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UNBELIEVABLE: They’re Using A Drowning Victim To Start A Race Riot
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UNBELIEVABLE: They’re Using A Drowning Victim To Start A Race Riot

What we're seeing is not an accident. It's a coordinated effort to bring back the BLM riots of 2020.

Matt Walsh
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23 min

In the storied tradition of George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, and Michael Brown, Democrats have finally named their BLM martyr for the 2026 election season: an 18-year-old black man named Nolan Wells, who drowned while on a boat trip on the Fourth of July. 

We’re told he’s the latest casualty of white supremacy and, indeed, of whiteness itself. Take a look at the following footage, and as you watch it, keep in mind — this is the Democrats’ leader in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), talking about a random teenager who drowned while partying with his friends.

Watch:

Source: @LangmanVince/X.com

To be clear, is referring to a unanimous grand jury decision that found none of the conspiracy theories about Nolan Wells had any merit whatsoever. For the record, there were several black people on this grand jury, and they spent the better part of a week listening to all the evidence. 

But Hakeem Jeffries isn’t convinced. He thinks it’s very strange that Wells left his cellphone behind, even though several other people did too. It’s not strange to do when you’re swimming. Jeffries also seems to believe that Wells suffered a serious, potentially fatal head injury, which also isn’t remotely true.

We have to appreciate the irony here, which is that, after Barack Obama’s personal chef bizarrely drowned outside his mansion on Martha’s Vineyard a few years ago, these same people told us there was no cause for alarm.

Watch:

Source: @TalkMullins/X.com

As you can see from the video, there is documented evidence that the chef knew how to swim, and he should’ve been able to handle the pond on Obama’s estate. One day, nevertheless, he somehow died while paddleboarding, and no one on the Left finds it remotely suspicious. Maybe the chef really did just accidentally drown. But if you’re going to claim that there’s something inherently suspicious about an able-bodied male randomly drowning with no clear explanation, then by definition you must find this event at Obama’s house highly suspicious. 

On the other hand, if you’re willing to accept that random accidental drownings happen sometimes — actually, they happen a lot — and if you’re willing to defer to medical examiners and autopsies confirming that a drowning didn’t involve any foul play, especially if you aren’t demanding that Obama be hauled in for questioning, then logically you have to apply that to Nolan Wells. But the key word here is “logically,” and, as we know, the race hustlers do not concern themselves with logic. 

This case really deserves a deep dive now that Democrats have decided to make it a central talking point ahead of the midterms. And we also need to discuss how, at precisely the same moment that Democrats are trying to start a race war, leaders of third-world nations (mostly in Africa) are storming the United Nations demanding “reparations” (which presumably would ultimately be funneled to the progeny of the Africans who actually ran the slave trade).  

What we’re seeing is not an accident. It’s a coordinated effort to bring back the BLM riots of 2020. And we’re going to expose it. This is an all-out push to cause race riots in an election year, and it’s not hard to figure out who’s behind it. 

I want to begin with a horrifying killing that took place in Charlotte, North Carolina, in January of this year. Just before 6:00 P.M., a 28-year-old black woman named Q’Laundra Hood — yes, her name is Q’Laundra Hood — ran a red light and mowed down a white 25-year-old runner named Lance Sotelo, according to WCNC. 

Q’Laundra Hood then fled the scene, leaving Sotelo to die in the street. After Hood was apprehended the next day, the DA reduced more serious charges to “felony hit-and-run and misdemeanor death by vehicle” and gave the sentencing judge discretion on how to proceed. 

The case went before Mecklenburg County Superior Court Judge Reggie McKnight, who, as you already guessed, is black. After hearing all the evidence — and the pleas from the victim’s family and friends for a meaningful punishment — he sentenced Q’Laundra to a grand total of 16 to 36 months of jail time, with the entire sentence suspended except for 30 days. That means, realistically, she’s getting out of jail in 30 days — that’s how these “suspended sentences” always work, no matter what other crimes she might commit. Oh, and she also has to pay $765 in restitution. That’s it. 

