A Chicago cross-burning presumed to be the work of a racist menace turned out to be an anti-Trump protest — and the birdbrain responsible for it insisted he had no idea what he was doing.
The towering cross was seen engulfed in flames in Grant Park on June 9, with horrified onlookers filming the vile sight that looked straight out of Jim Crow America — and left many fearful a hateful cretin was lurking in their midst.
Racist groups like the Ku Klux Klan — infamous for burning crosses to menace black people — and other white nationalists were immediately suspected of the burning, with the FBI even dispatching investigators to probe the apparent hate crime.
A photo of the suspect was also quickly released, and appeared to show a shirtless Asian man running from the scene while covered in soot who officials spent days searching for.
But that man apparently emerged on Tuesday, revealing himself in an NBC 5 interview to be University of Illinois senior Merlin Lu, who insisted he was simply trying to protest President Trump — and that race was nowhere on his mind when he sparked ne of the nation’s most notorious hate images.
“My protest has nothing to do with race, nothing to with gender,” Lu told the outlet, explaining he wanted to protest “by myself” and the burning cross “just came to my head.”
“I did know about this historical relevance beforehand, but I didn’t know the severity, how racially motivated it may seem from what I did,” he said.
“In no way possible was that a hate crime. I understand why it was interpreted that way, and I apologize for that, but no, the intent was not there.”
Pressed by NBC 5 on how he made it through four years in college without realizing how hateful burning crosses were, Lu admitted the extent of his research was reading a Wikipedia page.
“I just saw the Wikipedia page with the movie with the, like, I think it’s called like ‘Under One Nation’ or something like that,” he said, misidentifying the infamous 1915 movie “Birth of a Nation,” which popularized much of the modern KKK’s imagery.
Exactly how it was supposed to be a protest of Trump was revealed in one small detail completely obscured by the flames, Lu claimed.
“I put a red hat to signify the MAGA hat, the Make America Great Again hat,” he told NBC 5. “So that was, yeah, that’s what I tied on top.
“I don’t want to wait till his term ends. I want him gone right now.”
The apparent outcome was a far cry from what many suspected — with some even blaming the president himself for the wild scene.
“I do think we’re living in a time when we have a president that stokes this kind of thing and invites this type of stuff,” SAID Gina Miranda Samuels of the Culture at the University of Chicago.
“People feel emboldened and are invited to see how far they can go.”
Others drew parallels to Trump’s pardoning of those charged in the Jan. 6 storming of the US Capitol.
“The same kind of people got the same white supremacist mentality as a cross-burning,” said Frahnk Chapman, executive director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. “So, they figured, like, they got a license now.”
A suspect was arrested Tuesday in the cross-burning, though Chicago police have not confirmed whether or not it was Lu. It remains unclear if he would face hate crime charges.
With Post Wires