February 20, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – President Donald Trump has offered his moral support to Nick Sandmann, the Covington Catholic High School junior suing the Washington Post for its role in the false narrative that he and his classmates harassed an elderly Native American at the March for Life.
“‘The Washington Post ignored basic journalistic standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump,’” the president Tweeted Wednesday morning. “Covington student suing WAPO. Go get them Nick. Fake News!”
“The Washington Post ignored basic journalistic standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump.” Covington student suing WAPO. Go get them Nick. Fake News!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2019
Following the March, the press erupted with claims that a video showed Sandmann and his classmates harassing Nathan Phillips outside the Lincoln Memorial. But additional extended video and firsthand accounts soon revealed that Phillips was the one who waded into the group waiting for its bus and decided to beat a drum inches from Sandmann’s face while members of the Black Hebrew Israelites fringe group shouted racial taunts at the kids.
Last week, an independent investigation commissioned by the Diocese of Covington (which had initially condemned the boys) cleared them of wrongdoing, confirming the students’ explanation that they had been performing chants to drown out the Black Hebrew Israelites, and did not respond to their abuse in kind.
Many who ran with the original narrative just as quickly deleted their initial condemnations, but as some try to keep it alive, attorneys representing the students have threatened to sue numerous media figures and Phillips himself for defamation. Yesterday, attorneys representing Sandmann announced a $250 million defamation suit against the Washington Post.
“The Post rushed to lead the mainstream media to assassinate Nicholas’ character and bully him,” they argued, fanning the “flames of the social media mob into a mainstream media frenzy of false attacks and threats against Nicholas.” Sandmann “suffered substantial reputational and emotional harm,” they continued, because the left-wing newspaper saw him as “an acceptable casualty in their war against the President.”
This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has expressed solidarity with the Covington students. Trump, who famously has his own adversarial relationship with the mainstream media, also tweeted a more general jab at the media Wednesday morning.
“The Press has never been more dishonest than it is today. Stories are written that have absolutely no basis in fact,” he said. “The writers don’t even call asking for verification. They are totally out of control. Sadly, I kept many of them in business. In six years, they all go BUST!”