For mowing down and killing a white guy in the middle of the street, this black woman has been given a lighter sentence than what you might receive for shoplifting or trespassing. In fact, in most states you can get six months in jail, or more, for reckless driving where you don’t kill anyone. Which means that this woman will spend less time in jail for recklessly driving and killing someone than many people have received for recklessly driving and not killing anyone. That’s how it works when your skin pigmentation is dark enough to qualify as a “get out of jail free” card. 

Cases like this happen all the time in this country. Here’s another example:

Watch:

Source: @mattvanswol/X.com

So a black man named Calvin Jones, who was already on pre-trial release for burglary, punches several women, a 15-year-old boy, and a father holding his 1-year-old child. He terrorizes a family festival. This just happened over the weekend in Aurora, Illinois. And after being arrested, he was released the same day. 

This is how it goes in this country, particularly in Left-wing cities. Black criminals can violently attack and even kill whomever they want. Particularly if their victims are white, they’ll suffer no consequences, or comparatively minor consequences. Instead, what will happen is that the most prominent Democrats and media outlets in the country will demonize white people and claim — without any evidence whatsoever — that whites are the ones who are somehow terrorizing black people.

The other day, we outlined the deranged effort on the Left to pretend that white supremacists are lynching random black people. This is an extensive and well-funded propaganda campaign — to the point that the Congressional Black Caucus, along with the NAACP, just met for an event called “STOP THE LYNCHINGS.”

They even added a noose for good measure. Never mind the fact that no one has been lynched this century. The last lynching in this country was more than 40 years ago. And the second to last one was 20 years before that. A congressional campaign to “stop the lynchings” in 2026 is like forming a task force to develop a polio vaccine in 2026. Meanwhile, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) posted the following message on social media:

Black folks are being found hanged in America. This is a national crisis and we CANNOT stand by while strange fruit hangs from trees across the country. We’re demanding a federal investigation NOW so we can stop modern-day lynchings.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was quick to agree:

This year, there have already been 10 reported hangings of Black people in the U.S. I’m proud to have signed onto [Ayanna Pressley’s] letter to address these widespread modern-day lynchings and put a stop to this racial terror.

Several other prominent Democrats echoed this messaging, including Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), who together have the approximate combined IQ of boiled cabbage:

Source: @Badhombre/X.com

They all claimed that black people were being lynched. But in every single one of these “reported hangings,” the victim was either murdered by a black person or committed suicide. In one case, a black man was actually recorded on camera dragging the noose to the site where he hanged himself. In another case, BLM lawyer Ben Crump — who has never seen a race hoax he didn’t like — ghosted the victim’s family because their case was so bad. 

That doesn’t mean Ben Crump has given up on his grift, of course. Lately, his main fixation — which is shared by top Democrats and black activists — has been Nolan Wells, who, as I mentioned, drowned during a July 4 boating trip with his friends on Horn Island, off Mississippi. 

This is a case that, in the eyes of many black people in this country, is a Watergate-level cover-up. Here’s a woman identifying herself as “Dr. Shola Mos-Shogbamimu” to give us the rundown on how this case is being perceived by a very large number of black people in America.

Watch:

Source: SholaMos1/X.com

We can assume that “Dr. Shola Mos-Shogbamimu” is not a medical doctor, based on the fact that she apparently believes “blunt force trauma” is inconsistent with drowning. Apparently, no one has ever hit their head and fallen into the water at any point in human history. 

As best I can tell, much of the outrage in this case is based on the following image from the day that Wells went missing.

He’s surrounded by white kids. Apparently, if a black guy hangs out with white guys and then later dies, that alone is evidence that he was murdered in some kind of homicidal racist conspiracy. To be clear, though — not that it even matters — while Wells is pictured with white people in this photograph, he wasn’t the only black guy at this gathering, as the grand jury found: 

The Grand Jury recognizes there have been public assertions that Mr. Wells was the only African American individual on Horn Island on July 4, 2026. The Grand Jury finds that Mr. Wells was not the only African American on Horn Island that day. These false assertions have led to misidentification, speculation, and rumors concerning the death of Mr. Wells.

