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[dramatic music]
[Woman] This is not a singular event.
It's part of a chain of so many other news events
happening in this country right now.
[Man] The message that we send these kids
time and time again, is that you're better
and that's a very dangerous message to send.
[Man] The core function of those schools
is to serve the class interests of wealthy families.
[Man] I do think the media
is gonna finally get their comeuppance. I do.
[dramatic music]
[Jonathan Schroder] My name is Jonathan Schroder.
Nine years ago, my friends and I
created a documentary series
for National Geographic Studios.
Oh man, that's a, that's a calf look at- he's,
he's looking right at the lens.
[Jonathan Schroder] And ever since, I've been in central Michigan
filming farm animals
and the veterinarians who take care of them.
I mean he's, he knows he's been filmed.
[Jonathan Schroder] But a certain event that took place
on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
compelled me to take on another project.
See, I'm a graduate of Covington Catholic High School.
You may have heard of that school before.
It's the all boys academy
that became the subject of national debate
after this video went viral.
[People chanting and singing]
And there it is, that notorious smirk
that sparked a controversy unlike anything
this community has ever seen.
- Those videos went viral on social media today
receiving widespread opposition and already,
one of those videos has been viewed
more than a million times.
[reporter] Members of the Indigenous Peoples March,
surrounded by others wearing Make America Great Again hats
and clothing, connecting them
to Covington Catholic high school.
Indian Country Today identified the man playing the drum
as an Omaha elder.
I heard them saying, build that wall,
build that wall.
This is indigenous lands,
you're not supposed to have walls here.
Here's what I knew from the initial news coverage.
A native American Vietnam war hero was peacefully marching
when a bunch of kids wearing MAGA hats blocked his path
and started to harass him.
The video exploded and the media went absolutely nuts.
Overnight, it became the biggest news story in the world.
A group of high school students has caused outrage
in parts of the United States.
A troubling scene many are calling racist.
For Covington Catholic high school students,
they traveled from Kentucky to Washington
to attend the March for life rally.
It exploded all over Twitter,
kids in MAGA hats, taunting a Native American man.
Appearing to face off with Nathan Phillips,
a 65 year old Native American
The viral encounter has thrust this Kentucky community
into a politically charged debate
that has police here on high alert.
[people chanting and singing]
When I first saw the video, I refused to believe
that these kids even went to Covington Catholic
but then I saw our logo, I saw some familiar faces
and I was like, holy shit, this is my school.
And like most of America, I was outraged
when that video surfaced. I was embarrassed, ashamed,
I was even angry I went to school there.
It made me want to vomit.
Absolutely made me wanna vomit.
That let's fix things with a football cheer mentality,
let's take off our shirt and jump up and down,
let's stand in front of this person you know nothing about
with a shit-eating smirk on your face.
It just brought flashbacks.
I mean that was what drew me in just like anybody else
that smirk, that was heard around the world.
I was a little embarrassed of my community.
I was a little embarrassed with my association
with Cov Cath.
I thought we were supposed to be better than this.
[reporter] In a statement, the diocese of Covington
and Covington Catholic High School
condemned the actions of the students and said quote
"This behavior is opposed to the church's teachings
on the dignity and respect of the human person."
School officials say they are now investigating the incident
and considering next steps
including the possibility of expulsion.
[Jonathan Schroder] To say that Covington Catholic community
was taken off guard by the situation
would be a gross understatement.
Everyone simply wanted to go back to their country clubs
and their barbecues.
[upbeat music]
Now don't get me wrong,
every kid that attends Covington Catholic
does not come from wealth, but if you're rich
and you live in Northern Kentucky,
chances are you're sending your kid to Cov Cath.
Everyone came from Fort Wright, Fort Mitchell, Villa Hills
very prominent upper class white neighborhoods
in Northern Kentucky.
I do think Covington Catholic students
think they're better than students
from surrounding public schools.
I did when I was there,
it's not something I'm necessarily proud of now,
looking back at it.
[music playing]
[Jonathan Schroder] Pride, that's the name of the game at Covington Catholic
and something I learned well before I went to school there.
I saw my mom beaming with pride after a coach from Cov Cath
recruited me to play football there.
Just by being invited, she acted like
I won a full scholarship to play football at Notre Dame.
She saw this as an invitation to an elite club,
to a place where students graduate
and go on to institutions
like Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia.
I only knew one thing about Cov Cath,
it was an all boys school.
So I was like,
"Great mom, you're sending me to a teenage penal colony."
Plus all my friends were going to a public high school.
My freshman year was pretty rough.
I missed my friends and I felt like a complete outsider.
I'd never seen so much Ralph Lauren, sweater vests
khaki pants and argyle socks in my life.
I only lived 15 miles away, but the kids would make jokes
that I was some sort of inbred banjo picker
or a derelict hillbilly.
You know, it didn't help
that I was from a part of the county
formerly known as Sugar Tit, Kentucky.
That's right, I was from a place
called Sugar Tit, Kentucky.
But after a few months,
I fell head over heels in love with the place.
That's when I really started to get it.
I'll never forget when I applied for my first job.
As soon as the employer learned
that I went to Covington Catholic, he gave me the job,
no questions asked.
My senior year, I became captain of the football team
and had major colleges recruiting me.
It was everything my mother had always dreamed of.
At Cov Cath, we were a traveling pep rally.
Everywhere we went,
we'd chant and sing our school fight song.
Being called rich faggots by our rivals,
that wasn't offensive to us.
It was more like a badge of honor.
They don't have what we have
and they'll never be as good at anything as us.
God roots for the Colonels.
That's what we were taught
and that's what we believed.
And when people got into our face,
you know what we would do?
We would smirk.
Sometimes just to be little pricks,
sometimes because we were scared
and at the end of the day, we trusted we would win.
And one way or another, we usually did.
[reporter] Saturday morning, more clips have surfaced
showing almost two hours of what happened in Washington, DC.
The teens insist they faced a barrage of verbal abuse
from a group who called themselves
the Black Hebrew Israelites.
That's when Native American elder Nathan Phillips
says he stepped in and began drumming as a gesture of peace.
[Jonathan Schroder] Seeing the entire video, I did a full 180.
The entire incident was taken totally out of context.
And as you'll see here, Nathan and his group
look over at the kids and March straight towards them.
[chanting]
The way this thing was reported and went viral
just me pissed off, not just at the media
but at myself for buying into all this nonsense
and all of the inaccurate reporting.
I felt like a complete jackass.
For days, I've ranted like an idiot.
When it turns out these boys were being demonized
for wearing MAGA hats.
As redemption, I dedicated the next year of my life
to finding out what really happened.
I have lofty goals of proving these boys were innocent
and were only guilty of having a tremendous amount
of school spirit.
[music playing]
So how - how has it been trying to get people in
the Covington Catholic community to get on camera?
One of my best friends I was talking about, well
do you think maybe that those
who attend Covington Catholic, they're in a bubble?
And he said, I love my bubble,
I'm comfortable in my bubble.
I thought it would be insulting him
by saying you know what?
You all live in a bubble, but he's like,
you're damn right we do and we like it here.
Bubble or not, after hearing
so many different versions of the story,
it made a world of difference
hearing from the people who were actually there.
The bus leaves around nine, 10 o'clock at night
and drives straight through to Washington.
We all met at the National Archives to gather
so that we could march as a group in the March for Life.
[people chanting] We love babies, yes we do!
We love babies how 'bout you? We love babies, yes we do!
[Jill Hamlin] The march was peaceful, all the boys knew ahead of time
that they were instructed to meet
at the Lincoln Memorial
because all the buses pick up from that location.
When the boys started coming,
we were gathering at the lower bottom part of the steps.
