Covington High School graduate Nicholas Sandmann said Wednesday he would have given the same speech at the Democratic National Convention that he gave for the Republicans if the Democrats "actually cared about holding the media accountable."
"I haven't seen that, and they never invited me to give such a speech, so I used the platform I had," Sandmann, who became nationally known last year after his confrontation with Native American rights advocate Nathan Phillips, said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends," the day after speaking for the convention.
"This is a media that completely ignored video online about the entire incident, and instead crafted the exact opposite that I walked up to Mr. Phillips, which isn't true," said Sandmann. "It was never true, and someone had to do something about it."
Sandmann was attacked during his speech by members of the media, including two from CNN, one of the networks that had settled in one of the number of defamation lawsuits he'd filed over their reporting after the Washington, D.C., incident.
CNN Opinion writer Jeff Yang posted in a series of tweets that he was "disappointed" by Sandmann's speech, saying he heard nothing that "would convince me of your position that you were an innocent victim of a cruel media," and CNN political analyst Joe Lockhart called Sandmann a "snot nose entitled kid from Kentucky" and said he didn't have to listen to him.
Sandmann said the "assault by the media was calculated" and he thinks Yang is "simply upset that I went after the media."
He also said he thinks President Donald Trump is treated worse by the media than anyone else, "and the bias is clear to the people watching on TV."