Chicago Police Spokesperson Disputes 'MAGA' Angle of Jussie Smollett Attack -- UPDATE 2

UPDATE 2: OK, now I'm hearing the reason for the discrepancy is that Smollett added that detail during his second interview with police. And now questions about the truthfulness of the whole story HAVE BEEN RAISED. Truth be told I can't decide which would be worst at this point -- that people are capable of doing something so disgusting or that someone would make it up for attention? Either way, it's a very sad story.

UPDATE 1: OK, now we can go nuts ...

Via WSJ: A police department spokesman said Mr. Smollett later told detectives that the attackers said, “This is MAGA country,” an apparent reference to the slogan popular with supporters of Donald Trump, Make America Great Again, the spokesman said.

It seems whatever happened to "Empire" star Jussie Smollett was undoubtedly barbaric and horrific. And that there was a homophobic and racial element also seems beyond likely. But again, please allow members of the media to do their jobs before running with every horrific detail that has been floated. Tim Teeman is a respected journalist and friend of mine, and he just posted this on Twitter.

We still do not know what Jussie says happened, and we do not know what he told police happened. So far we only know what TMZ and That Grape Juice have HEARD from someone close to him, allegedly ... and now a police source is contradicting it.

Also, using words like "alleged" and "apparent" before the term "hate crime" isn't calling into question whether or not what is alleged to have happened was in fact a hate crime. The "hate crime" moniker is a legal distinction that prosecutors make, not reporters and editors, who mustn't try and convict people in the press.

TMZ is a Trump supporter. Do we know they didn't add that detail to the story to make liberals look silly when it "suddenly" turns out not to be true?

And here we go -- an actual response to the tweet from Tim. When did we get to be so stupid?