They're kind of free to sight see for a while.
So my classmates and I were standing
near the Lincoln Memorial,
we were doing a couple school cheers to pass the time.
[Jonathan Schroder] This kid here, he's a Cov Cath student
who was front and center during the confrontation.
We decided to conceal his identity
due to his classmates receiving threats of violence.
My next step was to research the group
who didn't appear in the first video,
the Black Hebrew Israelites.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center,
they're an extremist hate group
that trades an anti-Semitism.
In December of 2019, two people associated with the group
were held responsible for murdering four people
in a domestic terrorist attack in New Jersey.
As soon as there were probably maybe 20 boys, 30 boys,
the Black Hebrew Israelites
immediately kind of targeted in on the boys.
We were hearing a few jeers,
we were kind of ignoring those.
The boys just kind of were like, whoa, like
what's going on.
You know, like, why are they screaming at us?
I remember them vividly telling us
to look up a video on YouTube about
how our president is a homosexual.
They called them crackers, white ass crackers,
bigots, school shooters.
They look like school shooters, incest babies,
these boys will harvest your organs.
No one should have to go through that.
The more boys that gathered, kind of the worse it got.
One of the boys had asked one of the teachers
if they could do their school cheer
because they do that every year
on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial,
that's kinda how they seal the day,
and, you know, that's what they do.
The teacher said no in the beginning.
And then I can't remember what the exact insult was
but the teacher said, go ahead and do your cheer,
let's drowned out the hate that's being thrown at us.
And that's when they did their rally cry,
and it's an all boys school,
so, you know, that's what they do.
As we were coming to the steps,
I could hear the Cov Cath boys on the- see them on the steps
and they were doing one of their cheers.
As we move closer, I could see the Black Israelites.
And there was a smaller group
which ended up being the Native Americans.
The boys were watching the Black Israelites
and it was like a moth to a flame
is what I've equated it to.
You don't have any place in our community
where you have people standing just espousing name calling
and trying to incite a reaction.
You just don't have that around here
and so we came up to the steps,
the Native Americans were moving
and walking slowly into the crowd of Cov Cath boys.
[student] A man walked over to us and he was beating a drum
and we weren't really sure what was happening,
he kind of just inserted himself into our crowd.
So we thought, "Oh, you know, gosh, let's be here,
let's stand, let's be respectful, let's not move".
[boys cheering loudly] [drumming]
We didn't know why he came into our group.
We thought, well, maybe he's trying to, I don't know,
join in on the boys that are chanting.
[boys chanting to drum beat]
[student] He made his way through the crowd
and confronted one of the students.
They just stood there, looking at each other
while he was beating the drum in his face.
The boys let him stand there.
Did we tell him to move?
No, we thought if we turned our back
and walked away from this Native American
who's beating his drum, it would be disrespectful.
So we stood there and we waited until he was finished.
[boys chanting]
I guess he was just, he had a smirk on his face
to let the man know
he wouldn't be intimidated by his presence.
There were several people that were running around
and filming things, jumping up on steps and on columns.
Maybe we were naive, but we didn't know.
I even said to a teacher,
"Wow, I wonder what they're filming this for what website
this will be on tomorrow."
Once Nathan Phillips and his group
moved away from our group, the rhetoric continued
from the Black Hebrew Israelites.
We moved the boys to another area across the street
so that we could get them out of the way.
You know, everyone's kind of geared up
and ready to get on the buses.
And while on the bus,
everybody's just settling back down.
There was only one boy that kind of turned and said,
"What just happened there?"
And I said, "You were being baited."
We got back, we went home
and woke up to kind of a firestorm.
[reporter] Videos on the internet showed student Nick Sandmann
standing in front of Nathan Phillips
a Native American veteran as Mr. Phillips played his drum.
I can see if you were only seeing the snippet,
why you would automatically jump to a bad conclusion.
My wife, Beth says the boys are under attack
and I was like, what?
And they're being blamed and I saw the video,
I said, this is not true.
I heard my mom on the phone downstairs.
I saw the TV was on Fox News.
I was kind of angry at the way things looked
because they did look-- it looked bad to begin with.
It seemed like for the first few days
a lot of people were still against us
and thought that we were just white privileged males.
I got caught up in it, my parents got caught up in it.
People around me got caught up in it.
They went through a complete living hell
that nobody should ever have to experience.
Joining us right now is that Attorney Robert Barnes.
[Jonathan Schroder] Meet celebrity attorney, Fox news pundit
and InfoWars special guest Robert Barnes.
Now Robert is representing some of the boys
and their families of Covington Catholic.
You have former CNN commentators talking about
getting them getting punched in the face.
A Hollywood director talking about
putting them through a shredder.
These are just some of the most horrendous things
you could ever experience as a human being.
[slow music]
The atmosphere seemed a little different,
not as much energy as there usually is.
You had a writer for Saturday Night Live, comedian,
say that she would provide free sexual services
to anyone who would violently attack the kids.
[student] I did not expect people to be this hateful.
I got a direct message on Instagram from someone
and they said something along the lines of
I saw what your group of people
did to my culture or my community,
I just, I declined it, I didn't wanna respond.
[slow music]
Like it's so immature,
like, I mean...
[Jonathan Schroder] Speaking of immature,
my love affair with Cov Cath
ended about six months before I graduated.
One day in class, I interrupted a teacher's lecture
with a joke so the teacher calmly walked over to me,
stood in front of my desk
then proceeded to punch me straight in the forehead.
And this guy just wasn't any other teacher.
This guy was and still is considered a legend
at the school and in the community.
After the punch I was dizzy and seeing stars.
Just before football practice,
I had a lump on my head so big
that I could barely put my helmet on
and not once did I consider talking about it.
Not because I wanted to protect the teacher,
I wanted to protect myself.
The general attitude was, if this guy whooped your ass,
then you probably deserved it.
And if you told any of your other teachers or coaches
you probably get another round of discipline.
At Cov Cath, one punishment wasn't enough.
You got extra punishment
for being punished in the first place.
[bricks falling]
And then it would keep piling on.
For the rest of my time in high school,
I counted down the days to graduation
like a prison sentence.
I became distant, angry and dismissive.
Immediately after college,
I took the first flight I could find to New York City.
I couldn't wait to get the hell out of Kentucky
and away from places like Covington Catholic.
But even then, I could have never imagined
the school being shut down due to violent threats.
[soft music]
[reporter] Covington Catholic students
were supposed to be back in class today,
but administrators decided to close the campus
early this morning, citing safety concerns.
Now the boys are expected to be back in class tomorrow.
[Jonathan Schroder] So far, those who were there
made one thing clear.
This was way more than just a story
about a smug kid blocking an activist.
Could it be these kids were just standing tall
in the face of adversity?
Once people see the full video
and realize what really transpired,
people started getting behind us.
[Jonathan Schroder] Pretty soon, all the entities
that were criticizing the boys were now backtracking.
Truth is the Washington Post within two days of this story
started printing the other side, Covington kids side.
They printed four stories that were favorable to Covington,
but they ran with a headline that says,
"Investigation clears kids
no racist or offensive language used."
It's like, oh perfect.
A final investigative report
requested by the diocese of Covington found no evidence
that the students use racist or offensive language.
Today, Bishop Foys has issued a letter,
he is offering support for those students.
I'm just amazed at the poise and restraint
that the students of Covington Catholic had.
In a matter of hours, these students were tried
and sentenced by the media where accuracy is irrelevant.
I wrote an article called,
"I Failed the Covington Catholic Test" for The Atlantic.
It seemed like there was a unanimous verdict
that these kids had done something awful.
I started talking to both my kids about it
and my son started pushing back.
