Late Monday commentary on the Lincoln Memorial Dust-up

Trump’s freewheeling past should not lend automatic credibility to the latest media charge against him (which, a nanosecond after hitting the media, was followed by demands for his impeachment). So, too, that a co-author of the BuzzFeed piece, Jason Leopold, had been a confessed felon, had been fired or repudiated by various news venues for alleged unprofessional conduct, and had been an admitted prevaricator did not ipso facto mean that his latest “scoop” had to be immediately written off as false. Just a few hours of gestation would make that clear enough.

Victor Davis Hanson:  From the BuzzFeed Psychodrama to the Covington Video Melodrama  "In the current polarized climate concerning the shutdown, Trump, the media, etc., it would be wise for everyone to take a deep breath and wait at least 24 hours before snap editorializing, in response to the latest sensational morality tale flashing across electronic media.
"In the present climate, one video (or even three or four videos from different angles and elevations) is not necessarily worth a thousand words.

"Similarly, co-authored sensational scoops might not be so sensational if the old anonymous “sources say” modus operandi has no verifiable supporting documentary evidence as alleged — and if, at the outset, the co-authors cannot substantiate their story, and especially if they also cannot substantiate it later when challenged by the special counsel. (NB: In both the Michael Cohen and Covington stories, BuzzFeed ran with stories that were not substantiated but that did reflect its own predictable agendas).

"I doubt we will know exactly what happened at the Washington, D.C., march until more eye-witnesses, videos, interviews, etc. are all collated (other than the fact that different groups were shouting different things, sometimes at each other). But the result will probably be a lot more complicated than the initial narrative of “white spoiled MAGA Catholic youth approached, surrounded, and taunted noble Native American elder,” a narrative that has induced an epidemic of virtue-signaling." . . .
Don Surber considers Covington kids should sue Twitter  . . . "Meanwhile, in news of fools who rush in, Media-ite reported, "Journalists and Celebs Rush to Delete Tweets Slamming MAGA-Hat Kids."
" If it looks too good to be true, it is."

Throwing Covington’s Pro-Life Boys to the Crocodiles  . . . "Here’s CNN’s carefully edited footage and one-sided commentary.
. . . Instead, we saw an instant feeding frenzy. One aimed at destroying young men’s lives, based only on … carefully edited footage from screamingly biased media. And our religious leaders, and even some typically canny political commentators, showed an unseemly eagerness to join in.

Apologies Roll In For Catholic School Kids After As Fuller Picture Emerges 
. . . "[National Review] pulled the article on Sunday and published an explanation by editor Rich Lowry.
“Anyway, if not a hoax, this at the very least was not what it initially seemed,” Lowry wrote. “I deleted my original tweet and we also took down a strongly worded post by my colleague Nick Frankovich that relied on the incomplete video. It’s another reminder — even for an old hand like me — that it’s best not to make snap judgments and to wait for all sides of a controversy to have a chance to be heard.” . . .

 

. . . "But then I watched more clips, showing the greater context of the incident. It is not as simple as it has been portrayed. Below is a more complete video account of what happened. In it, one of the Catholic boys is overheard asking, “Does anybody know what he’s doing? Does anybody know what’s going on here.”

"And, in it, one of the Indians with Phillips shouts: “White people, go back to Europe. This is not your land.” He curses the students with f-bombs (video is NSFW). He goes on: “You’re being a white man about it. That’s all you know how to do.”
"You didn’t see that in the news reporting, did you?

"The majority of the apologies and retractions have come from sources that most would consider right-leaning."

Nathan Phillips’ Story Of What Happened Changed From Media Outlet To Media Outlet

Journalists and Celebs Rush to Delete Tweets Slamming MAGA-Hat Kids

Blue-Check Twitter Mob Demands The Doxxing And Violence Against High School Junior  Kyle Kashuv :  

The Media has bent over backwards to defend my Parkland High school liberal peers, no matter what outrageous things they have said.
But now they have tried to ruin a high school kid's life, over fake news.
What changed?
The student was a Trump Supporter.

