Newsmax host Greg Kelly issued a snarky, equivocating correction and apology on Tuesday night for airing a mugshot of a totally different person and claiming it was that of Texas mass shooter Mauricio Garcia.
Following this weekend’s massacre at an Allen outlet mall, researchers and law enforcement have revealed that Garcia had an extensive online history of neo-Nazism and white supremacy. Additionally, the 33-year-old former security guard had tattoos of swastikas and Nazi SS bolts, and wore a patch reading “RWDS,” an acronym for the extremist slogan “right wing death squad.”
Despite the overwhelming evidence that Garcia was a white supremacist with violently far-right beliefs, MAGA influencers and chief Twitter troll Elon Musk have outright dismissed this as nothing more than a “psyop.” Pointing to Garcia’s Hispanic heritage while sharing an inaccurate photo of someone with the same name, right-wing media has claimed the mainstream press “manufactured” this narrative in a continuing effort to demonize Trump supporters.
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Considering Kelly’s cartoonishly over-the-top pro-Trump schtick, it wasn’t all that surprising that he would parrot MAGA Twitter’s conspiracies about the Allen shooting. However, by the time he went to air on Monday night, it had long been established that the mugshot floating around online was not of the actual shooter, but of a 36-year-old with the same name who’d been arrested in Dallas County, Texas. (Authorities have said Garcia did not have a criminal record.)
“Look: this is not a white supremacist,” Kelly declared while pointing to the entirely wrong photo. He’d also air the inaccurate image later in the program.
The following morning, a Newsmax spokesperson said the network “regrets the error and will be issuing a correction on air this evening.” At the same time, the rep said “numerous outlets ran an incorrect photo due to the Dallas County Sherriff’s office having a mugshot with someone by the same name.”
At the top of Greg Kelly Reports on Tuesday night, Kelly did indeed address the error. The conservative host, however, spent the bulk of that time both shrugging off the mistake and taking swipes at the rest of the press.
“We got to clear up something from last night. At this time last night, we showed a picture of what we thought was the guy involved in the shooting in Allen, Texas,” he said while an on-air graphic blared “Fake News Never Acknowledges Its Mistakes.”
He continued: “Now a lot of media organizations showed this picture; turned out to not be the guy. So we’re sorry about that.”
With his tone growing ever snarkier, Kelly then took the opportunity to air his grievances about the coverage of Border Patrol agents seemingly whipping migrants from horseback. An investigation later found that the agents didn’t strike immigrants at the Mexican border, but did find “failures at multiple levels.”
“And by the way, when a mistake is made here on this show, we admit it, we own it, we do it right at the top of the show. Not at the bottom. Not in the last 15 seconds,” he huffed. “And now, I’d like an apology from the mainstream media for all those awful things they said about those guys on horseback. the border patrol, right? Remember that?! Remember all the unfair things? Yeah, let's have a let's have a few apologies for that. And a million other things.”