He also goes to an all boys Catholic school.
I watched the longer videos
with the sinking feeling in my stomach.
I believe the liberal elite lead media
flat-out character assassinated those boys.
It is just magnified and blown out of context
for the purpose of being divisive.
There's nothing worse than the identity politics
that is without question played on by Democrats.
The reality is this wasn't much of a story
and it became such an incredible story.
[Jonathan Schroder] So that's it then. Let's just all move on.
Everyone knows the boys didn't do anything wrong,
so everyone's living happily ever after, right?
Okay, not really.
Everyone is still very much pissed.
You tell me you're religious, you need to apologize.
Nope.
You need to apologize for 400 years of tyranny.
[Jonathan Schroder] So, after all the facts came out, why is no one
on either side of this thing, satisfied with the results?
Even Nick Sandmann still harbors resentment, as he tweeted,
looks like Nathan Phillips only wants to be on camera
when he's in on the ambush, what a fraud.
He embedded this video from Liberty Hangout in his tweet.
[Protester] Nathan, why did you lie?
You ruined someone's life, what a bleep, what a bleep.
[Jonathan Schroder] And where does this divide stem from?
I wanted to dive deeper, but of all the people
I wanted to talk to, only two could tell me
what really happened, Nathan Phillips and Nick Sandmann.
And I have so many questions for both.
I mean, they both gave versions of events, right?
So I mean, Nathan Phillips, he had a few interviews
where he talked about his version of events,
which appears to not coincide with the reality,
the rest of us are experiencing.
Yeah, it sounds like there's a couple of lies he's telling.
So Nick Sandmann, how do you go about
trying to engage in a conversation with a minor
that has obviously lawyered up and he's got a PR Firm, and-
I'll have to bro down with him,
I'll be like, "Look Nick, I'm a Colonel, you're a Colonel,
I love Cov Cath, you love Cov Cath.
One question for you, buddy.
Why didn't you just step aside? Why?"
[laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
[woman] Hello?
Hey, it's Jon Schroder calling.
Hey Jon, how are ya?
-I'm good, how're you doing? -Good.
I'm trying to still see if I can get
ahold of the Sandmann family somehow.
And I know you have a relationship with those guys
and I was calling to see if there's any way
you could explain to them-
I just want to get a feeling of who Nick is
and how it's affected of his life.
I don't know, I know you don't have a definitive answer
on this but do you think this is something that
the Sandmann family would even be open to?
Because the last thing I wanna do is harass them.
I mean, maybe? I don't really know, to be honest with you.
I don't know but I mean, I'm sure she would
at least take it under consideration.
But again, I'm not positive about that by any means.
Okay, we'll give it a shot and we'll see what happens.
Yep. Yep, for sure.
Fantastic, thanks again.
Okay, thanks, Jon, bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Given that these boys
were essentially vindicated in the next day's news cycle,
I thought the folks at Covington Catholic
would be happy with the media flip-flop.
[dramatic music]
It turns out they're still very, very angry.
In their minds, this was a deliberate attack
on their religion, their beliefs, even their ethnicity.
And a lot of that anger
is directed straight at Nathan Phillips.
Nathan Phillips is lying.
I think Nathan Phillips lies to get his agenda across.
You know, it was a good way for him to script the story
because you get prestige by whether you're a victim.
And particularly when you combine that
with intersectionality, then you know,
how many bonus points do I get?
Oh, I could be this, I could add this and I could add this.
Well, I'm a transgendered alien,
so maybe that'll put me at the top.
You know what I mean- And all the rest.
He wanted to create a viral moment.
I don't really know a lot about him,
I haven't read a lot about him
because I don't think he's deserving of my time or energy.
But what I have heard and read about him
is that he does lie.
When I first started following the story
about Nathan Phillips, one of the things that I noticed was
there were a lot of inconsistencies.
I went to a blog that was the Native Youth Alliance blog.
And I noticed it said, we can give you a tax deduction.
I thought - hmm, that's interesting.
So I wanted to find out more
and every time I started to dig,
something more came up that was strange.
They weren't registered as a nonprofit with the IRS.
Did some more digging and found that Native Youth Alliance
was registered in DC
but it had not kept current with the filings
to remain a company in good standing.
The Native Youth Alliance when it had been registered
had used the same PO box as his wife
who had since deceased for a nonprofit that she was running.
And when I clicked to send an email,
the email came up as going to Nathan Phillips
which really seems strange given that
all the newspaper articles were describing this
as an organization he had previously served
as a director for.
If someone presents themselves as being a charity
that is registered with the IRS and allowed to accept
tax deductible donations, but they're not,
they're committing a fraud.
I question his motivation, I question his integrity.
He may be filled with hate, I don't know.
[Jonathan Schroder] You know, right about now,
I'm not a big fan of Nathan Phillips,
his lies and his actions caused innocent kids
to get death and bomb threats.
But why would he do such a thing?
And why would he want such a thing?
And who is this guy in the first place?
I'm determined to find out.
So I am the Native American journalist, I'm Mohawk,
and I was the one who identified Nathan Phillips
when this first came out.
No, I don't think anything was staged.
I really think it's an unfortunate instance
of capturing a microcosm of the reality of society on film.
I was talking to Nathan Phillips later that day and he says,
"You know, I saw the Black Hebrew Israelites
saying really, really terrible things.
And these kids had no idea what to do."
[reporter] A longer video showed Phillips approaching
the boys with his drum.
What Nathan is doing is he's playing his drum
as a sense to say, look, I am coming in here
as a peaceful person and then realized in the middle of it,
Uh... Okay, people are not responding
the way that I thought, so I'm gonna keep playing it.
[boys cheering]
People thought he was being an instigator
but what people never understood about this entire thing
was this was a native man and non-native young men
who didn't understand the communication
that the elder was trying to deliver.
There is something very intrinsically important
in dealing with the Native American drum.
It is the ultimate in sacred instruments.
If I was to be having an argument and we were yelling
and Hey, this and Hey that
and an elder was to walk up to the two of us,
hitting his drum, both of us would understand immediately
we need to stop and to take a moment
and to realize there are sacred existences besides ourself.
Nathan Phillips here he's portrayed as an elder,
I've seen no evidence that he was an elder at all.
[Jonathan Schroder] And that anger just wasn't reserved
for Nathan Phillips either.
After those first few weeks, I was still very frustrated
with how the media portrayed us, because I don't think
you can trust the media in this day and age.
They ruin lives.
I'd really love to see the media be held accountable
for their actions, with these lawsuits.
[reporter] Breaking tonight, Nicholas Sandmann,
the student that you remember from this famous moment,
he's now filed a $275 million lawsuit against NBC Universal.
His legal team has also sued the Washington Post
and CNN for huge amounts of money.
[Jonathan Schroder] Even President Trump tweeted:
Nick Sandmann and the students of Covington Catholic
had become symbols of fake news and how evil it can be.
They have captivated the attention of the world
and I know they will use it for good.
It started off unpleasant but can end in a dream,
says President Trump.
Can you imagine being one of these kids
and having the President of the United States in your corner?
Talk about having the ultimate resource against the media.
They get away with so much
and they need to be held responsible.
It's not right for them
to be given as much freedom as they are.
You see it with the President,
they'll paint the President in the worst light possible.
It's not just the Cov Cath,
you've got other fake instances going on
where they're saying that a crime has happened,
it didn't happen, just to make a point.
I think it's mostly the media's fault, they're animals.
[Jonathan Schroder] You know, I have to admit,
I feel protective over these kids, especially Nick Sandmann.
This could have easily been me and my friends.
And after discussing with the families,
I really understood the toll it had taken on the community.