To give some more context, Wells went to the island with his friends on a boat called the Triton (two other boats went as well — the Tideline and Palm Beach). In the late afternoon, the three boats left the island, but Wells (according to his friends) stayed behind. As the Triton was leaving, it experienced a bilge pump and motor malfunction, and there was a distress call from the boat to Sea Tow around 4 p.m. If you listen to audio recordings of this distress call that you’ll find online — including recordings pushed by Nancy Grace — it appears that the people on the boat are talking about Wells being dead. 

Listen:

Source: @NancyGrace/X.com

On its own, that audio obviously sounds alarming. It’s the kind of thing that makes it sound like Wells’ friends lied about leaving him on the island. The thing is, there’s no reason to believe that the audio is accurate. This was billed as “enhanced audio” by Nancy Grace, but it seems like it was “enhanced” by being totally made up, possibly with AI. This is also from the grand jury’s report: 

The Grand Jury received the original Sea Tow call made by the occupants of the Triton on July 4, 2026. The Grand Jury finds that the various Sea Tow calls and interpretations of the call circulating on the internet and social media are not true and accurate.

In other words, the smoking gun is a total fabrication, and it’s being spread all over the internet as if it’s real. That’s one of the reasons Ben Crump and the Democratic Party have been able to convince millions of people that Wells was murdered. 

Watch:

Source: @TMZ/X.com

It can be tempting to not take Ben Crump seriously, given that he looks and sounds and has the public speaking ability and presumably the SAT scores of a black Elmer Fudd. Unfortunately, even if Crump is a cartoonish dimwit, he has a lot of influence over a lot of people in this country who are also cartoonish dimwits. 

In the TMZ clip, Crump makes the cartoonishly dimwitted claim that somehow the evidence doesn’t matter, the medical report doesn’t matter, and witnesses don’t matter, because “common sense” tells us that Wells didn’t “just drown.” That claim might make sense to someone who has no sense — common or otherwise — but to everyone else, common sense runs in the exact opposite direction here.

Most rational adults know that drownings happen all the time. Roughly 4,000 to 4,500 people die from drowning every year in the United States, which averages about 11 people per day. And the majority of those victims are adults. Some of them are drunk or high, but usually, it’s just extremely bad luck. 

Indeed, in many of these cases, when people drown, it’s often because they hit their heads on a rock or the side of a boat, or a wave crashes into them. When that happens, it can be violent. It doesn’t mean someone murdered them. It’s a regular occurrence. It happens literally every day in this country. It’s sad and tragic every time. But there is absolutely nothing shocking, from a statistical perspective, about Nolan Wells or anyone else drowning. 

So what exactly makes the death of Nolan Wells suspicious in any way? The answer is — absolutely nothing. The only reason the district attorney in Jackson County, Mississippi, sent the case to a grand jury was to placate the mobs of black activists who demanded a prosecution. The DA didn’t want to have to make the decision herself, so she convened a grand jury to investigate the case for 5 days. During the grand jury’s exhaustive investigation — a grand jury that, I’ll reiterate, consisted of five black people — they listened to 43 witnesses. More than 100 subpoenas were issued. All kinds of experts testified. This is already way more than is usually done for accidental drownings where no foul play is evident or suspected. The grand jury, after hearing all of the testimony, concluded in no uncertain terms that “the position of, the condition of, time of discovery, and location of Mr. Wells’ body is consistent with drowning.” 

If you read their report, they addressed the specific issues Ben Crump and Hakeem Jeffries were complaining about: 

There was bruising on the back of Mr. Wells’ head which was not a fatal injury. Further, the Grand Jury found no evidence of any fatal injury or organic disease to Mr. Wells’ body. The State of Mississippi’s Chief Medical Examiner and Dr. [REDACTED] disagree about the presence of bruising (non-deep tissue) on Mr. Wells’ buttocks and shoulder. The Grand Jury considered credible evidence concerning the circumstances of how Mr. Wells sustained the injury to the back of his head, but the exact cause of the injury remains uncertain. A witness testified under oath that he saw Mr. Wells slip awkwardly off the side of a boat around the time of 3:30 p.m. on July 4, 2026, but could not say whether Mr. Wells struck his head during the fall. The witness testified that Mr. Wells continued to socialize after the fall and did not appear injured.

