Conservative media offer a VERY different take on what Trump supporters did to that Black Lives Matter activist

Donald Trump isn’t exactly apologetic about an incident at his rally in Birmingham at which a protester sporting a Black Lives Matter shirt was reportedly punched, kicked and knocked to the ground. The Republican presidential front-runner said on Fox News that “maybe he should’ve been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”

But some conservative media outlets have volunteered another defense for Trump and his supporters: Perhaps the protester, Mercutio Southall, wasn’t really roughed up at all. Breitbart is leading the way in questioning the first-hand reporting of other journalists who covered the event, which was attended by about 10,000 people.

A Washington Post reporter wrote that she “watched as one of the men put his hands on Southall’s neck and heard a female onlooker repeatedly shout: ‘Don’t choke him!’ ” Yet in a story bearing Breitbart’s customary all-caps headline (CNN’s NEW TRUMP SLAM NOT SUPPORTED BY ITS OWN VIDEO), the conservative site offers a different version of events. In this account, “it is unclear how the black protester ended up on the ground.”