And if it weren't for the kooks on social media,
this entire event would have never been reported.
But not everyone I spoke with agreed.
I think that this was an important event
and I think that social media have been terrific
in highlighting how hyper-local issues
can snowball into greater moments.
And so while this may be seen as an isolated incident
that turned into a spectacle if you will,
it's essential to highlight some of these things
to know certain things are becoming acceptable
and others aren't.
Do I think these students were treated unfairly
by the media?
All I can say is that it's our job
to get both sides of the story, to tell the truth,
be fair, be accurate, and that's our role, that's our duty.
I think social media acted irresponsibly
but that's kind of what social media does.
I think news media was essentially playing catch up.
It takes a little bit longer to get the whole story
out there.
And I thought we had some news outlets that
covered this really well.
This term, "the media" or "mainstream media"
has become this pejorative essentially to decry, you know,
any content that you don't like, or you disagree with.
We've kind of lost our journalistic appreciation.
Journalism is a part of our American democracy,
it is at the core of it.
It's very critical to hold our people in power,
our elected officials, accountable.
Not all media is the same,
not what some everyday citizen says on Facebook
isn't the same as what a reporter
at the Cincinnati Enquirer is writing,
or what a talking head at CNN is saying,
or what a celebrity in Hollywood is saying on Twitter.
That's a dangerous view of the media.
[Jonathan Schroder] You know, even if it took
the media time to get the story correct,
the news reports ultimately made it clear
these boys were completely innocent, right?
Some others to this day still think we were in the wrong.
[Jonathan Schroder] How could they be in the wrong?
They were innocent bystanders.
Like Seinfeld said,
there's no such thing as a guilty bystander.
Am I blind?
What the hell are these people seeing that I'm not?
The entirety of this video
should completely exonerate these boys, right?
I think even though the students were cleared,
I'm still kind of outraged.
I can't say I blame them
but I kind of blame the culture of Covington Catholic,
and I couldn't help to think that that
would have easily been us had we gone on that trip.
My opinion hasn't changed one iota, nothing.
When I saw it, and the first thing I saw was the image
of that young man smiling in the face
of this Native American elder, surrounded by his peers.
What I saw was an arrogant young man
aware that there are no consequences
for how he treated that elderly person.
Hard-stop, that's what I saw.
And that's what I still see.
And what I see now is America running to apologize for it.
When the other videos surfaced, it complicated the narrative
and the media were eager to retract
that this was a disrespectful interaction
from the young boys.
The full video was released showing what really happened
with left wing activists who approached the teens first.
All the local elected officials
retracted their statements.
We're watching local media run to defend.
One of my friends locally wrote an article,
"I Failed the Cov Cath Test"
Right away, I apologize,
I shouldn't have said those things.
What I saw was white people
always getting apologized for it,
because if that was a young African-American,
I can guarantee you
this conversation would be totally different.
We never ever jump to defend the African-American
who is gunned down in the street by a cop.
We jump immediately to shouldn't have been saying it,
shouldn't have reached for his Skittles,
shouldn't have been selling
single cigarettes on the street corner.
[soft music playing]
[Jonathan Schroder] If you're a white guy like me,
it can be difficult to relate to minorities,
especially when you're surrounded
by other white people, 99.9% of your life.
And it wasn't until I moved to New York City
that I finally began to experience
different ethnicities and cultures.
And it wasn't an easy adjustment.
I lived above a gay bar in the West Village.
My one roommate was a self-proclaimed social anarchist
and my other roommate didn't speak a lick of English.
I tried to embrace my new home
but I was intimidated and lonely and honestly,
I was leaning towards moving back to Kentucky.
That's when I decided to call my friend Brian Williams,
who is also a Cov Cath grad
and had a really sweet place on the Upper West Side.
When I spoke with Brian,
he encouraged me not to leave and he invited me out.
And this was a guy I hadn't seen for six years.
It didn't matter.
He was a Cov Cath grad,
we played football together and he considered me a brother.
Brian introduced me to all his friends
and suddenly I had a new social circle.
He became the star of my student films
and I was his sidekick at some amazing Yankees games.
Brian was just a blast to be around
and he epitomized everything a Cov Cath grad should be.
Athletically and academically, he was a superstar.
After playing football at Columbia University,
Brian landed a prestigious job on Wall Street
as soon as he graduated.
Brian and I had very similar
but also very different experiences in high school.
Brian was proud to be a Colonel. Me? Not so much.
But Brian encouraged me not to let one bad experience
define my entire existence in high school.
And I took his advice.
I can honestly say that without Brian Williams,
I doubt that I would've ever reconnected with that community
or ever stepped foot on the campus again.
These kids did nothing wrong, they were innocent bystanders.
There were wearing MAGA hats,
they were jumping up and down, they were chanting,
not a good look but for Nicholas Sandmann
and for these kids to get death threats, bomb threats?
I think there's reasons why people who maybe aren't white
aren't rich Catholic school kids,
see that and see something different.
You know, they see things that maybe you or I don't see.
This certainly was a win for Covington Catholic
but not because the truth came out.
In fact, it was a win because the truth was hidden.
The very truth that would reveal the amount of resources
that were mobilized in order to protect a school
and its students from any kind of challenge
to their elite status.
The cleanup job, as it refers to the Covington Catholic incident
really centers on making the story about one person
rather than the institution,
making about Nick Sandmann and whether he is a good child
or a bad child, whether he's a racist child
or not a racist child, all of which
are the most shallow ways that you can approach this story.
And so when you make it about him
and you make it about his character, he gets a chance
to go on The Today Show and say that he was scared
because the Black Israelites were threatening to him
and even Savannah Guthrie at one point, I think
in that interview kind of challenges him.
There were more of you than them.
But you felt like they were stronger?
They were a group of adults
and I wasn't sure what was gonna happen next.
[Anne Branigan] What you see in those videos
are tribes acting in tribal ways.
And the way to approach that story is to think about
which tribe actually has the power here.
And I would have to remind everybody
there was only one person suing the Washington Post
and NBC and all these other major media organizations
for hundreds of millions of dollars.
There's only one.
While I can agree that a child doesn't innately have
all of that power, what are the things behind that child?
Elite schools teach students,
there's always a winner
and there's always a loser therefore.
So their success always comes
at the expense of someone losing.
I think those schools graduate socially inept young men.
And I don't think there's anything
that these schools can do about it.
We had three female teachers when I was at this school,
one African-American teacher
in the history of the school, 50 years old,
one the whole time.
You're graduating these kids, what are they gonna think?
The only time they see poor people
is when they go on a mission trip
and they're going to save and to serve these people.
I think it's very difficult to teach inclusiveness
in that kind of environment.
I've really been reflecting
upon my time at Covington Catholic,
and I think something that really hampered my growth
was the overall lack of diversity
and the lack of diversity education.
People of different color, of different religions
of different nationalities, that was a weird thing to us.
That was a very strange thing to us
if you were not a white guy from Northern Kentucky.
And there were times when we wrestled with that.
And I wonder if a little bit of that's not happening now.
The best educational minds
can be absent of thought about diversity.
During the time of the ordeal in DC,
there was an immediate call from the NAACP
to the leadership of the Covington diocese.
We did make the phone calls to the principals of the school,
to the superintendent, to the Bishop's office.
We did call a few times.
I had a talk with the superintendent of the Archdiocese,
I introduced him to a diversity program that I do
in Northern Kentucky for other school districts.
They felt that they had enough people around the table
to handle this internally.
And so they chose to go that route.
[Jonathan Schroder] I have to admit race awareness
is not something my alma mater does well.
[reporter] Overnight, a series of images showing
past Covington high school students wearing blackface
at a sporting event, sparking new controversy.