The Donald and Nancy Show

Stilton's Place:

 

 

 Stilton's Place  . . . "And finally, we think it's freaking hilarious that President Trump cancelled Nancy Pelosi's overseas jaunt on a military aircraft at the last minute as an act of transparent payback for her attempts to force him to cancel the upcoming State of the Union address. What his move lacks in class, it more than makes up for in style points!" . . .

Ian Macfarlane

Native American At Center Of MAGA Student Incident Has History Of Claiming Racism, Disrespect By Students

Daily Wire

"The Native American man at the center of the controversy involving a group of Trump-supporting high school boys from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky has a history of claiming disrespect and racism by students.

"Nathan Phillips of Ypsilanti claimed in April 2015 that a group of students at Eastern Michigan University (EMU) were "racist" toward him after he approached them while they were participating in an American Indian theme party.

 

" 'They had little feathers on, I was just going to walk by," Phillips claimed. "A group of them said 'Come on over, come here.'"

" 'Then started whooping and hollering," Phillips continued. "I said that wasn't honoring, that was racist. Then at that time, it really got ugly."

"Phillips claimed that the students yelled racial slurs at him and threw a beer can at him." . . .

First Ad from ‘Draft Beto’ is as Empty as the Man Himself

Legal Insurrection  "[Robert Francis] O’Rourke hasn’t announced his candidacy for 2020 yet, but the folks at ‘Draft Beto’ have already released an ad, which I guess is supposed to get people excited for his inevitable run.

"The ad is just like Beto, all style and no substance. It’s set to the classic song ‘Baba O’Riley’ by The Who, which will leave anyone under the age of 40 asking: Who?

"Other than that, it’s just a montage of fast moving clips with a few quotes thrown in about our ‘polarized’ nation.

"The Draft Beto people included this wording in their roll out of the ad:

Right now our nation is deeply divided and in desperate need of inspiration.
We need someone who can go anywhere, talk to anyone, and inspire everyone.
Beto O’Rourke is that person.

"A whisper campaign has been growing about Beto being the ‘white Obama’ and it looks like his supporters are going with that, not that it will work.

"Take a look: 

 

 

"If my analysis of Beto’s first steps seems a bit harsh, wait until you read this take from Nia-Malika Henderson of CNN:

Beto’s excellent adventure drips with white male privilege

. . .

Nathan Phillips Lied. The Media Bought It.

National Review

"There was far more than met the eye to the Covington Catholic story, but that didn’t stop the popular press from vilifying its students."

. . . "It would have been revolting if Nathan Phillips had been minding his own business doing a tribal chant while a gang of kids swarmed around him and started jeering. That’s what many media outlets reported: “Boys in ‘Make America Great Again’ Hats Mob Native Elder at Indigenous Peoples March,” ran a New York Times headline over a story that said “a throng of cheering and jeering high school boys” were “surrounding a Native American elder.”

"That isn’t what happened. Phillips was the aggressor in the situation. It’s a curious feature of our culture that people aggressively seek to be victimized, go out of their way in hopes of getting punched in the face, but here we are. People do that because they know the media hand out condemnation based on perceived ranking in the victim hierarchy. “Old Ypsilanti man” is near the top, while “privileged-looking young white male probable heterosexual in a MAGA cap” is the absolute bottom. The surface appeal of the story short-circuited the reporters’ brains to such a degree that they failed to perform basic tasks such as asking the people they were accusing for their version of events. The Times and other outlets had zero evidence that a “mob” “surrounded” Phillips, except a claim of Phillips that he has since backed away from.
"Phillips has on at least one other occasion gotten himself into what he says was a racist altercation with a group of youths. This one, four years ago, also involved him approaching others, in this case a group of college students. (“Why did Phillips go over to the fence? Why not just walk away?” wondered a reporter. “For me just to walk by and have a blind eye to it,” Phillips said. “Something just didn’t allow me to do it.”)" . . .

Liberal Native American Activist Nathan Phillips Held Drum Protest at Trump Hotel In DC in 2017

NY Times tries to shed proper light:  . . . "In Mr. Sandmann’s statement, which was released by a public relations firm, he said he remained “motionless and calm” in an effort to defuse 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,” he said.

“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,” he said. “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,” he continued. “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.”

