If you’ve been on any form of social media at all in the last few days, you have undoubtedly by now seen the video of a confrontation between a large group of young men from an all-male private Catholic school in Kentucky and a Native American elder that took place near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC last Friday.
The encounter has remained controversial since, despite the obviousness of the intent on the main young man’s face who stood nearly nose to nose with the Native playing a drum, the family of the young man hired a Republican PR firm to essentially claim that he was a victim in the situation.
That young man, Nick Sandmann, elected himself to stand as a representative of the group of students, who were in DC on a school-sanctioned protest against women’s health care. The group, called at one point a “mob” by a woman nearby in the video that was initially seen on social media, were offended by personal and disgusting insults being lobbed at them by the Black Hebrew Israelites gathered near them.
That group, numbering no more than five, represented an organization that has been classed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
It’s clear from both the initial video seen on Twitter and elsewhere and from longer subsequent video of the entire event that the confrontation between Sandmann and the tribal group was relatively short in comparison with the showdown between Covington Catholic students and the Black Hebrew Israelites, which went on before and after the Native Americans arrived and left.
The primary Native American man seen in the video was identified after the event as Nathan Phillips, a Vietnam veteran who served in the US Marine Corps.
Once again, despite these young men being at the capital expressly to take part in a political event that should likely get the private school stripped of its tax exemption, and despite the unwavering smirk that Sandmann wears during the entire encounter with Phillips — moving his face and head to remain directly locked in eye contact with Phillips as the elder moved with the beat of the drum — many went looking for deeper context and most found something to confirm whatever they believed before they went looking.
People found that whichever side they didn’t like was to blame. It was, after, quite easy to pick political sides from the video: The vast majority of the young men were wearing “MAGA” hats.
President Donald Trump, however, seems to be roughly half a day behind the news cycle, however, as he finally weighed in on the situation:
Looking like Nick Sandman & Covington Catholic students were treated unfairly with early judgements proving out to be false – smeared by media. Not good, but making big comeback! “New footage shows that media was wrong about teen’s encounter with Native American” @TuckerCarlson
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 22, 2019
This response smacks of the “both sides” nonsense of the Charlottesville gathering of conservatives in 2017 that resulted in the murder of activist Heather Heyer at the hands of Nazis and their supporters.
It seems that Trump chose to make his statement prior to seeing the wealth of evidence that further incriminates both the young men and the culture of their school, including a number of videos of Covington Catholic pep rallies and athletic events with students in blackface — some even posted to the official CCHS YouTube account and taken down since they’ve been discovered.
Another small group of young women posted an entirely unrelated video of themselves being accosted by the young men from CCHS as they walked by on the national mall, where you can clearly hear one of them yell “slut” at them as they walked past:
The Covington Catholic boys harrassed my friends and I before the incident with Nathan Phillips even happened. I’m tired of reading things saying they were provoked by anyone else other than their own egos and ignorance 🤦🏼♀️ pic.twitter.com/utdPFii92D
— linds (@roflinds) January 21, 2019
But setting aside the surrounding evidence of these young men’s disgusting behavior, we are now in a situation where the President defending them makes them look guiltier than ever. And that’s perhaps the saddest part of all.
Featured image via screen capture
