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Liberals Rage Over Savannah Guthrie Interview With Covington Student Nick Sandmann

Savannah Guthrie's interview with Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann, aired on the

(YouTube screenshot/TODAY)

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Joshua Gill Religion Reporter
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  • Progressive Twitter users raged over the “Today” show’s airing of Savannah Guthrie’s interview with Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann, arguing that it was unfair and immoral to give the maligned child a platform to speak. 
  • Activists like Amy Siskind demanded a boycott of Guthrie and NBC’s “Today” show over the interview, which they claimed was a staged attempt to make Sandmann look innocent, despite the fact that video evidence shows that Sandmann was in fact innocent and did not approach Nathan Phillips or mock him. 
  • Some supporters of the Covington boys also took issue with the interview and said that Guthrie’s questions implied that Sandmann and his peers were at fault for the confrontation with Phillips, when in reality Phillips was responsible for the entire confrontation and lied about it. 

Progressive Twitter users slammed journalist Savannah Guthrie’s interview with Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann Wednesday and were outraged over her giving the teen a platform to speak.

Members of the media, activists, authors and other prominent accounts on Twitter accused Guthrie of staging the interview and urged others to boycott her and NBC’s “Today” show — an effort spearheaded by The New Agenda founder Amy Siskind.

They also accused Guthrie of working in concert with the Sandmann family’s crisis management team, hired after social media users barraged the Kentucky student with death threats, to contrive an innocent appearance for Sandmann, despite video evidence proving that neither he nor his classmates behaved as racist aggressors in their confrontation with Native American activist Nathan Phillips and black supremacists. (RELATED: Los Angeles Bishop Decries ‘Literally Satanic’ Social Media Backlash Against Covington Boys)

When Guthrie asked if he felt there was anything for which he should apologize, Sandmann asserted that he had a right to stand in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and did not need to apologize for merely smiling and listening to Phillips.

Sandmann did say, however, that he wished he and his friends had walked away or waited for their bus somewhere else. Catholic leaders, media outlets and social media users publicly condemned Sandmann and his peers as bigots after a short excerpt of hours of video of their Jan. 18 encounter with Phillips went viral.

Longer videos of the encounter showed that Phillips actually approached the students, contrary to his earlier statements, after Black Hebrew Israelites began shouting racial epithets and profanities at the boys. The boys responded with school cheers to drown out the vulgarities but did not, as Phillips asserted, hurl racist insults at Native Americans or chant “build the wall.”

Many Twitter users, however, maintain that Sandmann and his peers are guilty of white privilege and bigotry, despite proof of their innocence. The fact that Guthrie gave Sandmann a chance to publicly respond to their accusations only enraged critics of the Covington students further.

Progressive activists like Bishop Talbert Swan took the accusations of bigotry further, arguing that it was somehow unfair to give Sandmann an interview in light of the hostile treatment of black youths implicated in or charged with crimes.

Several prominent Twitter users who support the Covington boys also took issue with Guthrie’s phrasing of her interview questions to Sandmann, saying that she implicated that Sandmann and his peers were at fault for the incident.

“Do you feel from this experience that you owe anybody an apology? Do you see your own fault in any way?” Guthrie asked.

“Apologize for WHAT!?!?!” Larry O’Connor, associate editor of The Washington Times, tweeted in response.

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