In a lengthy video posted to YouTube, the Hebrew Israelite activists shouted insults at Native Americans and the high school students. One of the activists, Shar Yaqataz Banyamyan, denied in a Facebook video that his group had been instigators." . . .

"Native American Activist Nathan Phillips Is a Poseur . . ."   . . . "Phillips, reportedly a Vietnam veteran, got up in one boy’s face and started screaming and beating his drum inches from the boy’s face.
"Phillips also has a history of setting up similar incidents.
"According to one of the high school boys who was present, a group of black men were taunting the Trump supporters, calling them “shooters” and “crackers” and said the white kids “had everything given to them by their parents.”
"According to a witness, it was at this point that a Native American man showed up “out of nowhere” and began drumming in the high school kid’s face.“We weren’t even chanting at him, we were chanting at the African American guy, but obviously social media made us look bad to get views and stuff,” a witness said.
"Video shows the children were not chanting, “Build the wall!” as Nathan reported.
The media isn’t interested in facts — they want to push their left wing agenda so they doxxed the high school kids.
*"The high school boy was doxxed by the liberal fascist mob." . . . *(Emphasis added by TD)

Why Democrats Said No to Trump’s Border Compromise

Rich Terrell

They view him as a devil they must defeat at all costs.  "Lots of people are wondering just why Democrats rejected President Trump’s plan to reopen government agencies even before he announced the plan. House speaker Nancy Pelosi called it a “non-starter,” and Senate Democratic whip Dick Durbin rejected it even though, as the Daily Caller noted, Trump’s proposal to protect immigrant “Dreamers” from being deported “included everything” that Durbin had asked for “just over two years ago.”

"The Washington Post editorial page, normally one of Trump’s harshest critics, was puzzled by the Democratic intransigence:

To refuse even to talk until the government reopens does no favors to sidelined federal workers and contractors. . . . A measure of statesmanship for a member of Congress now is the ability to accept some disappointments, and shrug off the inevitable attacks from purists, if it means rescuing the lives of thousands of deserving people living among us.

"So why are Democrats so dug in? GOP congressman Peter King, who is frequently critical of Trump, says it’s because the issue of a border wall is secondary to their hatred of Trump. “The fear is, among the Democratic leadership, if they make any agreement with President Trump, it’s like compromising with the devil,” he told New York radio station AM970." . . .

Townhall

About those kids with MAGA hats that were reported harrassing a native American

More Fake News: No,These MAGA-Hat Wearing High School Kids Didn't 'Hound' A Native American Man  . . . "The scene occurred by the Lincoln Memorial where students from Covington Catholic High School in Covington, Kentucky. They were in the city for the annual March for Life. They’re wearing Make America Great Again hats and they’re doing sports chants. Robby Soave at Reason has a great recap of the incident, where a small group of Black Hebrew Israelites engaged in the provocation, not the kids and not Nathan Phillips, the Native American Vietnam veteran who is at the center of all this. Soave also described the Black Hebrew Israelites as well. It’s a racist, homophobic, and all-around kooky group who thinks their members are descendants from the tribes of Israel (via Reason): . . .

From Reason Magazine: The Media Wildly Mischaracterized That Video of Covington Catholic Students Confronting a Native American Veteran  . . . "One student did not get out of Phillips way as he marched, and gave the man a hard stare and a smile that many have described as creepy. This moment received the most media coverage: The teen has been called the product of a "hate factory" and likened to a school shooter, segregation-era racist, and member of the Ku Klux Klan. I have no idea what he was thinking, but portraying this as an example of obvious, racially-motivated hate is a stretch. Maybe he simply had no idea why this man was drumming in his face, and couldn't quite figure out the best response? It bears repeating that Phillips approached him, not the other way around.
"And that's all there is to it. Phillips walked away after several minutes, the Black Hebrew Israelites continued to insult the crowd, and nothing else happened.
"You can judge for yourself. Here is video footage of the full incident, from the perspective of the black nationalists. Phillips enters the picture around the 1:12 mark, but if you skip to that part, you miss an hour of the Black Hebrew Israelites hurling obscenities at the students. They call them crackers, faggots, and pedophiles. At the 1:20 mark (which comes after the Phillips incident) they call one of the few black students the n-word and tell him that his friends are going to murder him and steal his organs. At the 1:25 mark, they complain that "you give faggots rights," which prompted booing from the students. Throughout the video they threaten the kids with violence, and attempt to goad them into attacking first. The students resisted these taunts admirably: They laughed at the hecklers, and they perform a few of their school's sports cheers.
"It was at this moment that Phillips, who had attended a nearby peace protest led by indigenous peoples, decided to intervene. He would later tell The Detroit Free Press that the teenagers "were in the process of attacking these four black individuals" and he decided to attempt to de-escalate the situation. He seems profoundly mistaken: The video footage taken by the black nationalists shows no evidence the white teenagers had any intention of attacking. Nevertheless, Phillips characterized the kids as "beasts" and the hate-group members as "their prey":" . . .

