I also think the chaperones, if they are school personnel, ought to be chastised for not stepping into the situation. As I said before, I blame the school. If some were parents, they ought not to be chosen again to supervise kids.
I agree but when I've been in Washington. DC, and came across school tours in various museums, there rarely seemed to be anyone in charge. Although there are a couple of adults in one of the clips, I am not clear that they were part of the group. One of the kids said they thought of walking away, but they were supposed to wait there for the bus. Kids are kids, and I don't expect kids to exercise perfect behavior when they are in a group of any kind of an outing. Apparently, there was a group of black people calling themselves black Hebrews or something who were harassing the kids even before the Native American group got involved. This other group were hurling epithets at the kids, including calling them "faggots." Whatever really happened, the media initially went with the narrative that fit their anti-Trump agenda.
I think this was just a setup to try and discredit it anything Trump. The only person who could have come between this would have been police.
I think this was a case of probably all involved doing something they shouldn’t....and it all depended on the camera angle what the story was/is.
The problem is instantaneous rush to judgement. Those kids have been subjected to the most horrible threats. They even had to cancel classes at their school today because of threats.
Fake news first than truth Nathan Phillips, AKA Nathan Stanard, Native American Drummer Dude was NOT a Vietnam Vet.
I stand as a normal Vietnam vet in that I have a lot of honor for those who were really there so in the case of Phillips, I had to take my time when the media stated that he’s the real deal. When I heard on the news this morning that in reality, he’s not a war vet but merely a vet who served around the time of the Vietnam era, I blew a mental cork. Granted, he hasn’t said that he’s an actual combat veteran but he hasn’t refuted the position that the media has given him either. Instead, he has added to that position by saying that he was a “Marine Ranger”, whatever that is. Maybe he was in Marine Recon, says I. Nope, just a refrigeration mechanic/electrician who wants to be something he wasn’t and apparently from his record, not a very good one at that especially if he was only an E-1 or E-2 at the time of his departure from the military. The guy is nothing more than a grandstanding fake doing whatever he does on the backs of those who actually did something in their lives. He lies about his service to the U.S. and that by itself gives me pause to believe anything he has to say until I do my own fact checking on him. I do not have a whole lot of respect for our present day media but now even less especially when they are making a hero out of someone who cannot even stand among the ranks of real American combat vets. He has had his 15 minutes of fame but until the media comes up with another point to make Phillips relevant, he is as nothing but a thief who steals from the identities of those who really fought.
Here’s what Truth or Fiction says about it... https://www.truthorfiction.com/is-n...his-military-service-in-order-to-raise-money/ It’s confusing but I do have a slight headache...
I have no opinion on his military service but a problem I have with fact checkers is that they are usually set up to defend an agenda. Being unfamiliar with Truth or Fiction, I don't know about that one but the fact-check article states that the claim is not true but then gives us no reason why we should believe them over anyone else. In other words, is the fact-checking article fact or simply another opinion? This issue hasn't held my undivided attention so it's hard to sort things out but my impression had been that Phillips hadn't necessarily claimed to have done two tours in Vietnam but that the Washington Post had stated that. I don't know, maybe he has. Since I am not about to pay to read Washington Post articles, I don't know if their story said that they had gotten that from Phillips or somewhere else, but I do know that they have retracted that part of their story.
Whether the presentation of his DD214 is bogus or not, Phillips claimed to have been a “recon ranger” in the Marine Corps. Since, to my knowledge, there is no such position to be held in the Marines, it’s enough for me to cry bogus on the fame the media has given him in its entirety. Could Phillips have received recon training? Certainly. Nearly everyone in the Army and Marines has a little training in recon when we went through basic. I personally received recon and survival training which is part of “Army Ranger” training but I wasn’t a Ranger. Airborne yes, Ranger no.
I thought I’d use something besides snopes for a change. Truth is I don’t believe anything anymore. Each side has a bias or slant.
I appreciated that because I don't know if they are biased or not. That seems to be the case. The fact that they take a side accomplishes that.