[students chant]
[Jonathan Schroder] Soon after the Lincoln Memorial incident,
old footage of the cheering section,
the Cov Cath crazies as they're known resurfaced,
showing students in blackface at basketball games.
[reporter] People affiliated with the school point out
that the video was filmed during a blackout night
for the basketball team where students were encouraged
to wear black from head to toe.
And the Covington Catholic community
just shrugged it off as a simple misunderstanding.
What wasn't shown was Covington Catholic has black-outs,
they have blue-outs, they have white-outs.
And so there are other games where they are dressed
like the Blue Man's Group, blue shirts,
I don't think they were intending to offend Blue Men,
I think that that happened to be one
of their school colors.
When they were all whitewashed,
I, as a white person took no offense at that whatsoever,
it's part of the fun they had.
[Jonathan Schroder] I just don't get it,
how can any adult, parent, teacher or administrator
think that white kids painting their face black
is a good idea?
There was no intent to offend by any of those boys
at any time.
[Jonathan Schroder] I noticed that some of the blackout faces,
the boys added big exaggerated white lips and eyes
to their face paint.
And that's a look specific to minstrel shows
and those exaggerated white lips and eyes?
They were missing during the blue and white outs.
At best, this is woefully ignorant.
At worst, it's just flat out racist.
Early on in my research, I was at a basketball game.
The school was playing this public school
where the students are mostly African-American,
the students come from poverty, et cetera.
Towards the end of the game, when it became obvious
that they were going to lose,
this one little group of students that began
shaking their keys to their expensive houses
and expensive cars towards the opposing team
and began to chant this thing,
you'll be working for us one day,
you'll be working- it's okay.
What was the--?
[Jonathan Schroder] That's alright, that's okay,
you will work for us someday.
Yeah, we used to chant that one too.
And what was remarkable at that moment,
not just that the entire school, it seemed like,
began chanting this, but the fact that
there were so many teachers, the headmaster
and the principal and parents and they were laughing
and they were condoning that behavior,
which revealed a lot about what their children,
what their students think about themselves and others.
[Jonathan Schroder] You know, even if would lose the game,
we wanted everyone else to know that we were gonna win at life.
And not once did our teachers, our parents, our coaches
tell us that anything was wrong with that,
that it was elitist or reprehensible.
For anyone who's gone to Cov Cath and wonders,
gee I wonder why so many people hate us? That's why.
Part of what young people at elite schools learn
are strategies that allow them
to uphold those understandings.
And one of those strategies is to cast themselves
as the victim.
They really went after us,
said are very rude and mean things.
You have all these people coming out of the woodwork,
attacking them for nothing.
They were the ones targeted,
they were the ones prosecuted,
they were the ones persecuted, they were the ones shamed,
they were the ones defamed, they were the ones attacked.
These kids are not trying to act like victims.
Look at all of these people against me when in fact
a lot of things are working for them.
Privileged individuals have a lot of resources
to mobilize in those moments
to make sure that they are getting
the narrative that they want out,
and that's the one that we all believe.
Students from more disadvantaged schools
would not have had the same resources.
And therefore it would have been
a very different outcome for them.
One of the most important parts of the first video
was the face of the young man.
The white male gaze
directed towards the elder native American man.
[people chanting]
This is a look that is very familiar to minorities
that communicates I'm superior to you,
it communicates a certain contempt for others,
that smirk even though he was very silent,
during that moment no words were spoken,
it communicated volumes.
Smirk, smile --
I don't think he was smirking,
but that was the thing that was said
is that he was smirking. I think he was nervous,
he was young and he was standing there.
Everybody saw in that what they wanted to.
It was another Rorschach test.
You looked at that kid's face
and brought your own prejudices to it.
The biggest criticism wise is,
how do you know what was going through his head?
And we don't know he could have been experiencing fear
and this was probably scary to him in many ways.
But despite that fear,
we also need to pay attention to the confidence,
the sense of entitlement, the fact that he didn't back down.
[Jonathan Schroder] I had no idea a little smirk
could cause such huge contempt and outrage.
His actions, his body language,
it was communicating something that we have seen
over and over in our country.
It was the same face that we saw in the 1950s,
when a bunch of white men were gathered around
African-American children as they entered
the school building after desegregation.
It was the same look that we've seen in the history books
of the African-American man, sitting at a counter
with a bunch of white men surrounding him
with this same smirk on their face that communicates
that I'm better than you and a particular kind of contempt.
There was a moment of real intentional gazing
that is not often afforded to people of color.
People of color are supposed to look away,
they're supposed to not see oppression,
they're supposed to not call it out.
But I think in this particular moment, young people,
especially young white males who are being radicalized
to have these kinds of racist ideals are being challenged
to look directly into the face of someone
that they would like to oppress or like to do away with
in order to make America great again.
[people yelling]
What always preceded an act of violence in those videos
was the jeering that we saw in this video.
So all of the righteous sneering and the yelling
and those kinds of things eventually escalated to pushing
and tragically escalate to lynching.
So for many communities,
when they see that kind of cheering, it's a trigger.
It's very scary because you don't know where that
is going to end, you don't know where the line is.
One of the things that it revealed was that obviously
these young men had kind of formed not so productive
kind of understandings about themselves and others.
And where are they getting those understandings?
What sources is it? Is it from their school?
Is it from their churches?
Is it from families, larger contexts?
[Jonathan Schroder] I know exactly where they got it.
When other schools would scream insults at us,
we'd just start chanting and singing our fight song.
That was our defense mechanism to drown them out.
* Don't be offended you liberal snowflakes! *
[upbeat guitar music]
* Your media and twitter attacks *
* We've got lawyers and they've got our backs *
* You limousine liberal hypocrites! *
* If we can't be smarter *
* We're gonna be louder. If we *
[Jonathan Schroder] Is it possible that these kids were just responding
in the only way they knew how?
Chanting is a big part of the culture at Covington Catholic.
It's who we are, it's what we do.
I wanna entertain that idea, I do.
And you know, it's possible, it's possible that
the only way that you know how to deal with conflict
is to throw a pep rally at it.
I mean, that kind of beggars belief
what else are you learning at that school?
They had the option of not responding
which is what the vast majority of people who walk by
black Israelites on any sidewalk in DC or in New York do.
They just keep walking.
Have you heard anything
as far as Sandmann's attorneys,
you're just dealing straight with the attorneys, right?
Not the Sandmann family?
Right, dealing straight with the attorneys and it's,
we'll see.
I had a great conversation on the phone,
he understands the point of the documentary,
he understands that I'm sensitive to Nick
and what he went through.
So hopefully we'll hear something soon,
but it's just been a back and forth.
Last text I sent to Nathan was, look,
I don't have to interview on camera, no microphones.
How about just the two of us get a coffee.
To me, it almost be better if there weren't cameras there.
And I could just speak to Nathan directly.
I think he'd be more open,
I think he'd be more honest and more comfortable.
Yeah, well, it's kind of interesting
how the Sandmann family has so much wrapped up in this
monetarily resource-wise whereas Nathan is just,
it seems like he's doing it all on his own.
Could be one reason why he'd be reluctant to talk is, I mean
if it goes bad for him, he doesn't really have a recourse.
Whereas Nick, it sounds like if the situation go exactly
as the Sandmann's wanted you could be real fucked.
At the same time, Nathan has a lot more to hide.
[Jonathan Schroder] When this story first broke,
I saw Nathan Phillips as the good guy,
someone I could root for,
almost a hero for standing up to these punks.
But as the story got more complicated,
so did Nathan Phillips.
The more I learned about him,
the more I began to question his character
and his motivations.
Nathan claimed the boys were chanting,
build that wall, build that wall.
