Follow NASCAR banning Confederate flags, Bubba Wallace, the only black driver on the circuit, found a noose in his garage. The outrage was only matched by the support Wallace got from liberals who normally hate car racing. It was the feel-good story of the week except it’s not remotely true. Federal investigators determined nobody put a noose in Wallace’s garage to intimidate him or make a racist statement. In fact, there probably wasn’t even a noose at all.
The story goes that someone left a noose in Bubba Wallace’s garage on Sunday when the GEICO 500 at the Talladega Speedway was postponed because of rain. The outrage was immediate and even the feds got involved vowing an investigation.
The day of the race, every racer and members of their pit crews stood behind Wallace on the track in solidarity as the National Anthem was played. Liberals who never watched one Nascar race were suddenly huge fans.
The narrative being pushed was that racists were trying to intimidate a black man in a white man’s sport and that Wallace was rising above the hate.
Then, one NASCAR fan noticed something a little suspicious about pictures from the garage Wallace allegedly found the noose:
#nascarnoose solved. These images are all from the garages at Talladega SuperSpeedway.
Image 1 shows rope “nooses” are affixed to every garage bay door as a pull down.
Image 2 shows Bubba’s bay 4 in Nov. 2019.
Image 3 is of bay 4 after the incident. Notice the rope is cut. pic.twitter.com/2rHdSdgtOo
— James (@JamesEBeatty) June 23, 2020
With that, theories began to float that this was a Jussie Smollett-style hate crime hoax that apparently NASCAR was involved in. Both Wallace and NASCAR condemned anyone who didn’t buy the veracity of the noose story:
Following the discovery of a noose in the garage of Bubba Wallace — who helped spark the company’s new policy to prohibit the presence of Confederate flags at any events — NASCAR’s only African American driver has to had to hear multiple ignorant and unfounded opinions being spouted online, suggesting the incident was staged or never even happened.
“It’s simple-minded people like that, the ones that are afraid of change, they use everything in their power to defend what they stand up for instead of trying to listen and understand what’s going on,” said Wallace. “It offends me that people would go to those measures, but again, I’m not shocked. People are entitled to their own opinion to make them feel good, to make them sleep at night.”
“That is something that personally offends me. This is a terrible, terrible act that has happened and those who would think that this is staged, I don’t even know where to go with that, frankly,” said NASCAR president Steve Phelps.
How about we go here with it? AL.com reports the feds have finished their investigation into this horrific hate crime and…well it’s not a hate crime at all:
An investigation into the discovery of a noose in the garage stall of Black driver Bubba Wallace at the NASCAR race Sunday showed the rope had been there since last year and no federal crime was committed.
Northern District of Alabama U.S. Attorney Jay Town on Monday announced his office had launched an investigation along with the FBI and the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Town said they were looking to see whether there are violations of federal law.
Town and FBI Special Agent in Charge Johnnie Sharp Jr. on Tuesday released this statement about the probe: “On Monday, fifteen FBI special agents conducted numerous interviews regarding the situation at Talladega Superspeedway. After a thorough review of the facts and evidence surrounding this event, we have concluded that no federal crime was committed.
The FBI learned that garage number 4, where the noose was found, was assigned to Bubba Wallace last week. The investigation also revealed evidence, including authentic video confirmed by NASCAR, that the noose found in garage number 4 was in that garage as early as October 2019. Although the noose is now known to have been in garage number 4 in 2019, nobody could have known Mr. Wallace would be assigned to garage number 4 last week.
And thanks to that tweet from the NASCAR fan, we know the “noose” was probably just a rope used to pull the garage door shut.
Hopefully Bubba Wallace will apologize to all of those “small-minded” people who doubted he was the victim of a racist attack and I’m sure the liberal media will put just as much enthusiasm into the truth as they did the lie. i won’t hold my breath.
