Covington Catholic Student Nick Sandmann Tells TODAY: 'I Can't Say That I'm Sorry for Listening to Him and Standing There'

Madison Feller

From ELLE

Nick Sandmann, a 16-year-old junior at Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky, made news when videos of him standing in the face of a Native American veteran playing a drum began to circulate on social media.

In a recent interview on NBC's TODAY show, Savannah Guthrie sat down with Sandmann as the two went through the entire incident.

While not all details of the encounter are clear, it's now known that Sandmann and his classmates were in D.C. to attend an anti-abortion march when they first encountered five Hebrew Israelites, which NBC has described as a radical movement. Sandmann told Guthrie the men "started shouting a bunch of homophobic, racist, derogatory comments at us… I heard them call us incest kids, bigots, racists."

From there, Sandmann says the students, who were standing near the Lincoln Memorial, asked permission from a chaperone to start saying their school chant in response. Guthrie asked Sandmann if he thought it was a good idea to start chanting back, and he said, "In hindsight, I wish we had just found another spot to wait for our buses, but at the time, being positive seemed better than letting them slander us with all of these things." Sandmann said none of his classmates taunted the protestors with insults or racial slurs, saying, "We’re a Catholic school, and it’s not tolerated. They don't tolerate racism, and none of my classmates are racist people."

It was at this point that Native American elder Nathan Phillips, who had been with other Native Americans at an Indigenous Peoples March, can be seen in videos walking between the two groups to intervene. Sandmann then comes face-to-face with Phillips, and many thought he was smirking at and staring down Phillips.

Phillips has previously said in an interview with CNN that he had hoped to bring calm to the situation, saying, "It looked like these young men were going to attack these guys. They were going to hurt them. They were going to hurt them because they didn't like the color of their skin. They didn't like their religious views."

When Guthrie asked if Sandmann feels like he owes anybody an apology or if he’s at fault in any way, he said, "As far as standing there, I had every right to do so. My position is that I was not disrespectful to Mr. Phillips. I respect him. I’d like to talk to him. In hindsight, I wish we could’ve walked away and avoided the whole thing. But I can't say that I'm sorry for listening to him and standing there."

Since the incident occurred, more information about the Covington schools has come to light. Christian Bales, an openly gay student who was the valedictorian at one of the schools run by the Diocese of Covington in Kentucky, made news last year when he was told he was not able to give his planned speech at his graduation ceremony, according to NBC.

Bales spoke to NBC about the recent confrontation between Sandmann, the students, and Phillips, saying, "I was not surprised at all. It was only a matter of time that something this school community did would blow up to this degree, and I think they need to be held accountable." Bales also said the Diocese of Covington is "archaic" and that Sandmann's school is "notorious for being a not-well-disciplined school."

During the interview, when Guthrie asked Sandmann why he didn’t just walk away, he said, "Well, now I wish I would’ve walked away. I didn’t want to be disrespectful to Mr. Phillips and walk away if he was trying to talk to me. But I was surrounded by a lot of people I didn’t know that had their phones out, had cameras, and I didn’t want to bump into anyone or seem like I was trying to do something."

Sandmann told Guthrie he wasn’t smirking at Phillips, rather that he was trying to communicate that he wasn’t going to get aggressive and that he was "willing to stand here as long as you want to hit this drum in my face." He also believes that the people who are calling him racist and disrespectful have had to "assume so many things to get there without consulting anyone who can give them the opposite story."

Phillips previously spoke to CNN about his drumming and singing, saying "the reason for it, was to bring unity and to bring love and compassion back into our minds and our beings as men and as protector of what is right."

The Courier-Journal also reported that Sandmann's family has hired a Louisville public relations firm, called RunSwitch PR, to help deal with the aftermath of the incident. One of the partners at RunSwitch, Scott Jennings, has worked on Mitch McConnell's re-election campaign, Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, Jeb Bush's presidential campaign, and for former president George W. Bush, according to Jezebel.

TODAY has interviewed Phillips before but plans to do so again, in light of this conversation.

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