In 2019, Nicholas Sandmann was a student at Covington Catholic High School, near Cincinnati, when a video of him and his classmates at the Lincoln Memorial put him at the center of a viral political firestorm.
Among the first to FaceTime the overwhelmed 16-year-old? Charlie Kirk, offering Sandmann encouragement and reassuring him that people cared about him and the truth.
“I would say that, in some ways, that was probably a lifeline,” Sandmann said in an interview with The Enquirer.
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s shooting death has prompted an outpouring of support from those who knew him, including Sandmann, now working in Washington D.C. for U.S. Senate Republicans.
Roses and candles are placed next to a picture of Charlie Kirk during a vigil in front of the Embassy of the United States in Germany after conservative U.S. activist and commentator, Charlie Kirk, was shot dead during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
What happened on the National Mall
In the viral videos, a 16-year-old Sandmann was wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat, smiling, and standing face-to-face with Native American elder Nathan Phillips. According to previous Enquirer reporting, the two had been at separate events in Washington D.C. – the March for Life and an Indigenous Peoples March.
Sandmann didn’t appear to say anything to Phillips, but the video went viral and social media users made accusations of racism and privilege, The Enquirer reported. News reports, some inaccurate or missing context, followed.
At the time of Kirk’s call, he and his family were staying with family friends, fearful of having their private information or location publicly released online. He was kept out of school for his safety. And he’d lost a normalcy to his life that he said he never got back.
Through Kirk, Sandmann was introduced to other conservative influencers, who he said helped restore a sense of community and surrounded him with people who cared for him.
The incident fundamentally changed him. He became interested in politics, has worked on political campaigns and moved to Washington D.C.
“Once that Pandora’s box opened … I was never getting that back,” he said about his life before the incident.
‘I couldn’t take my eyes away’
Sandmann, who’s now 23 years old, saw the news of Kirk’s shooting on X. He was in Washington D.C., where he works as a press assistant for the Senate Republican Conference.
“I couldn’t take my eyes away from it yesterday,” he said. “It was very quiet around here and I think that quiet comes from a sense of shock.”
Sandmann said he’s been told that his experience in 2019 opened people’s eyes to the state of the media and how people vet information.
In that same vein, he said he hopes Kirk’s assassination will prompt people to ask themselves questions about society, political violence and how shootings like the one that killed Kirk happen.
“I don’t think anybody would deny that there’s fringe extremists and problems all over the spectrum – left, right, center, up and down,” he said. “I think we need to do our best to kind of put water on the flames as much as we can.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Charlie Kirk offered Nick Sandmann ‘friendship and comfort’