Savannah Guthrie called out for interviewing student from Lincoln Memorial incident: 'You don't have to do this'

Savannah Guthrie called out for interviewing student from Lincoln Memorial incident: 'You don't have to do this'

Savannah Guthrie is being called out for her latest high-profile interview.

On Tuesday, the "Today" co-anchor took to Twitter to reveal that she had sat down with Nicholas Sandmann, the student at the center of the recent incident at the Lincoln Memorial involving students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky.

"Sitting down with Nicholas Sandmann - the student at the center of the protest controversy at the Lincoln Memorial," she captioned an uncomfortable photo from the sit-down. "Airs tomorrow on @TODAYshow."

Twitter was quick to call out Guthrie for the interview, telling her, "you don't have to do this."

"Do you think Pepe the Frog is available for Thursday’s show?" one person replied. "Can Dylann Roof do a segment from prison? Heart-to-heart with some Fentanyl traffickers?"

"Make sure to ask him about the videos of the group harassing women on the street and the ones where they said ‘It isn’t rape if you like it," another person reacted. "Also the pictures of blackface."

"In any other time, this young man would likely be suspended from school for disrespect," another account wrote. "You people put him on TV."

Others called the interview "yuck," "nope!," "keep it" and, calling to mind preview NBC News interviews with controversial figures like Alex Jones and Vladimir Putin, "I thought you fired Megyn Kelly."

Sandmann was the center of a viral video that showed him, along with hoards of his mostly-white male classmates wearing Make America Great Again hats, in a tense confrontation with a Native American Vietnam War vet, Nathan Phillips, 64. The standoff took place during the Indigenous Peoples March, which took place on the National Mall.

The students were reportedly sent by their Kentucky school to participate in the anti-abortion March for Life event that took place on Washington, DC, on Friday.

"I never interacted with this protestor," Sandmann said in a Sunday night statement. "I did not speak to him. I did not make any hand gestures or other aggressive moves. To be honest, I was startled and confused as to why he had approached me. ... I believed that by remaining motionless and calm, I was helping to diffuse the situation."

President Trump weighed in on the situation on Tuesday morning saying on Twitter that the students at Covington Catholic High School were "symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be."

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