Exclusive — GOP Convention Speakers to Include Nick Sandmann, Gov. Kristi Noem

Covington Catholic high school student Nick Sandmann, who was viciously smeared by the establishment media and has won settlements from the Washington Post and CNN, will speak at the Republican National Convention (RNC), Trump campaign and RNC officials confirmed to Breitbart News exclusively.

In addition to Sandmann, campaign and Convention officials confirmed to Breitbart News what the Washington Post reported previously, that the St. Louis couple Mark and Patricia McCloskey will speak at the RNC next week. In addition, Andrew Pollack—whose daughter Meadow was killed in the Parkland shooting at Stoneham Douglas High School in February 2018—will speak at the Convention, a Trump campaign official confirmed to Breitbart News. Abby Johnson, a former clinic director at Planned Parenthood who is now a leading pro-life activist, will also speak at the Convention, as will South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and GOP candidate for U.S. House and veteran Sean Parnell.

Sources familiar with the plans told Breitbart News that each of these cases—in particular, those of Sandmann, the McCloskeys, Pollack, and Johnson—illustrate the potentially disastrous consequences of Democrat governance.

When Sandmann—donning a red “Make America Great Again” hat—was with his classmates at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, a Native American activist, Nathan Phillips, began banging a drum in his face. Media coverage originally framed it as Sandmann being confrontational with Phillips, but full video of the incident that emerged later proved the opposite to be true. Sandmann has filed a number of lawsuits against a variety of establishment media outlets, and has won settlements from the Washington Post and CNN so far.

A GOP official told Breitbart News that Sandmann being on stage at the Convention will demonstrate the dangers of “cancel culture,” something President Donald Trump delivered a blistering speech against on July 3 at Mount Rushmore in the lead-up to Independence Day. That’s part of why Noem, the governor of South Dakota, is speaking at the convention, but also because of her response to the coronavirus pandemic. Noem was one of the few governors to resist lockdowns altogether, and her state’s public health and economic pictures are faring much better than many Democrat-run states several months in.

The McCloskeys, meanwhile, received international attention as rioters stormed onto their property when they were marching through St. Louis. The couple appeared outside their home wielding firearms in a show of force to protect themselves and their property from the leftist mob bearing down on them.

Pollack’s daughter Meadow was killed in the shooting in Parkland, a shooting that sparked the March for Our Lives, where several of the kids who survived, including David Hogg, became supporters of Democrats’ push for gun control. Pollack, meanwhile, has sought to be much more of a voice of reason as he and his son—Meadow’s brother Hunter Pollack—have sought to speak out for more common-sense solutions to violence than gun control.

Johnson was, for eight years a clinic director at Planned Parenthood, who left in 2009 and began speaking out against abortions and what happened inside Planned Parenthood clinics.

Parnell is the GOP nominee for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 17th congressional district and will face off against Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) in November. Before he launched his congressional campaign, Parnell served as a U.S. Army Ranger Captain in the “Outlaw Platoon” for 485 days on the Afghan-Pakistan border.