Lincoln Memorial. This wasn’t a ‘protest’, it was a bunch of high school kids taking in the sights in the national capital.
As is often the case when people wear the red hats, they were confronted by strangers who assumed the absolute worst about who they were and what they believed.
“You white people go back to Europe, this is not your land” pic.twitter.com/az204veNKo
— Cosmo Di Girolamo (@CosmoDiGirolamo) January 20, 2019
The man with the drum who featured in the viral video — Nathan Phillips, a Marine and Vietnam War Vet — had a permit for an indigenous peoples march he had been participating in. For whatever reason, he and others approached this group of teenage sightseers, moved into their personal space, and continued banging his drum.
When someone does the same thing with a bullhorn, it is seen as a provocative action. But for whatever reason, Nathan was immediately painted as a victim ganged up on by thirty kids.
Nick was Doxxed (as was an innocent random kid were mistaken for the guy in the video), harassed and threatened with violence.
A teenage boy who had done nothing wrong wound up Doxxed because Twitter’s blue-check brigade including Kathy Griffin — demanded he be ‘named and shamed’, a musician offered a reward to anyone producing video of themselves punching Nick in the nuts, and CNN employee Ra.
The Left sure loves their mob justice, don’t they? Here is Nick setting the record straight.
Just in: Statement of Nick Sandmann, Covington Catholic High School junior, about the event at the Lincoln Memorial: pic.twitter.com/PkuMh2cVZM
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 20, 2019
“I am providing this factual account of what happened on Friday afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial to correct misinformation and outright lies being spread about my family and me.
I am the student in the video who was confronted by the Native American protestor. I arrived at the Lincoln Memorial at 4:30 p.m. I was told to be there by 5:30 p.m., when our busses were due to leave Washington for the trip back to Kentucky. We had been attending the March for Life rally, and then had split up into small groups to do sightseeing.
When we arrived, we noticed four African American protestors who were also on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I am not sure what they were protesting, and I did not interact with them. I did hear them direct derogatory insults at our school group.
The protestors said hateful things. They called us “racists,” “bigots,” “white crackers,” “faggots,” and “incest kids.” They also taunted an African American student from my school by telling him that we would “harvest his organs.” I have no idea what that insult means, but it was startling to hear.
Because we were being loudly attacked and taunted in public, a student in our group asked one of our teacher chaperones for permission to begin our school spirit chants to counter the hateful things that were being shouted at our group. The chants are commonly used at sporting events. They are all positive in nature and sound like what you would hear at any high school. Our chaperone gave us permission to use our school chants. We would not have done that without obtaining permission from the adults in charge of our group.
At no time did I hear any student chant anything other than the school spirit chants. I did not witness or hear any students chant “build that wall” or anything hateful or racist at any time. Assertions to the contrary are simply false. Our chants were loud because we wanted to drown out the hateful comments that were being shouted at us by the protestors.
After a few minutes of chanting, the Native American protestors, who I hadn’t previously noticed, approached our group. The Native American protestors had drums and were accompanied by at least one person with a camera.
The protestor 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. 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 protestor. I did not speak to him. I did not make any hand gestures or other aggressive moves. 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, and when the second group approached I was worried that a situation was getting out of control where adults were attempting to provoke teenagers.
I believed that by remaining motionless and calm, I was helping to diffuse the situation. I realized everyone had cameras and that perhaps a group of adults was trying to provoke a group of teenagers into a larger conflict. I said a silent prayer that the situation would not get out of hand.
During the period of the drumming, a member of the protestor’s entourage began yelling at a fellow student that we “stole our land” and that we should “go back to Europe.” I heard one of my fellow students begin to respond. I motioned to my classmate and tried to get him to stop engaging with the protestor, as I was still in the mindset that we needed to calm down tensions.
I never felt like I was blocking the Native American protestor. He did not make any attempt to go around me. It was clear to me that he had singled me out for a confrontation, although I am not sure why.
The engagement ended when one of our teachers told me the busses had arrived and it was time to go. I obeyed my teacher and simply walked to the busses. At that moment, I thought I had diffused the situation by remaining calm, and I was thankful nothing physical had occurred.
I never understood why either of the two groups of protestors were engaging with us, or exactly what they were protesting at the Lincoln Memorial. We were simply there to meet a bus, not become central players in a media spectacle. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever encountered any sort of public protest, let alone this kind of confrontation or demonstration.
