Over the past month, many people have posted on social media expressing their prayers and apologies to actor Jussie Smollett for being attacked in a brutal hate crime.

From the start, I knew there was something odd about this story, but I chose to remain silent and watch the facts continue to surface.

[media-credit name=”Jose Gonzalez/Flickr” align=”alignright” width=”300″][/media-credit]Jussie Smollett described his attack as a “violent hate crime”. He claimed to the Chicago Police that he was brutally attacked by two white males wearing MAGA hats, who put a noose around his neck, beat him, yelled racial and homophobic slurs at him, poured bleach on him and yelled, “This is MAGA country,” according to Fox News.

Now the first thing I found odd about this story was who committed this crime. The easiest people to blame in any attack are Trump supporters because the media will wreak havoc over it. But when really listening to the context of the story, it is obvious this was not done by a Trump supporter.

If we look at the 2016 election data via the Chicago Magazine, Hillary Clinton won 83.7 percent of votes (890,705 votes), while Trump won 12.5 percent of votes (132,738 votes). Now it is no secret that this city is no fan of President Trump or his supporters. This being said, if two white men were lurking the streets in the late hours of the night with MAGA hats on, they are most likely the ones that are going to get beat up rather than beating someone else up.

This is just proven. We see attacks on Trump supporters and conservatives all the time, but it doesn’t blow up in the media because people don’t think violence against Trump supporters is an issue. Take for example the attack that occurred at the University of California-Berkeley. A conservative student was brutally punched in the face for simply promoting Turning Point USA, a group that promotes conservatism on college campuses, according to Fox News.

The other problem I had with this story is that the attackers yelled “this is MAGA country.” Now, who in their right mind thinks Chicago is “MAGA country?” If Trump managed to turn a city that voted 83.7 percent against him into “his country,” then I feel it is only right to go down to the White House right now and shake his hand.

After having all these reservations about this “hate crime” it was much to my delight when I heard that the attack was completely staged by Smollett himself.

Smollett paid brothers Abimbola (“Abel”) and Olabinjo (“Ola”) Osundairo $3,500 to initiate the attack by writing them a check, according to CBS News. He also gave strict instructions to the brothers on how he wanted them to carry out the “attack.” Smollett told the brothers they needed to yell racial and homophobic slurs at him, not harm him too badly and allow him to appear that he is fighting back. Quite a long list of instructions for a “hate crime.”

It is beyond disappointing to see an individual stage something that have caused people to be permanently damaged both mentally and physically or even killed.

Hate crimes are real issues that people face and by people staging attacks of their own they completely undermine actual attacks.

When the news surfaced that Smollett orchestrated this attack on his own, people blamed this mentality on living in fear because of Trump. Pathetic.

The reason why people do this kind of things is that being an angry, violent, racist, misogynistic and homophobic person are character traits the media and Democrats like to associate with Trump supporters. Which in my opinion could not be further from the truth.

Another “hate crime” that took place at the Brown County church in Indiana consisted of someone spray painting “HEIL TRUMP,” drawing a swastika and writing out a gay slur on the side of the church. People went crazy trying to figure out what Trump supporting degenerate would do such a heinous thing to a church. Turns out, it was the church organist. He claimed he did this because he wanted to “mobilize a movement” due to his disappointment of the 2016 election, according to CBS channel 4.

Perhaps a better way to deal with your disappointment could be to sit at home and cry instead of spray painting a swastika on the side of a church. Just a suggestion.

It is disappointing to see how often people fake these hate crimes and blame them on Trump supporters. Martha MacCallum, the host of Fox News program “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” stated perfectly why people continue to do these things.

“People will get the attention they want if they blame these actions on Trump supporters,”she said.

I believe MacCallum is 100 percent correct in saying this. If the media learns to fact check and get the story correct before spewing out that Trump supporters are anti-Semitic, racist, etc., maybe more people will stop and think before they commit these crimes.

At the end of the day, I am just happy that the man who committed this heinous attack against Smollett will soon be behind bars.