During an exclusive interview with Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann for NBC’s Today show on Wednesday, co-host Savannah Guthrie interrogated the teenager about his “infamous” altercation with a Native American activist and other left-wing demonstrators at the Lincoln Memorial days earlier. She repeatedly suggested that he and his fellow students were to blame for the incident and even wondered if the “Make America Great Again” hats they wore escalated the situation.

After hyping Sandmann’s “now infamous encounter with a Native American elder” in the segment intro, the taped interview began with Guthrie asking: “Do you feel, from this experience, that you owe anybody an apology? Do you see your own fault in any way?” After Sandmann explained that he had done nothing wrong and “had every right” to be there, Guthrie breathlessly followed up: “What’s it been like to be at the center of this storm?”

Talking about the confrontation with Native American activist Nathan Phillips, Guthrie pressed: “Did anyone say, ‘Build the wall’?” Sandmann denied hearing anyone say that: “I never heard anyone say ‘Build the wall’ and I don’t think I’ve seen it in any videos.” The Today show anchor actually confirmed that fact: “After a review of the videos, NBC News could not hear anyone shouting that hot-button phrase...” Despite the lack of evidence, she quickly added that “Phillips claims he heard the teens shout, ‘Build the wall.’”

Minutes later, Guthrie fretted to Sandmann: “Why didn’t you walk away?” She then narrated: “The center of the firestorm, what critics characterize as a smirk, some saying it was an attempt to stare down Phillips.” The host asserted to the teen: “What some people see is a young kid with a smirk on his face.”

Guthrie demanded: “Have you looked at that video and thought about how it felt from the other’s perspective? In other words, there were a lot of you, a handful of the others. Do you think they might have felt threatened by a bunch of young men kind of beating their chests?” She even argued that Sandmann simply standing in place was an “aggressive” action: “There’s something aggressive about standing there, standing your ground, you both stood your ground, and it was like a stare-down. What do you think of that moment?”

Wrapping up the contentious exchange, Guthrie worried that Sandmann’s choice of hat may have been the real problem: “As for the red 'Make America Great Again' hats that some students were wearing, Sandmann says he bought his that day from a street vendor in Washington. Do you think if you weren’t wearing that hat, this might not have happened or it might have been different?”

In addition to discussing the Covington students’ encounter with Phillips, Guthrie also explained how the whole incident began:

Sandmann and dozens of his classmates had just finished attending an anti-abortion March for Life rally when they converged with five Hebrew Israelites, a radical movement that is “growing more militant” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

She asked Sandmann to describe some of the vile insults hurled at them by the left-wing group. Sandmann replied: “ I heard them call us incest kids, bigots, racists, they called us [bleep].” A clip ran of one of the Hebrew Israelite members shouting the disgusting remarks at the students.

Even after clearly establishing that the students were victims of intense verbal abuse, Guthrie still suggested that they brought it on themselves:

GUTHRIE: Did you feel threatened at all? SANDMANN: I definitely felt threatened. GUTHRIE: There were more of you than them, but you felt like they were stronger? SANDMANN: They were a group of adults and I wasn’t sure what was gonna happen next.

She added: “It’s unclear from the video who actually started the confrontation. Each side believes it was the first to be taunted.”

Continuing to grill Sandmann about the altercation, she wondered: “Do you think it was a good idea to start chanting back at the protesters?” Guthrie then pressed: “Did anyone shout any insults back or any racial slurs back at the group?” Sandmann pushed back: “We’re a Catholic school and it’s not tolerated. They don’t tolerate racism, and none of my classmates are racist people.”

Before airing the interview with Sandmann, Guthrie revealed that “NBC News has sat down with Nathan Phillips three times and heard his side of the story.” After the interview with the student, she promised viewers that Phillips would get a fourth sit-down with the network: “...we’ve interviewed Mr. Phillips a few times, but we invited him again now, in light of this conversation. So I think we’re going to hear from him tomorrow on Today.”

As Media Research Center President Brent Bozell declared on Wednesday, NBC and the rest of the liberal media have perpetrated a “hit job” against the students of Covington Catholic High School. Guthrie’s interview is just the latest example of that hostility, after days of deceptive coverage of the incident.

Here is a transcript of the questions Guthrie posed to Sandmann in the interview aired on the January 23 Today show: