Political commentator Michelle Malkin accused the media of playing the “hate card” against Covington Catholic High School students, on “Fox & Friends” Thursday, and said it ultimately backfired.

Malkin cheered Covington student Nick Sandmann for deciding to pursue litigation and said those who clamored for the Kentucky students to be punished should be held to account. (RELATED: Investigation Found No Proof That Covington Catholic Boys Said ‘Offensive Or Racist Statements’ To Nathan Phillips)

“The theme here, and I’ve been talking about this for the past several weeks and months now, is that we finally have people who are willing to fight back against the defamation and smear machines, because it wasn’t just the archdiocese that jumped the gun,” she said. “Why did they do that? Because of the immense amount of social media and mainstream media pressure that stereotypes people, that plays the hate card game and nobody ever pushes back.”

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An investigation into the January incident released Wednesday found there was no proof of any racist or offensive behavior by the students.

“So finally, we’re going to have litigation and these people are going to be called to the carpet, particularly the ones that have blue check marks by their name on Twitter that caused this whole maelstrom in the first place,” Malkin continued.

Malkin also condemned the archdiocese for jumping to conclusions and said the frenzy was driven by fear.

“It comes to a conclusion that was obvious to people who were fair minded and did their due diligence before they jumped the gun. And, unfortunately, it has to be said that the archdiocese in Covington were among those who indicted the kids along with everyone else,” she said earlier in the interview.

“There is so much fear and there’s so much prejudgment of people based on bigoted stereotypes,” she said.

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