I've watched that video at least a thousand times
and I still can't hear anyone saying that.
But at the same time,
I'll give Nathan the benefit of the doubt.
However, Nathan also claims that he was
a "recon ranger" in Vietnam.
First of all, there's no such position
in the Marine Corps called a recon ranger.
Secondly, he was actually a refrigerator repairman
who never stepped foot outside of the United States.
And according to the Washington Examiner,
Nathan had a criminal record
during his time in the military.
He was charged with assault, escaping from prison
not to mention several alcohol related crimes.
But no matter what happened in Nathan's past,
this story blew up for one reason: the MAGA hats,
quite possibly the most divisive
and controversial political attire in modern day history.
I feel like part of why we were targeted
was because of the hats that we had on
showing our support for the president.
[upbeat music]
Like it or not, this hat has become a symbol of hate,
of judgment, white privilege.
And by wearing this hat, those students cloaked themselves
with those kinds of messages.
It implies a greatness that large chunks of this country
were not able to take a part in.
It taps into a nostalgia for a greatness that did not exist
for a large group of Americans.
And to embrace that slogan means to disqualify
those Americans. Laying that out that way,
it is a racist slogan.
Like I don't think it's racist personally
but I think other people might think it is.
I think you have to question yourself,
why are you feeling hate at a hat?
Because the person wearing it
probably doesn't feel hate towards you,
but you feel hate towards the hat.
Just because you wear a MAGA hat
doesn't automatically make you a racist
but it makes you someone who is willing
to provoke a reaction to throw into somebody's face
this strong statement that you know to be loaded.
They're not trying to do something truly terrible
like wear Chicago Bears hat at a Green Bay Packer game.
That might be truly offensive.
That might be intentional infliction of emotional distress
but a MAGA hat in Washington DC
is something that we should love and celebrate.
You have to understand in this day and age,
a bunch of white kids wearing MAGA hats,
jumping up and down and chanting,
whether they're confronting other people,
other people are confronting them,
they're not putting themselves in a great situation.
[upbeat music]
[Jonathan Schroder] This isn't about Nick and Nathan.
This is about what's right and what's wrong.
And how you feel about Trump,
the MAGA hats or white privilege,
it can put you on either side of this
without knowing the facts.
To me, I don't think either direction of the story
is totally honest, right?
I mean, you've got Nathan Phillips saying
that he heard people yelling, "build the wall",
you can't hear in the recording,
but it doesn't mean nobody said it.
You've got Nick Sandmann saying he was smiling, not smirking
and they were just scared and trying to be respectful.
Meanwhile, you watch the video,
they're all jumping up and down doing Tomahawk chops.
I feel like both of these stories
are being spun to some degree.
So I just wanna make sure that we have a level of skepticism
that is appropriate for both sides of this.
Well, I think if the Cov Cath kids, for example
lied about being in Vietnam,
lied about their discharge from the military,
if they set up a fictitious charity,
I would be a lot more skeptical of that side,
but these are 17 year old kids and I know it looks horrible,
but when push comes to shove,
they're all gonna get together and they're all gonna chant.
And this was at Nathan Phillips expense
and cameras were everywhere.
I just don't buy it,
I don't think Nick Sandmann's interviews
are any more honest than Nathan Phillips interviews.
The difference is Nick Sandmann's family
has a lot more money to do it with.
I'm a part of that,
I'm a part of that community,
I'm a part of that culture,
I'm an alumni.
I used to participate in that sort of behavior.
I'm not proud of it, but that's what those kids do,
that's what they're taught to do.
But I think that's the whole crux of this thing is like
it's not necessarily how the kids responded,
but why did the kids respond that way?
Why does this school with so many resources
at their disposal have children who think
it's okay to do what they did?
One thing that I found particularly interesting
was if you look at the beginning of that video,
when Nathan Phillips comes up
Nick Sandmann isn't even in the picture
which means he had to insert himself into it.
You know, which is something that nobody really ever
kind of revisited.
It's like these were children,
and we can call them children, we can call them young men,
but fundamentally they were acting as provocateurs
and they enjoyed that as young men tend to do.
And you can tell by their interaction there isn't,
from the kid perspective,
they're not hostile or anything else.
Not one time do you ever hear or see, or did I hear or see
any boy in that group turn and scream an insult
or reply or yell back anything at any time.
They stood there more composed
than probably most adults ever would have been.
[students screaming]
It's so frustrating and kind of unbelievable
and somewhat laughable that there were so many people
trying to paint those students' reactions
as something other than mockery and derision.
Because if you've been to high school,
you know what it looks like when a group of kids
know that they have the power and are wielding that power.
That's exactly what it looks like.
So they think they're joining in and they, this was great,
this is fun, it's all a big moment.
We had to deal with these crazy
Black Hebrew Israelites over here,
and now we've got a guy that wants to party with us.
That was their reaction.
They didn't think, "Oh, let's make fun of him,
let's attack them, let's hurt them",
nothing like that at all.
You hear a lot of the young men, singing along with him,
some would say mockingly,
some of the kids were doing Tomahawk chops.
Well, how dare they?
My response to that is how could they not?
You know, we still have teams like the Washington Redskins.
We have entire stadiums of people
who do the Tomahawk chop for the Atlanta Braves.
[crowd singing and chanting]
And it's just cherished by our media.
We haven't even gotten rid of this mockery
of native existence
but we suddenly expect these kids to behave perfectly
and not act like Indians?
I don't blame these kids.
They're taught every day that acting like an Indian
inappropriately is perfectly acceptable.
Nobody doing a Tomahawk is doing it to mock
Native American tradition at Florida state games
or Kansas City Chiefs games or Atlanta Braves games.
They see it as celebrating this emotive powerful
music tribal tradition.
I do not know of one single person, not one
that has said they're honored by such behavior.
I'm insulted by it and I find it a mockery of my race,
I find it a mockery of my culture
and I find it a mockery of my beliefs and I don't like it.
And I would like to ask people to stop.
Those boys might not have thought about it that deeply,
they might not have considered all the implications of that,
but teenagers know how to troll,
teenagers know how to provoke,
they know how to cause offense
and that was something that they were willing to do.
The kid that confronted the Native American with the drum,
his shitty reply on Good Morning America
really pissed me off.
Do you feel from this experience that you owe anybody an apology?
Do you see your own fault in any way?
As far as standing there, I had every right to do so.
I don't, I, my position is that
I was not disrespectful to Mr. Phillips.
That really made me think, Oh, there's no concession here.
There's no we were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Or we should have been the better person and walked away,
there was none of that.
I see it as a smile saying that
this is the best you're going to get out of me.
You won't get any further reaction of aggression
and I'm willing to stand here
as long as you wanna hit this drum in my face.
There wasn't a single 'I regret'
there wasn't a single 'I apologize'
there wasn't a single 'I'm sorry'
there wasn't a single 'Well maybe looking back at it,
I should have done this'.
I think that's the part that still kind of chips my ass
a little bit,
even with the kids being cleared.
[Jonathan Schroder] While I didn't share Andy's anger,
I did wanna get real honest answers from Nick Sandmann.
I was hopeful that his attorney
would respond to our request.
Speaking of Sandmann, I just got off the phone
with his attorney.
He said, draft an email.
He encouraged me to actually play up the fact that, you know
I went to Covington Catholic, that I'm a Colonel,
that I'm sympathetic to Nick Sandmann.
So I was thinking we got to go big.
Right.
We'll get a designer, design him like a scrapbook,
we'll produce something, you know.
It needs a grand gesture.
If we could fly an airplane over his house
with a sign that said, please be in our documentary,
that's what I would do.
