The MSNBC channel erroneously reported that the suspect in the 2 April ramming attack on the Capitol checkpoint was a "white male". NBC News correspondent Pete Williams made the statement, soon proved to be wrong by the authorities, citing undisclosed sources during the "Katy Tur Reports" programme, which runs at 2pm ET.
"The question now is, what's the condition of the Capitol Police officers who were injured when the man – we're told it was a white male that was driving the car - when the man got out of the car and attacked the police officers with a knife," the correspondent said.
MSNBC's Pete Williams of Capitol attacker: "We're told the driver is a white male"
— Dr. John Hancock, DMin (@rdscrypto) April 3, 2021
Who told them this 25-year-old follower of the Nation of Islam was a white male? Is this just the default now? I usually brush it off, but there's just no excuse for journalism this bad! pic.twitter.com/Rohx0nBP9T
The erroneous MSNBC report comes nearly three months after the Capitol suffered from another, larger attack, carried out by a mob of Trump supporters disappointed by his loss. The protesters, who attended the then-president's rally in Washington DC on 6 January, stormed the Congress' building after Trump's speech, during which he repeated his unsubstantiated voter fraud allegations.
Note: the Capitol attacker was identified as a white male by MSNBC’s Pete Williams. Not me personally.
— saki saki saki (@radiocandied) April 2, 2021
Both political parties and Trump himself condemned the actions of the rioters, although the president's opponents and some of his allies accused Trump of provoking the mob. The mainstream media covering the 6 January events, including MSNBC, claimed that a significant part of the rioters seen on the videos purportedly belonged to "white supremacist" organisations.
Who Was the Attacker in 2 April Capitol Ramming?
Officials revealed that the suspect, who was shot dead after ramming two Capitol police officers and emerging from his car wielding a knife, was, in fact, a 25-year-old black resident of Indiana, called Noah Green. The motives of the young man, who killed one officer and seriously wounded another, remain unknown, but media reports claim that his last Instagram post was captioned: "The US government is the #1 enemy of Black people!"
His social media accounts have since been taken down, but some media outlets apparently managed to take a look at their contents. Several media reported that Green proclaimed himself a supporter of Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI) - a Black religious and nationalist movement, which, despite its name, has little to do with the tenets of Islam. The man also allegedly lost his job during the pandemic and had experienced unspecified mental issues for some time.
His brother, Brendan, told in an interview with The Washington Post that Noah Green was "violently ill" and suffered from hallucinations, heart palpitations, headaches, and suicidal thoughts. He said that the man recently has been living in Virginia with his family, who was worried about his condition, but added that Green left the home not long before the 2 April attack.
