First-term Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) apparently deleted a tweet in which she perpetuated several falsehoods about the students of the Covington Catholic High School and their encounter with a group of Black Hebrew Israelites (BHI) and several Native Americans after the Jan. 18 March for Life ended in Washington, D.C.
Dozens of the students were waiting for their bus near the Lincoln Memorial when a small BHI group started to hurl insults at them. The students eventually attempted to drown out the BHI group by school chants and cheers when several Native American activists walked up and inserted themselves into the crowd, beating their drums and performing a Native American chant. The students, some wearing hats with President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” jumped and clapped to the drum beat and for a moment joined the chant.
One of the Native Americans, Nathan Phillips, 64, approached one of the students and came so close as to beat the drum inches from the student’s face. The student, Nick Sandmann, responded by silently looking at the Native American man, mildly smiling. The incident lasted several minutes.
The now unavailable tweet contained a number of false statements and inaccuracies.
The students were the ones accosted by the BHI group and, based on multiple videos of the incident, they didn’t seem to respond in kind.
Also, they didn’t “surround” Phillips, as claimed. It was Phillips who inserted himself into their midst after they had already started chanting.
According to videos of the incident, the students appear to have joined the Native American chant for a while and didn’t respond with a racist chant of their own.
Omar was correct that Sandmann’s family hired a PR firm.
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