[upbeat music]
We're right on the cusp,
we're right on the cusp of getting him.
It's just a matter of executing whatever we sent him.
[Jonathan Schroder] And here it is,
in all its glory, the packet we sent to Nick.
Not bad, huh?
[slow music]
[Jonathan Schroder] I always wonder what my friend Brian Williams
would have thought about the situation.
Unfortunately, I'll never know
because on September 11th, 2001,
Brian lost his life in the World Trade Center.
Not only did I lose a brother,
the Cov Cath family lost one of their own.
Hopefully his family can take solace in knowing
that Brian Williams will forever be known
as being one of the greatest people to ever call themselves
a Covington Catholic Colonel.
That should be our school's legacy,
not this crazy viral video.
The video I watched, you see the very beginnings of it.
So it's the Covington high school boys just standing there
and the black Israelites standing there,
both of them are being antagonistic to each other
in equal parts.
Ain't y'all supporting Trump?
That's not even a real-
You know what?
Now the Covington Catholic boys,
there's so much more of them.
There were literally dozens and dozens of them
and then they start kind of that sort of pep rally,
almost like mob mentality.
And it was really kind of amazing to see
because there's a lot of movement from the students
but the black Israelites who they say
they felt threatened by are stood in one place
the entire time.
It's the Covington Catholic boys
that are moving back and forth.
There's this sense of provocation.
There was a couple of boys who were I think
waving sticks even.
You know, it's hard for me to imagine this same scenario
with a group of kids from a mostly black
Washington DC school acting in that way
because they are so hyper aware
of the way that they're viewed of as threats
which is not something that ever seems
to cross these kids' minds until well after the fact, right?
Until it becomes a news story.
I don't even think we could have a collection of black students
coming together and not being accosted
before they even got to a critical mass of people.
And we've seen that before.
We've seen the news frame peaceful gatherings
of African-Americans recently as quote unquote "race riots."
Even when we try to see groups
of African-American students going to a pool party in Texas,
in McKinney, Texas, we can see that becoming a problem.
You see police coming there and slamming a 15 year old girl
into the ground in a bikini completely unarmed.
So black kids aren't allowed to convene
in the same ways that white kids are.
I absolutely view this
as a textbook example of white privilege.
Privilege is a very messy concept
and it's a very confusing concept to many people.
You get your education,
you get a job and then you get married
and you raise your kids and then you work your ass off.
If that's white privilege, okay.
People get so offended
when you say the phrase white privilege
when you tell white people, white men especially
so me, maybe you got what you got
partly because of how you were born.
It rocks this American paradigm that
if you work hard in this country,
this is what you'll get.
But not as hard as the people I know
who are making $10 an hour
and have to make a decision whether or not to buy books
or clothes for their children.
I would love to talk to somebody
to understand their point of view of white privilege,
of what they're saying. I haven't experienced it
that I can tell.
Of course, I think this is an issue of white privilege
in that white people are allowed to take up space
in that way and even be loud and obnoxious in that way
and it still not be seen as threatening.
We see black men trying to have a meeting at Starbucks
and they have the police called on them
in a matter of seconds.
Once again, I don't understand.
I don't understand.
They - They're there - they're -
They're - they're Catholics.
They're going to school.
I don't understand.
I don't see a lot of handouts.
I think it's interesting that nobody treats those students
as though they were a threat.
Even though I look at that
and I see something very threatening
and I see why a Nathan Phillips
would wanna diffuse the situation
because it looked unruly, it looked threatening.
There were a lot of you, a handful of the others.
Do you think they might've felt threatened
by a bunch of young men kind of beating their chests?
I would just say that the fact remains that
they initiated their comments with us,
and I mean, they provoked us
into a peaceful response of school spirit.
It was a failed moment by both the chaperones
and the school, having not known the chaperones,
I can understand where immediately it may be jarring,
but as an adult you know not to get children
into those kinds of scenarios.
And that's hard to hear. Um -
We were there,
we were there the entire time. And -
We did not--
it was a fluid situation.
The chaperones job is to guide the student
in such a way that they don't become the story.
You can't possibly think that starting a cheer
is going to be seen as something calm.
There was just, there was a lot more going on
than just what was being filmed.
[boys chanting to drumbeat]
I don't think the boys could have reacted differently
in that situation.
I think if you are trained to be dominant,
to be first, America first, I think if you are consuming
a steady diet of nationalism and white nationalism at that,
I think it's very difficult for you to have a perspective
of what other people who don't look like you
could be going through.
It all just seems like a nuisance
and it seems like here we go again
with those people being very sensitive.
Why do we care about this?
I don't see any meaning in their actions whatsoever.
This is how liberals are reacting to anyone
these days suspected of supporting Trump.
All of a sudden, because Trump gets elected,
we're talking about how the dangers
of white nationalists is going to come up.
It's like when's the last white nationalist violent incident
of major consequence?
They don't exist anymore.
[shooting]
[reporter] The death toll here in El Paso,
rising tonight at least 22 dead now.
[reporter] Now the gunman opened fire in a Walmart parking lot.
He would later say that mission
was to kill as many Hispanics as possible.
[reporter] Breaking news: deadly church shooting,
at least nine people killed in a massacre
in a historic black church.
[reporter] The website includes a lengthy statement
criticizing blacks as quote, "inferior".
[reporter] In a car plowing into a crowd of demonstrators
protesting against those white nationalists,
a 32 year old woman killed.
The latest breaking news unfolding in Christchurch
where there have been two separate shootings
at two mosques.
It is no doubt, a manifesto of a white supremacist.
[reporter] Before Roof left, he stood over a witness
and uttered a racially inflammatory statement.
I feel like white males are now the target
just because people want to make other ethnicities
and races look - um - really good.
I don't wanna try.
So I heard back from the Sandmann family.
It's a hard, no.
Well that sucks.
[laughing]
Thanks for agreeing, yeah.
After all this fricking time, after the packet,
after the conversations, after all the emails,
after all the texts, it's a no.
[dramatic sound]
[Jonathan Schroder] Another person I've always wanted to meet up with
was the legendary teacher who punched me.
And it actually happened over a Thanksgiving weekend
at a Cov Cath football game.
And there he was, standing right in front of me.
I relived this moment a thousand times in my head
what would I do now as a grown ass man
if I ever came across this guy?
My former goal was to overwhelm him
with a tremendous amount of violence and rage.
But the very first words out of his mouth were,
"I'm sorry you lost your friend, Brian Williams,"
and then he gave me a big hug.
Afterwards, I was completely disarmed, all was forgiven,
and in spite of nearly knocking me out,
I still felt a conflicting need
to protect his power and reputation in our community.
It is quite remarkable how much effort
and how many resources are paid and devoted
to protecting the most powerful and privileged.
Institutions like Covington Catholic,
both fail Nick Sandmann and produce Nick Sandmanns.
Because he's not singular.
My political ideas are sort of locked.
I don't know if they'll ever change
just because of what happened.
In order to really have a discussion
that we need to have about racism in this country,
it would require us not centering the feelings
of white people and their goodness.
And we would have to center somebody else.
And that is something that has not happened
in that community clearly.
No, I can't, I'm too close to it.
I know those boys.
I know there, I know they meant no ill will,
I know they meant no harm.
No, I can't understand why they went batshit crazy.
You would have to value the personhood, the feelings,
the history of somebody who is not you.
Which is not something these boys know how to do.
And we can blame in their community,
we can blame their agency,
we can blame this country
for continuing to reinforce the idea
that their perspective is the center of everything.
The boys that were up there at Washington
that handled themselves peacefully,
that quality that I saw in those boys
is part of the quality of our region.
This is a story about childhood and who gets it.
This is a story about protection and who gets it.
