Monday night’s Newsmax broadcast of Greg Kelly Reports repeatedly showed viewers a mugshot of a man purported to be the mass shooter who killed eight and wounded seven at an Allen, Texas, shopping mall over the weekend. But it wasn’t.
A Newsmax spokesperson told The Daily Beast on Tuesday morning that the network would address the error on air, noting that other media outlets had also erroneously shared the wrong image.
“As you might know, numerous outlets ran an incorrect photo due to the Dallas County Sherriff’s office having a mugshot with someone by the same name,” the flack stated, sharing a fact-checking article about the inaccurate picture.
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“Newsmax regrets the error and will be issuing a correction on air this evening,” he added.
The actual gunman, Mauricio Garcia, 33, committed the shooting spree with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle while donning tactical gear that featured an acronym commonly used by neo-Nazis. But his photograph was not the one that Newsmax’s 10 p.m. audience saw. Instead, they were shown an August 2022 mugshot of a then-35-year-old with the same name who was arrested in Dallas County, Texas.
During the segment, as the wrong photograph appeared on screen, Kelly sought to minimize the racist elements of the shooter’s motivations. “Look: this is not a white supremacist,” he declared after pointing to the erroneous photograph. He then felt it necessary to make it clear that “we abhor” white supremacy.
“But you know what the left does, right?” he continued. “They think anything MAGA must be white supremacist. That is appalling. This is just pathetic.”
Garcia had apparently praised Hitler in posts on the social media site OK.ru, The New York Times reported Monday, and in late April shared pictures of a swastika tattoo and Nazi SS bolts on a torso that is believed to be his own. Yet after Garcia’s white supremacist’s sympathies were publicized, Kelly is calling foul.
“I think they’re making it up as they go along,” the Newsmax host claimed baselessly. “Sorry, but they have very, very little credibility. The same people—the media establishment, components of federal law enforcement—tell us that January 6 is the worst thing that ever happened since Pearl Harbor. I don’t believe these people, and neither should you.”