I really don't know if his experience has any relevance to his apparent attempted disruption at the convention/meeting, but I agree with @Bobby Cole that if his birthdate truly is 1955, it would have been highly unlikely that he would have been "in country" during combat operations in Vietnam. It seems to be similar to Jesse Ventura's claim that he was a SEAL during Vietnam; he was UDT, not SEAL, and UDT was a "training ground" from which SEAL candidates were chosen at that time. SEALs were truly an elite force during Vietnam, and there were not many of them. Jesse Ventura was not one of those. As Bobby said, I have no idea what a "Recon Ranger Marine" is/was, but to my knowledge, no such thing existed.
Originally, I assumed that the Catholic kids were probably at least partly at fault but, having watched several videos of the incident over the past couple of days, I no longer think they were at fault at all. Yes, they were chanting and being loud but they were in Washington DC to demonstrate for a political cause so that is part of the program, and I wouldn't fault any group of kids for being loud in such a setting, whatever the political cause. They were where they were because that is where the bus was going to pick them up. They were verbally attacked by a group of black people calling themselves black Hebrews or some such thing. The names they were called, and the threats that were made against them would have been the focus of at least a week's worth of media attention had they been the ones using these words and threats. However, since the people doing that were black, most of the media barely mentioned the role that this group of people played in it. When the group of Indians, led by Phillips, began to approach the kids, banging their drums, they indeed appeared to be banging their drums in cadence with the school cheers that the kids were using to drown out the threats and epithets used against them by the black Hebrews. These were kids, some of them as young as twelve. Should there have been adult chaperones there to help shield the kids from this stuff? Certainly, and there may have been, but none of the videos that I have seen were clear on that. if not, that's not the fault of the kids. If there is blame to be had by the Catholic group, the fault is in the school, which seemed not to support the kids at the time and certainly didn't afterwards. There were a couple of adults in the vicinity of the kids but I'm not clear whether they were actually with the kids. If so, they might reasonably have felt that a confrontation would simply escalate things. The black group were making violent threats against the kids, but they hadn't actually attacked them. When Phillips and his group began to approach the kids, as I mentioned, he seemed to be beating his drum in cadence with the kid's chants. The kid who became the face of the incident said that he thought the Indian group was coming over to support them against the black group and, contrary to what was portrayed as a smirk on his face, he did appear to be welcoming them when they began to approach. Clearly, he was deploying a friendly smile up until the point where Phillips was so close to him that he was right in his face, banging his drum. The situation changed. Phillips no longer appeared to be an ally, but the kid didn't know what was going on. Now Phillips was banging the drum in his face and he no longer appeared to be friendly. The kid said that he wanted to leave but he was afraid to leave the group, and they were supposed to wait there for the bus. While trying to keep a smile on his face, it was no longer genuine because now he was nervous and probably afraid. That is the look that was portrayed as a smirk. Some of the other kids are continuing to have a good time, chanting and so on, because he wasn't in their faces, and most of them are not even aware of what's going on between Phillips and this other kid. So I no longer believe that the kids had any part in it whatsoever. They were the victims. The only thing they were guilty of was being kids, being white, and wearing MAGA hats. Phillips, by the way, has done similar things before in his quest for the spotlight. Also, the Washington Post didn't make up the thing about him being a Vietnam Veteran. He had claimed to be a Vietnam veteran on past occasions, and a Recon Ranger. In reality, he was a refrigerator technician during his military service. He never left the States. He went AWOL at least three times and, I'm not certain about this part, but I don't think he received an honorable discharge. Upon discharge, he was still a Private.
I totally agree with what you have posted, @Ken Anderson , and from what I have read, the children were entirely innocent in this whole mess, and simply waiting for their bus to pick them up and take them back to the school. I did read that there were adult chaperones, and that they had given the children permission to be there, but they apparently didn’t try to help out any at all. If you read the boy’s version of what happened, it pretty much shows that they had no intention of starting trouble, and were actually trying to avoid any, and asked permission to sing their school spirit songs, because of the vulgar comments from the black group that was there. It is obvious that either the black group, or the Native American group, had at least one cameraman along with them, and were right there to photograph the whole event, and I think that they deliberately focused on the student who was wearing a MAGA cap.