Reaction from the highest quarters in the country was swift and credulous. Senator Kamala Harris, who turned out to know Smollett, was among those who described what had happened as “an attempted modern day lynching.”32 Smollett stuck to his story in the days afterward, occasionally adding extras. At a singing performance a week later, he told his sympathetic and supportive audience that he had fought back against his attackers and would not allow them to win because he, Jussie Smollett, stood for love. But as the story fell apart, so did much of the public support for him. Nothing about the
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