So whatever caused this “contusion,” it was not a fatal injury — contrary to what Hakeem Jeffries and Ben Crump suggested. No one clubbed this guy in the back of the head. Secondly, there’s reason to believe that Wells sustained the injury when he fell on the boat (I’ve also seen suggestions and speculation from morticians that, during the autopsy, it’s possible Wells would have suffered an injury consistent with a contusion, as his head was placed in a positioning device). As far as actual witness testimony in this case, the closest we have to an explanation for the contusion is that he fell and hit his head.

Now you might say, well, the witness who saw Wells fall was probably one of the murderers. It’s a gigantic racist cover-up, after all — so of course these secret “Klansmen” (who were friends with Wells for some reason) would lie about him falling and hitting his head. The thing is, the grand jury considered that possibility. And they didn’t simply take the witness’ word for it. This is from page 6 of the grand jury report:

The Grand Jury finds that GPS data and security footage confirm the accounts of the passengers on the Triton, Palm Beach, and Tideline. The Grand jury finds that Mr. Wells was not in any physical altercation or argument on July 4, 2026. The Grand Jury finds that the individuals who traveled to or from Horn Island on the Triton, Palm Beach, and Tideline cooperated fully with this investigation, including offering marine GPS devices, surveillance footage, cell phones, and statements to law enforcement officers and Mr. Wells’ family during this investigation. The Grand Jury finds that the position of, the condition of, time of discovery, and location of Mr. Wells’ body is consistent with drowning.

So this is what’s called “corroborating evidence.” We’re not simply relying on their testimony. We’re also relying on the fact that GPS devices, cellphones, and surveillance footage all support their version of events. Meanwhile, there is no evidence, anywhere, that supports the conspiracy theory that Wells was murdered.

Despite what they’re saying in public, Wells’ family knows this. That’s why, according to page 2 of the grand jury report, the family’s representatives “…advised that their investigation revealed no witnesses or evidence whom the legal team reasonably believes possess information germane to potential criminal activity that warrants referral to your office [the District Attorney’s Office].” Further, the family did not request that any “additional document, recording, photograph, digital media, report, or other material in the legal team’s possession be submitted to the Grand Jury.”

So they don’t have anything, in other words. There is no evidence, anywhere, that contradicts the obvious, plausible explanation. But because of the relentless propaganda from Ben Crump, the Democrats, and the media, a significant number of people are now convinced that there’s a grand racist conspiracy afoot. It’s gotten so deranged that the United States Cajun Navy — the volunteer search-and-rescue group that searched for Wells  — is now getting harassing phone calls from lunatics who are convinced they’re part of the KKK.

Watch:

Source: @SarahisCensored/X.com

Innocent volunteers who tried to rescue this kid are getting called Klansmen. They went to extraordinary measures to find him, and now they’re getting called racist. This is what Democrats want. They’d prefer to see some of these white people get slaughtered, actually.  To be clear, the primary reason they’re attacking the Cajun Navy is that they went public and didn’t affirm all of the lunatic conspiracy theories. 

Watch:

These are people who did more than almost anyone else to rescue Nolan Wells. And they’re being demonized for it because the platform of the Democratic Party is legitimately psychopathic. Here’s Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) pushing the same deranged narrative:

Meet the parents of Nolan Wells today at our forum, where we will honor them and other parents of murdered young boys. Our young black boys are being murdered, and nobody seems to care.

BLM activists are also staging events where the mother of Trayvon Martin met with the mother of Nolan Wells, apparently to try to draw some comparison between these two people. 

Of course, Trayvon Martin was a thug who viciously attacked an innocent man and tried to beat his head into the pavement. Nolan Wells, on the other hand, was widely liked and respected — he seemed like a completely normal, well-adjusted person. But when you’re running a racial psy-op, none of these distinctions matter. 

All that matters is that a black person is dead, and Democrats think he can be a useful political tool in an election year. It’s about as cynical and nihilistic as it gets. None of these people actually care about Nolan Wells or black people in general. It’s all a political game. 

It’s all part of a much larger strategy, which is always the case with high-profile BLM narratives like this. They’re never about the actual incident itself. The point is to shock and terrorize people into compliance with a false racial narrative, and then immediately pivot to advancing an anti-white agenda that’s been in the works for a long time. 

