The videos that initially flooded the social media on Friday showed an elderly man beating a hand-drum surrounded by a crowd of high school students, who can be seen jumping around and cheering. One boy in particular is seen standing very close to the man with what many considered an unabashed smirk on his face.

No slogans or chants can be heard in the videos, although some of the uploaders said the students were chanting "Build the Wall!" and mocking the elderly man, who turned out to be Nathan Phillips, a 64-year-old Vietnam War veteran and a Native American elder.

The incident took place near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, where the Indigenous People's Day March coincided with the anti-abortion March for Life. The boys in the video were from the Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky, who had attended March for Life event and were apparently waiting for buses to pick them up.

Phillips then appeared in another Instagram video, in which he said: "When I was there singing, I heard them saying 'Build that wall, build that wall."

"This is indigenous lands. We're not supposed to have walls here. We never did," he said, while wiping away tears.

The story was instantly scooped up by liberally-minded mainstream media outlets. The elder gave an interview to the CNN, in which he said that he had "fear for those youths, fear for their future, fear for their souls, their spirit, what they're going to do to this country."