Covington Catholic's Nick Sandmann Says His Life Has Been Under 'Constant' Threat Since March for Life Incident
In a recent interview, Covington Catholic teen Nick Sandmann said his life has been under “constant threat” since he became a media whipping boy after a viral incident at the March for Life last year.
Ever since his run-in with activist Nathan Phillips on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial — in which media at first inaccurately portrayed the MAGA hat-wearing student as having blocked Phillips — Sandmann told Fox Nation host Lara Logan this week that he’s been noticed everywhere.
“Everywhere I go, there is someone that will point me out,” Sandmann said on “No Agenda with Lara Logan.”
Sandmann went to the Lincoln Memorial for the segment, his first time back to where his confrontation with Phillips happened in 2019.
“As we stood there, people began to stare at Nick and it became uncomfortable,” Logan said in the narration.
“He was mindful of the death threats and bomb threats against him, his home and [his attorney Todd McMurtry]. So we decided to leave. The long looks followed us on the way.”
According to The Washington Times, Sandmann reached an undisclosed settlement with CNN over the network’s treatment of the story.
“The media’s role in it has never been fully addressed. Most outlets didn’t retract their stories,” Logan said. “CNN settled in a massive lawsuit — the sum was undisclosed — but that was evidence. And it was just the beginning in a series of lawsuits that are to come.”
The incident occurred at the March for Life in 2019.
Viral video which was amplified by a strange account whose owner was never quite identified showed Sandmann with Native American activist Nathan Phillips chanting in his face.
The fact that Sandmann was smiling and wearing a Make America Great Again baseball cap immediately made him a target of the establishment media and online bad actors.
The media hadn’t necessarily factored in that they were dealing with a minor or that Phillips’ story was inaccurate.
As it turned out, both were true. Sandmann was 16 at the time, and it quickly became apparent as more video came out that certain aspects of the activist’s story were dodgy at best.
That video would show that the incident was actually precipitated by the bizarre, fact-challenged racist cult that is the black Hebrew Israelites and that Phillips’ claims, like the idea that he was blocked from going toward the Lincoln Memorial by Sandmann or that he’d been subject to racist obloquy from the students from Sandmann’s Covington Catholic High School, were either lies or unverified by the massive amounts of video footage from the event.
In spite of that, you had celebrities who were more than willing to dox the Covington Catholic kids, even when they could probably guess that they were minors.
Names please. And stories from people who can identify them and vouch for their identity. Thank you.
— Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) January 20, 2019
Sandmann told Logan that he’s now an unwilling public figure because of the media attention.
“It happens everywhere I go,” Sandmann said. “From in my community to different parts of the country. Everywhere I go, there is someone that will point me out.”
“[This will last] probably forever,” he added. “It’s a constant threat and it’s a terrible threat. But you can’t choose to live your life in fear or they’ve won and they robbed you of your life.”
Which is what, essentially, the goal always was.
This wasn’t about politely asking Nick Sandmann what happened that day in Washington, D.C. It wasn’t about seeking a counterpoint from him.
Once that video footage was being played on CNN and Nathan Philips was appearing nonstop telling everyone how these kids had wronged him, you could tell what this was about — making Nick Sandmann prostrate himself before the media and beg for forgiveness which would never come.
The media bias against Sandmann was reprehensible. A year on, he still seems haunted by it. Haunted — but not broken, and not without perspective.
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