Ronda Rousey apologizes for sharing Sandy Hook conspiracy video – National
Eleven years after sharing a video touting conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shootingformer UFC champion Ronda Rousey apologized.
In a lengthy statement shared with X early Friday morning, Rousey said she regrets the post “every day of my life.”
In January 2013, about a month after a gunman stormed Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, killing 20 children and six staff members, Rousey shared a YouTube video on X (then Twitter) that cast doubt on the shooting. Rousey posted a link to the video and wrote, “Extremely interesting and not to be missed.”
“I didn’t even believe it, but I was so horrified by the truth that I looked for an alternative fiction to cling to,” Rousey said in her apology. “I quickly realized my mistake and took it down, but the damage was done.”
The 37-year-old professional wrestler said she has written apologies several times over the past decade, but never had the courage to speak out until now. One such attempt at an apology was in her recent memoir, Our fight, but Rousey said her publisher “begged” for it to be removed, “saying it would overshadow everything else and do more harm than good.”
Rousey’s reluctance to apologize was also due in part to fears that drawing attention to the video would increase the reach of conspiracy theories and “selfishly inform even more people that I was ignorant, self-centered and tone-deaf enough to share one in the first place.”
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“But honestly I deserve to be hated, labeled, loathed, resented and worse,” Rousey wrote. “I deserve to lose every opportunity, I should have been canceled, I deserved it. I still deserve it.”
In bold, Rousey continued: “I apologize for doing this 11 years too late, but to everyone who was affected by the Sandy Hook massacre, from the bottom of my heart and soul, I am truly sorry for the hurt I have caused. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain you have endured and words cannot describe how deeply sorry and ashamed I am for having contributed to it.”
Rousey then addressed others who might believe the conspiracy theories, or as she put it, people who have “fallen into the black hole of bullshit.”
“This doesn’t make you nervous, or independent-minded, you’re not doing your due diligence in considering all the possibilities in digesting these conspiracies,” Rousey wrote. “They’re only going to make you feel helpless, scared, miserable, and isolated. You’re doing nothing but hurting others and yourself.”
She concluded: “No matter how many bridges you have burned, stop digging a deeper hole, don’t fall into the sunk cost fallacy, no matter how long you have been down the wrong path, you still have to turn around.”
In the days after the conspiracy video was shared on YouTube in 2013, Rousey issued a brief apology.
“It was never my intention to insult or hurt anyone, sorry if anyone was offended,” the wrestler wrote on social media. “That was absolutely not my intention.”
She didn’t mention this message again after that.
Rousey’s most recent apology was met with general positivity online, with many people commenting that the statement was “better late than never.”
“I’ve never been a fan of Ronda, but I can respect that. If you can’t hold yourself accountable, how can you hope to improve,” wrote one user on X.
“This is so sincere it’s hard to imagine anyone questioning it,” another commented. “People make mistakes. You clearly did. You realized yours quickly and not because of a negative reaction.”
Other social media users speculated that Rousey’s apology was prompted by a recent AMA, or “Ask Me Anything,” session on Reddit that saw the athlete inundated with questions about her initial posting of the video.
The December 14, 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook School is the Second deadliest school shooting an event that occurred in the United States, leading to the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting.
Baseless conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre have circulated since it happened, often pushed by controversial public figures like Infowars host Alex Jones.
Jones, who for years told his audience that the shooting was a hoax, has been sued by family members of Sandy Hook victims and ordered to pay 1.5 billion US dollars in 2022 for his false statements. The trial was marked by harrowing testimony from family members, who said they still face intense harassment from conspiracy theorists.
A federal judge has ordered the liquidation of Jones’ personal assets in June, but dismissed his company’s separate bankruptcy filing.
Jones has since acknowledged that the Sandy Hook shooting did happen. Despite this, he has repeatedly said that Democrats and the “deep state” were conspiring to shut down his businesses and suppress his right to free speech.
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