I 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. I am a faithful Christian and practicing Catholic, and I always try to live up to the ideals my faith teaches me — to remain respectful of others, and to take no action that would lead to conflict or violence.
I harbor no ill will for this person. I respect this person’s right to protest and engage in free speech activities, and I support his chanting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial any day of the week. I believe he should re-think his tactics of invading the personal space of others, but that is his choice to make.
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. My parents were not on the trip, and I strive to represent my family in a respectful way in all public settings.
I have received physical and death threats via social media, as well as hateful insults. One person threatened to harm me at school, and one person claims to live in my neighborhood. My parents are receiving death and professional threats because of the social media mob that has formed over this issue.
I love my school, my teachers and my classmates. I work hard to achieve good grades and to participate in several extracurricular activities. I am mortified that so many people have come to believe something that did not happen — that students from my school were chanting or acting in a racist fashion toward African Americans or Native Americans. I did not do that, do not have hateful feelings in my heart, and did not witness any of my classmates doing that.
I cannot speak for everyone, only for myself. But I can tell you my experience with Covington Catholic is that students are respectful of all races and cultures. We also support everyone’s right to free speech.
I am not going to comment on the words or account of Mr. Phillips, as I don’t know him and would not presume to know what is in his heart or mind. Nor am I going to comment further on the other protestors, as I don’t know their hearts or minds, either.
I have read that Mr. Phillips is a veteran of the United States Marines. I thank him for his service and am grateful to anyone who puts on the uniform to defend our nation. If anyone has earned the right to speak freely, it is a U.S. Marine veteran.
I can only speak for myself and what I observed and felt at the time. But I would caution everyone passing judgement based on a few seconds of video to watch the longer video clips that are on the internet, as they show a much different story than is being portrayed by people with agendas.
I provided this account of events to the Diocese of Covington so they may know exactly what happened, and I stand ready and willing to cooperate with any investigation they are conducting.”
Here is the video for you to make up your own mind. Notice that the race-baiting rhetoric is begun by a group that has nothing to do with EITHER Nathan Philips’ group OR Nick Sandmann’s group, but is another protester self-described as Puerto Rican who says Indian means ‘savage’ and asks why you (meaning the native protesters) were not angry with those ‘bastards over there wearing Make America Great Again hats’. 2:11
4:10 ‘dirty-ass crackers your day coming’.
And there was plenty more like that.
And THEN the internet-famous scene with the drum unfolded.
“Far from engaging in racially motivated harassment, the group of mostly white, MAGA-hat-wearing male teenagers remained relatively calm and restrained despite being subjected to incessant racist, homophobic, and bigoted verbal abuse by members of the bizarre religious sect Black Hebrew Israelites, who were lurking nearby… Phillips put himself between the teens and the black nationalists, chanting and drumming as he marched straight into the middle of the group of young people. What followed was several minutes of confusion: The teens couldn’t quite decide whether Phillips was on their side or not, but tentatively joined in his chanting.” — Source: Inquisitr
Compare that account with what Nathan Philips told the media about the event:
“There was that moment when I realized I’ve put myself between beast and prey,” Phillips said. “These young men were beastly and these old black individuals was their prey, and I stood in between them and so they needed their pounds of flesh and they were looking at me for that.”
Source: Detroit Free Press
Sorry, but Philips’s own biases led him to misread this situation… badly.
It’s fortunate for all involved that the kid who has taken the brunt of these accusations had a more ‘tolerant’ and less cynical view of the strangers involved than the Marine did. Then again, by now, kids in MAGA hats are probably used to being ‘misunderstood’.
These sixteen and seventeen-year-old kids could have allowed themselves to be intimidated and chased off by the bigotry they had just put up with while visiting their own national capital and waiting for their bus. But then they’d know they cut and ran from some homophobic race-baiting bullies.
They didn’t run. Instead, they stood their ground — in a non-violent way — by drowning out the hateful words by singing pep rally songs from their school.
Because dammit, they had every bit as much right to that space as anyone else that showed up that day. Or does ‘E Pluribus Unum’ not count for anything anymore in the national capital?
…On REVEREND Doctor Martin Luther King Day weekend, no less.
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