Covington Catholic Student Begs Local TV News to Tell the Truth About Native American Incident In DC  "A student at Covington Catholic High School sent a letter Saturday to a local TV station that serves that part of Kentucky, Cincinnati-based WKRC-TV, begging the station to report the truth of an incident Friday in Washington, D.C., involving a Native American man and students from Covington Catholic." . . .
. . . "This video shows the beginning of the confrontation by Phillips where he tests several students before selecting one boy wearing a MAGA hat to target for abuse. Phillips is moving freely about and steps up to the student as he bangs his drum in the boy’s face and loudly chants at him in a language the boy does not understand. Phillips does not attempt to speak to the boy. Phillips doesn’t ask him to move nor does he explain what he is doing." . . .
Read this student's statement at the site.   WTVQ covers this student here.
"Here is the full statement:

“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.  . . .  Read the entire statement
 MORE media lies’: Looks like there’s a whole lot MORE to story about Catholic students ‘harassing’ Native American protester

More Media Lies There was no #MAGA mob hounding a Native American Mult Native Americans instigated an incident walking into a peaceful group of kids & taunting one chanting & drumming inches fm his face No one said "Build the Wall" & if anything That kid deserves a peace meda

 Jim Hanson‏Verified account @Uncle_Jimbo Jan 19   

• You see the boys here by themselves when the Native American activists move into their midst

Full Video: Covington Catholic Kids Were Harassed By Black Israelite Group, Native American Group Approached Them
"Black Israelites are a cult. At around 45:00 you can see them start to engage the kids, attack a priest calling him a “child molesting faggot,” calling the kids “peckerwoods” and “crackers” among a raft of attacks.
"And the Native American groups were the ones who approached the kids as they were in the middle of doing their school cheers. Initially the kids thought the man was drumming with them."
 

Before waiting for all the evidence and witness testimony, a Democratic congressman suggested there's only one solution: Ban the apparel.

 

The Truth about the Lincoln Memorial Incident

"The liberal media has been under pressure this week after a Buzzfeed News article implicating President Trump in crimes was promptly discredited by Mueller’s office.  However, they clearly have not learned any lesson from their failure to act with integrity by pushing a narrative that is framed and false, and they will eventually have to reap what they have sown from their intentional seeds of defamatory divides."

Taylor Day  "The viral video of a group of MAGA-hat wearing teenagers waiting for their buses last Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial has been paraded by news outlets as a confrontation with a Native American elderly man and has swept the weekend internet like the storm that is gripping most the nation.
"There was plenty for Americans to be upset by in that video, but contrary to the reporting by the Associated Press, the bad behavior did not come from the group of boys. Perfect examples of how not to behave were shown by a group of five black self-proclaimed “black Israelites”, the media that altered the narrative with a spin that is Orwellian, and the Native American man himself for unabashedly lying to the cameraperson directly after the incident about chants of “Build the Wall” that hours of video prove never occurred.
"The ugliness started when a set of five self-proclaimed black Israelites began preaching anti-white messages for at least an hour before the Catholic school boys walked into the area.  Thanks to their own livestream of the event, the boys were not searching for a problem as had been suggested, but instead makes clear of a regrouping effort at their designated meeting spot after their participation in the March of Life.
"The black “activists”, emotionally emboldened by witnessing children in red MAGA hats, directed their verbal abuse on the assembling group of kids.  Some of their sentiments included: 

• Calling the group of Catholic school boys “faggots” and “sodomites”
• Somehow defending Bill Cosby
• Threatening injury to a man on a hoverboard 
• Calling a group of white children “future school shooters”
• “There will be no peace until blood is shed”
• “The nation of Nubia will destroy America”
• Calling black friends of the MAGA hat wearers the n-word

"Despite the hateful rhetoric directed at them, the boys are now being held to higher standards than the adults that are indisputably provoking them, and they behaved admirably." . . .

