Conservative press apologizes for saying students harassed a Native American protester

Initially, McCain said she was “absolutely disgusted” at how the students treated the protester.

TV host and commentator S.E. Cupp shared the same sentiment as McCain and said Monday she reacted “too quickly” to the story.

“Hey guys. Seeing all the additional videos now, and I 100% regret reacting too quickly to the Covington story,” Cupp tweeted Monday. “I wish I’d had the fuller picture before weighing in, and I’m truly sorry.”

Before she watched the video, Cupp ran a segment on CNN and said she wanted to tell the students, “There’s no place for this in our society.”

Initial reports from last week said a student from Covington Catholic, Nick Sandmann, approached a Native American protester participating in the Indigenous Peoples March Friday. Those reports said Sandmann and the other students, many of whom were wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, confronted the protester, Nathan Phillips, in an effort to intimidate him.

A longer version of the video from a different angle, however, revealed that Phillips was the one who went up and confronted the group of students while banging on his drum. Sandmann later released a statement that said he “never interacted with this protester.”

“The protestor everyone has seen in the video began playing his drum as he waded into the crowd, which parted for him. I did not see anyone try to block his path. He locked eyes with me and approached me, coming within inches of my face. He played his drum the entire time he was in my face,” Sandmann wrote. “I never interacted with this protester. I did not speak to him. To be honest, I was startled and confused as to why he had approached me. We had already been yelled at by another group of protestors.”

Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of the conservative Turning Point USA, said that after watching the longer, unedited version of the video, the Native American protester Nathan Phillips was actually the one who approached the group of students. He also said he would “correct” an earlier tweet about the incident.

“I just watched the unedited video of the high school kids at the March – they did nothing wrong, and I correct an earlier tweet,” Kirk said in amending statements he made in denouncing the students’ actions. “The left intentionally misreported the facts (typical) to destroy these kids lives to blame it on Trump. Media made this a top story to wreck lives.”

The event also sparked confusion about who the student was. Some confused Sandmann with Michael Hodge, which led to attacks against Hodge and his family.

Conservative news source the Reagan Battalion on Monday apologized for confusing the two.

“Truly sad reading this, and we want to personally apologize to your family for blindly accepting the media’s narrative without doing research on our own before commenting on this story,” the group wrote. “We will do better in the future.”