Ryan Glasspiegel
Videos by OutKick
Nick Sandmann, the student from Covington Catholic High School who went viral after wearing a Make America Great Again hat, tweeted today that he and the Washington Post settled the defamation lawsuit that he filed in early 2019:
On 2/19/19, I filed $250M defamation lawsuit against Washington Post. Today, I turned 18 & WaPo settled my lawsuit. Thanks to @ToddMcMurtry & @LLinWood for their advocacy. Thanks to my family & millions of you who have stood your ground by supporting me. I still have more to do.
— Nicholas Sandmann (@N1ckSandmann) July 24, 2020
A Washington Post spokesperson told Fox News, “We are pleased that we have been able to reach a mutually agreeable resolution of the remaining claims in this lawsuit.”
Sandmann, who also settled with CNN earlier this year, had a veiled message for Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey:
We have settled with WAPO and CNN.
The fight isn’t over. 2 down. 6 to go.
Don’t hold your breath @jack.
— Nicholas Sandmann (@N1ckSandmann) July 24, 2020
Vox published an explainer on this whole situation last January: Sandmann and his classmates were in Washington, D.C. on a school trip. Video went viral of Sandmann standing in the face of Native American activist Nathan Phillips, appearing to mock him. Longer video later emerged that showed protesters from the Black Hebrew Israelites sect provoking the incident and Sandmann said that he and his classmates “wanted to drown out the hateful comments that were being shouted at us.”
Sandmann’s lawsuits against the media stem from their coverage of the situation before more the full context emerged.
May seem like a minor point, but it’s not. Sandman and his classmates were waiting to leave when the chit started. Nathan Phillips came up the steps and got in Sandman’s face and started chanting and banging his drum. Sandman didn’t do anything but stand where he already was.
Didn’t Phillips lie about Vietnam service as well? Stolen valor.
Yes he did, Feddy. Claimed he was Vietnam-era Marine recon. He never left the states and was a mechanic I believe.
Wow!! I hadn’t heard this story. Good for this young man!!
I am surprised Brett Kavanaugh didn’t do the same as this kid. With the amount of national importance tied to his position, along with the completely reckless and destructive lies reported about him, he could potentially bankrupt the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and MSNBC with such a defamation suit. How much does it cost to attack and defame a supreme court justice, significantly undermine trust in the overall American judicial system by reporting concocted lies?
Guess we’ll never know.
What the major media did to that kid is an outrage. If twitter had news people and cameras, this is what they would do daily. They do it now, but twitter uses lemmings like CNN and WaPo.
The kid is very rich now, but I hope he is not silent going forward. I hope the settlements didn’t buy his silence.
The lesson here is good people have to fight back or get run over.
This was the ultimate turn for me against the media. This kid did absolutely nothing wrong, and he and his class mates were drugged through the mud continuously. And the saddest thing is nobody apologized or learned their lesson.