Well, the Democrats are after them now.

And so is this celebrity!

Ah HA! It's all Trump's fault!

Bill Kristol deletes tweet, fails to apologize for jumping on phony story of MAGA hat kids harassing Native American  . . . "A number of conservatives jumped on the virtue-signaling bandwagon, accepting at face value yet another fake news story seeking to castigate Trump and his supporters.  Those with integrity, once they realized that their eagerness to display moral superiority to other conservatives, apologized.
"But not Bill Kristol.  He quietly deleted his tweet claiming moral superiority for what he imagines John McCain would have done, compared to that reprobate Donald Trump (who correctly did nothing).
"Too bad for him that a Twitter account called Screenshot bot captured the tweet, exposing the cowardly retreat from the public stage when shown up as a phony virtue-signaler whose virtue was imaginary to begin with." . . .

Anti-Israel Democrat Ilhan Omar Appointed to House Foreign Affairs Committee

Ilhan Omar (D-MN) speaks to the media after a
 lottery for office assignments on Capitol Hill

Former Women’s March Leader Upbraids ‘Antisemite’ Linda Sarsour for Posting Article Claiming Jews Are Waging War on Black People  Anti-Israel activist and Woman’s March co-chair Linda Sarsour was excoriated as an “antisemite” on Sunday by a former ally who once headed the DC chapter of the popular political movement.
. . .
"Alluding to the failure of Women’s March leaders to fully repudiate infamous antisemite Louis Farrakhan, long a source of concern among mainstream Jewish groups, she added, “During this entire fiasco who has continually attacked whom? Jewish people asking you to condemn an antisemite and antisemitism is not an attack. Writing that Jewish people are waging war on black people is an attack. It is vicious. It is vile. And it is not true. They are their own worst enemy. An appalling lack of judgment on Linda’s part. On this day, during this ongoing controversy' .”

Democrat State Senator Announces Using 'He/She' Pronouns Will Be Banned During Hearings (Updated)

Stupid is as stupid does, but an entire state government? I fear those millions who still vote Democrat.

Daily Wire

"California knows no bounds when it comes to radical LGBT activism. On Thursday, State Senator and Senate Judiciary Committee chair Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) announced that only "gender neutral" pronouns will be permitted during committee hearings.

" 'Our first order of business is to approve the committee rules. I'd like to note — in respecting the fact that we are now a state recognizing the non-binary designation as a gender — he and she, we are now merging them so we are using what my grammar teacher would have had a heart attack over: we are using the phrase ‘they’ and replacing other designations so it's a gender neutral designation: ‘they,’” announced the Democrat. “Basically, that’s the primary reforms and revisions to the committee rules.”

“ 'In the spirit of gender neutrality for the rules of this committee, we now designate the chair as ‘they,’” Jackson corrected the record.
“ .The world is a different place. My grammar teacher is long gone and we won’t be hearing from her," the senator noted, before correcting herself: "— from them! From they!” . . .

Update:  California state senator bans gender-specific pronouns

. . . "The stupidity of this move, abandoning the distinction between singular and plural, making language less precise and subject to confusion, was illustrated in the next words to pour from the Senator's mouth:

"The world is a different place.  My grammar teacher is long gone and we won't be hearing from her," the senator noted, before correcting herself: "– from them!  From they!"

She was correct the second out of three tries.  But by impoverishing the English language in the small domain she rules over – the Judiciary Committee – she is regressing in the ability to communicate with clarity.  So who cares about grammar rules?  Subject versus object?  Too complicated.  Eventually, just grunting at each other will do, given the level of intelligence on display here."