Former President Donald Trump met with Kyle Rittenhouse and his mother at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday after the young man was found not guilty on two counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, and two counts of reckless endangerment, after shooting three men in self defense during violent rioting in Kenosha, Wisconsin in August 2020.
In an interview on Monday with Fox News’s Sean Hannity Trump said, “Really a nice young man. What he went through — he should’ve, that was prosecutorial misconduct. He should not have had to suffer through a trial for that. He was going to be dead. If he didn’t pull that trigger, that guy that put the gun to his head, in one quarter of a second, he was going to pull the trigger — Kyle would’ve been dead.”
Trump’s comments came after an hour-long interview on Tucker Carlson’s Monday night show featuring Rittenhouse.
A Wisconsin jury acquitted Rittenhouse last week after a controversial trial that saw the prosecution berated, multiple times, by Judge Bruce Schroeder for what many have characterized as prosecutorial misconduct.
In the most startling example of prosecutorial misconduct the state’s assistant district attorney, Thomas Binger, was reprimanded for questioning Rittenhouse’s Miranda-protected post-arrest silence.
Success
You are now signed up for our newsletter
Success
Check your email to complete sign up
“I was astonished when you began your examination by commenting on the defendant’s post-arrest silence, the judge said. “That’s basic law. It’s been basic law in this country for decades,” adding, “I don’t know what you’re up to.”
What Trump and Rittenhouse have in common
At first glance one would think that Rittenhouse, a young man from Illinois with dreams of becoming an EMT, would not have much in common with the former president until one considers how both of them were treated by the corporate media.
Rittenhouse may very well have grounds for multiple defamation lawsuits targeting numerous corporate media outlets and even the sitting U.S. president, Joe Biden.
For months, the running narrative broadcast by numerous corporate media outlets was that Rittenhouse was a violent white supremacist who crossed state lines with an illegal assualt rifle and inserted himself into the chaos in Kenosha looking for trouble were he gunned down three innocent men.
The truth of the matter, as demonstrated in Rittenhouse’s trial, was much different. The trial was more an indictment of the corporate media’s misinformation peddling than anything else.
What was discovered was that Rittenhouse inserted himself into the chaos in an attempt to protect his community and his livelihood after authorities stood down in the face of violent destructive rioters. He was there affording medical care to wounded rioters and struggling to extinguish fires set by the mob when he was targeted.
It was later discovered that some of the men targeting him had lengthy criminal records with one of them having just been released from prison after serving time for brutally sexually exploiting minors.
The issue of race was inserted into the incident despite race not being a factor. All three men shot by Rittenhouse were white but that did not stop some media outlets from fanning the flames of racial tension.
The Independent ran a story falsely stating that Rittenhouse had shot three black men. Speculation as to why the news organization would publish such blatant inaccuracies range from lazy journalism to the media’s attempt to stir up more racial tension in the U.S..
The idea that Rittenhouse was a white supremacist took hold after president Joe Biden tweeted a video condemning white supremacy featuring an image of Rittenhouse.
This led Kyle’s mother, Wendy Rittenhouse, to blast the White House claiming that the president defamed her son. “President Biden don’t know my son whatsoever, and he’s not a white supremacist. He’s not a racist. And [Biden] did that for the votes,” she told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an interview.
To date the tweet in question remains published.