We’re seeing that today, with this case. It’s not a coincidence that Democrats are promoting fake lynchings at the same moment the United Nations is advancing a resolution to force white people to pay reparations.  

Take a look at this pathetic display from the U.N. Most of these clips are from this week. One by one, the leaders of various third-world hellholes — including Sierra Leone and Suriname  — took turns demanding “reparations” for slavery, as part of a new “resolution” for racial equity or something. 

What these people never talk about — because it would destroy their narrative, and prevent them from ever getting handouts again — is the fact that almost everyone who ended up as a slave in the Americas was first enslaved by Africans. So who exactly would receive these “reparations?” The descendants of the Dahomey, who literally sailed boats in the blood of their slaves? Are we supposed to enrich those people, at the expense of white people — the descendants of the men who risked their lives to end the institution of slavery? Explain to us, in plain English if you can, exactly how that makes any sense whatsoever?

This is from a recent editorial by a conservative politician in the UK named Daniel Hannan, who makes the point well:

This has gone far enough. The countries coming after us for slavery reparations, mainly Caribbean states but also some in Africa, are not just rude and ungrateful. They are launching a hostile campaign against us, and we should respond accordingly. If Barbados pursues us through the courts for trillions of pounds, we should cancel our aid programmes there. If Ghana wants to lead a Third Worldist posse against us in the UN, we should deny all visa applications from that country. We have a range of sanctions to deploy against unfriendly countries, ranging from targeted embargoes to travel bans. We should recognise that we are dealing with hostile states. To target Britain, which did more than any other nation on the planet to stamp out what had previously been a universal institution, is not just bad manners. It is an act of bellicosity. Britain was not just early in declaring slavery illegal. It then did something unique, pouring its blood and treasure into a campaign to extirpate the foul institution everywhere. Even when we were engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Napoleon, we were still diverting warships to hunt down the slavers.

So yes, they want reparations from the descendants of the people who ended the institution that their ancestors pioneered. But maybe the worst part — above and beyond all of this — is how these leeches claim that colonialism had only “negative effects” on their countries. Actually, it’s closer to the opposite. 

Colonialism brought literacy and prosperity to the most backward places on the planet — to people who hadn’t even invented the wheel. And if you doubt that, all you have to do is take a look at how these countries were doing before the colonizers arrived, and after the colonizers left. 

It’s not an accident that Zimbabwe and South Africa fell apart once the white people were expelled. Nor is it an accident that the same trajectory played out in Uganda, India, Ghana, Suriname, Algeria, and many other countries.

This is a basic historical fact that you’re not supposed to say out loud: Colonization was the best thing to happen to the Third World, and particularly to Africa. By every objective metric, they were doing better under the leadership of colonizers than on their own. And, as it happens, there was one African nation that demonstrated this point better than any other — it was a country ruled by a depraved queen who was determined, from the moment she seized power, to expel as much white foreign influence as possible. How did that turn out?

For the answer to that question — in all of its very gruesome detail — you should watch the new documentary we’re releasing today on The Daily Wire, called “The Real History of Colonization: Africa.” It’s an exhaustive look at what colonialism actually entailed — and how the British Empire, which the Third World resents, was actually the best thing that ever happened to them.

WATCH: Real History with Matt Walsh 

“The Real History of Colonization: Africa” is out right now for All Access members at The Daily Wire, and it will be available for all other Daily Wire subscribers on Wednesday.  It’s a deeply researched, fascinating historical narrative that we spent a lot of time on. We also learned a great deal in the process, which is one of the most rewarding parts of working on this series in general. And this particular story is obviously very relevant right now. 

We are witnessing, once again, an all-out effort to defame our ancestors and spark race riots based on total fabrications, which is now the go-to Leftist strategy in election years. 

The best response to this campaign of deception is to study what really happened — and if you do that, in all likelihood, you’ll be radicalized. You will realize the extent of the depravity we’re up against. And if nothing else, you will discover some truly disturbing details about what self-governance really looks like in Africa. You will come away with an undying resolve to never let these people run our country into the ground, in the same way they’ve utterly destroyed and desecrated their own homeland, to a degree that is unspeakable in polite company even to this day.

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