This is a story about who can get to redeem themselves.
And it's very clear to me who does and who doesn't.
[Jonathan Schroder] At this point,
the more I researched Nathan Phillips,
the more determined I am to speak with him.
In my mind, this is a guy who inadvertently
got into something way bigger
than he could have ever imagined.
Maybe he's embarrassed,
maybe he doesn't wanna get caught in another lie.
One thing I know for certain
is that Nathan Phillips has led an extremely difficult life
and has been an activist for quite some time.
So you've been having a dialogue with Nathan Phillips.
We've been going back and forth,
we've been texting back and forth.
So since his organization won't get back to me,
I went right back to Nathan Phillips and it was a hard no.
So what I'm thinking of doing is just
driving five hours to his place and knocking on his door.
Thinking with the hopes of maybe seeing me in person,
I can somehow magically charm him into uh - an interview,
I don't know.
So what's the Nick Sandmann situation though?
Are we, do you think, I know, I mean-
If Nick Sandmann was not a minor,
I don't give a shit about the lawyers,
I would knock on his door and be look, dude,
I'm a Colonel, you're a Colonel, let's talk this out.
But the fact that he is a minor and the fact that
I'm a 45 year old man knocking on someone's door
looking to interview a kid, probably not a good look.
I mean, Nathan Phillips is an adult,
but I don't know,
I think we should be similarly careful
about how we deal with Nathan.
I mean, I know you have given him
all the opportunities in the world,
but we should definitely make sure they're all expired
before we show up at his door.
I wanna be sensitive to Nathan Phillips
but there's a lot of questions that I want to ask him.
Nathan is a guy who's told many, many, many lies
to further his narrative that he was the victim.
So I have many more questions for Nathan than I do Nick.
[Jonathan Schroder] You know what?
Today I'm throwing a hail Mary and driving five hours
to see if Nathan Phillips will speak to me,
hopefully on camera.
Maybe all those websites and articles
exposing Nathan as a liar simply aren't true.
And maybe his charity is perfectly legit, I don't know.
But either way I want to give Nathan an opportunity
and a platform to set the record straight.
About halfway through the trip,
I received a text from my wife alerting me
that Nathan Phillips was on his way to New York City
and that he was soliciting money
from the Native Youth Alliance Facebook page
to fund the trip.
I kept this info to myself
because I didn't want the crew to think
we would be spending all day driving for nothing.
Who knows, maybe Nathan lied to his Facebook followers
and stayed at home.
Either way, I wasn't expecting Nathan to be home.
That's Nathan Phillips' house right there.
I'm just gonna walk up
and knock on his door and see if he'll talk.
[birds tweeting]
[knocks on door]
Nathan?
[door closes]
Hello, Nathan?
Hey, my name is Jon Schroder.
I've been texting you about a documentary that I'm doing
about uh - the Cov Cath incident and...
I was wondering if I could talk to you for just a second.
Nathan, I promise just no funny questions,
no trick ques--
[door shuts]
Call the police.
Threatened to call the police.
I just wanted five minutes to talk to him
and then I'm not sure if it picked up on the mic
but he threatened to call the police
and he slammed the door in my face.
So that's where we're at.
And actually I'd like to get the fuck out of here
before he actually does call the police.
So we'll cut on this.
[Jonathan Schroder] I will never forget the look on Nathan's face
when he answered the door.
My heart was racing as I saw Nathan's confusion
morph into rage and disgust.
And this was a guy that
I'd been researching for over a year.
I've read hundreds of the social media posts
and watched countless internet clips of this man.
I've been trying to dissect this man's life
and here I was standing face to face with him
and it was one of the most surreal moments of my life.
So Nathan posted this on his Facebook page
shortly after I knocked on his door.
Even though I identified myself by name and by profession
even though Nathan and I had been corresponding for months
and he has all my contact information, he knows my name
he referred to me as quote "this fella,"
he pretended not to know me and to add insult to injury,
He made it sound like I was after his little dog too.
When Nathan answered the door,
I couldn't help but notice his living conditions.
Anyone who thinks Nathan has become wealthy
due to this incident is dead wrong.
I doubt that anyone attending Covington Catholic
lives in similar conditions.
The trip obviously didn't go as planned,
but the more I thought about interviewing Nick and Nathan,
the more I realized this isn't a story about us versus them
or Nick versus Nathan,
this is about something way bigger.
You know I hope someday Nick and Nathan
will ultimately forgive each other
but it's impossible to forgive when each side feels
they have done nothing wrong in the first place.
[soft music]
I have my own issues with forgiveness.
I ultimately forgave the teacher who punched me,
mostly because he was like a second father to not only me,
but to many others who attended that school.
And make no mistake, I still love this man to this day.
Regardless, I have to wonder
if he were teaching at a public school,
there would be no way in hell
he would've gotten away with punching a student.
It probably would have ended his career
and he probably would have faced legal charges.
There were other kids hit by this guy
and some would tell their parents
and some of the parents would say,
"Well what did you do to deserve it?"
Most of the parents and the teachers
thought nothing was wrong with this.
Which brings me to the incident at the Lincoln Memorial.
The Cov Cath students were being verbally attacked
by a hate group and confronted by an indigenous man.
And what did we do?
We smirked and we threw a pep rally at it
because as dysfunctional as it sounds,
that's how we deal with adverse situations.
And the Cov Cath community
sees nothing wrong with this behavior.
Not only is it tolerated, it's expected.
I originally wanted to make this film
to prove that the boys in the red hats did nothing wrong.
But as I listened to those on the other side of it,
I realized they didn't do much right either.
My heart aches for these young kids
who didn't understand what was happening.
A lot of these young men probably just-
want to just put this to rest.
They don't wanna talk about it anymore.
And if they don't wanna learn anything from it,
You know, I have to be honest and say I don't blame them
because they've probably been asked to death about it.
But if any of these young men are listening,
I'd like to say that if you can,
try to empathize with people in this world
who may not have what you have,
people who aren't walking in your shoes.
[soft music]
[Jonathan Schroder] When I was reaching out
to the Covington Catholic community for interviews,
one person who declined
said something that really struck me.
He said, "You know what?
I love my bubble."
That's the problem.
Not the boys in red hats, not the Black Hebrew Israelites
not the Native Americans, not the Republicans,
or the Democrats, it's our culture of insularity
and our fierce instinct to defend our own beliefs.
And the only winners in all of this
are the social media conglomerates
and the 24 hour news networks.
They play us like pawns in an endless debate
that keeps us all trapped, galvanized and divided.
So whether it's our social media bubble, the Fox News bubble
or CNN bubble, maybe it's time, we all burst out.
**
* And if you like Trump *
* It doesn't mean that you're a chump *
* And if you're in to Bernie *
* I hope you enjoy the journey *
* If you're sitting on a fence *
* And you love Mike Pence *
* I might say that makes sense with a smile or a smirk *
* It doesn't mean you're a jerk *
* Let's be friends *
* Let's hold hands play nice in the sand *
* Let's be bros *
* Let's see how it goes *
* Let's smile away *
* On this glorious day come on *
* Let's be friends *
**
* Whether left or right *
* You should love with all your might *
* Liberal or conservative *
* Eat your food with less preservatives *
* It's the land of the free *
* Red white and blue diversity *
* Baby Jesus on our knee *
* Not judging or blaming *
* Let's be friends *
* Let's smile away on this glorious day *
* Come on, let's be friends *
* Just take my arm *
* We'll do no harm *
* It's some lucky charms *
* You bring the bowl I'll bring the milk *
* Marshmallows in our silks *
* Come on, let's be friends *
* Let's be friends *
* Pete Rose for the Hall of Fame *