The young men of Covington Catholic High School have been subjected to nothing short of a political witch hunt because of their faith, the color of their skin, and their devotion to making America great again. And they are owed an apology.

What CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and National Review (among others) did to these teenage boys is nothing short of child abuse.

The boys had been in Washington, DC, to participate in Friday’s March for Life. Later in the day, they assembled outside the Lincoln Memorial to wait for school buses. And that’s where the trouble started.

According to the mainstream media, the boys surrounded and terrorized Native American activist Nathan Phillips. A video clip showed what the media described as a teenage boy wearing a MAGA hat blocking Phillips and staring him down.

“It was getting ugly, and I was thinking, ‘I’ve got to find myself an exit out of this situation and finish my song at the Lincoln Memorial,’” Phillips told The Washington Post. “I started going that way, and that guy in the hat stood in my way and we were at an impasse. He just blocked my way and wouldn’t allow me to retreat.”

Phillips told the Detroit Free Press that he had seen the white Catholic students “attacking these four black individuals.”

“There was that moment when I realized I’ve put myself between beast and prey,” he told the newspaper. “These young men were beastly and these old black individuals was their prey, and I stood in between them and so they needed their pounds of flesh and they were looking at me for that.”

It was all untrue, of course — but that did not stop the mainstream media from going nuclear.

“Boys in ‘Make America Great Again’ Hats Mob Native Elder at Indigenous Peoples March,” read the New York Times story.

“The Catholic Church’s Shameful History of Native American Abuses,” The Washington Post declared.

Even conservative outlets like National Review turned on the Catholic boys — without bothering to check their facts.

“The Covington Students Might as Well Have Just Spit on the Cross,” read a screed written by National Review Deputy Editor Nicholas Frankovich.

“They mock a serious, frail-looking older man and gloat in their momentary role as Roman soldiers to his Christ,” he wrote.

Seriously? National Review compared the Native American activist to Jesus Christ? Sweet mercy.

As a result of the media coverage, the students and their families have been terrorized and publicly shamed. Some students were identified and targeted by leftist activists.

And now, thanks to irrefutable video evidence, we know that the entire story was a hoax — a flat-out lie.

The videos, which I have personally viewed, show that Phillips and some of his associates were the ones who instigated the confrontation. It was Phillips who thrust his drum in the face of the teenage boy wearing the MAGA hat.

“White people, go back to Europe where you came from,” one of the activists shouted at the Catholic students. “This is not your land.”

And the young man in the so-called “stare down” can be seen trying to calm down a classmate while one of the adult activists cursed the child.

The boys were also accused of chanting, “Build that wall.” However, based on the videos I’ve seen, there is no evidence to back up those accusations. Oh, and those black protesters turned out to be members of the Black Hebrew Israelites, a radical group known for being anti-gay.

The video clearly shows the black protesters berating the teenage boys with all sorts of racial and homophobic slurs.

“Your president is a homosexual,” one of the grown men told the boys. “Your president is a homosexual. Greek was a bunch of homosexuals, just like the Romans. You proud of sodomy?”

“You give fa—ts rights,” the man shouted.

At that point, the Catholic school boys jeered in protest and disgust. One of the boys could be heard rebuking the Black Hebrew Israelites for using anti-gay language.

And yet, that information was completely left out of the mainstream media news coverage.

“Covington Catholic High School students surrounded, intimidated and chanted over Native Americans singing about indigenous people’s strength and spirit,” read the lead paragraph in Cincinnati.com.

In context, it appears that what really happened on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is that a group of Catholic school boys was targeted and harassed by grown adults just because they were white, Catholic Trump supporters.

But the mainstream media doesn’t care about the truth because they believe people who support President Trump and believe in God are irredeemable deplorables.

“Don’t let your Catholic school’s students wear MAGA hats on a field trip for the March for Life,” New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote on Twitter.

It’s not the first time that people have been attacked for wearing those ball caps. And I doubt it will be the last.

There are a whole lot of grownups who owe those teenage boys an apology — starting with the liars in the mainstream media.

It is not a sin to wear a Make America Great Again ball cap. But it is a sin to bear false witness.