People have always cast doubt on hate crimes. There are entire sections of Reddit dedicated to trying to find holes in racially-motivated crimes. Sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong.
I can understand not taking a stand in a conflict or event like this and waiting for the facts to come out; the facts came out and it proved to be a hoax. But there are people that use this event to push an idea that it doesn't happen. That hate crimes don't happen and that discrimination doesn't exist based on gender, race, etc.
This was politically motivated because he tried to paint all MAGA fans as racist and then threw in a splash of homophobia, but this still doesn't change the fact that these things happen and are often brushed under the rug.
This dude is a piece of shit and definitely should be punished to the max and I'd enjoy that, but the next time something similar happens for real, it's going to be annoying dealing with the skeptics then.
I'm still not sure what exactly happened with the Covington boys and that Native American banging his drum, but I do know that it was a few days of shitting on white people and then people attacking the NA's military service and racist remarks made against those black religious people that were in the background of the video and also involved in some way in that incident. But people are hanging on to that example and this Jussie Smolett example that there is racism against White People and that there's some impending genocide of white people going on in the US. And that makes me take both sides less seriously.