Of all the willful lies and omissions in the media’s coverage of the Steele dossier, Brian Sicknick, the Covington kids, Jussie Smollett, the Wuhan lab, Hunter Biden’s laptop and so on, nothing beats the evil propaganda peddled about Kyle Rittenhouse.
They try to make the Rittenhouse case about race, but it’s about class, punching down at the white working-class son of a single mother because they don’t see him as fully human, and it makes them feel good.
They lie about him because they can.
The central media narrative is that Kyle Rittenhouse is a white supremacist whose mother drove him across state lines with an AR-15 to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters. All lies.
“A white, Trump-supporting, MAGA-loving Blue Lives Matter social media partisan, 17 years old, picks up a gun, drives from one state to another with the intent to shoot people,” was typical from John Heilemann, MSNBC’s national affairs analyst.
So, let’s go through 10 lies about Rittenhouse, debunked in court:
1. He killed two black BLM protesters. All three of the men he shot in self-defense during violent riots in Kenosha on Aug. 25 last year were white.
2. He crossed state lines. He lived 20 miles from Kenosha in Antioch, Ill., with his mother and sisters. But his father, grandmother, aunt, uncle, cousins and best friend live in Kenosha. He had a job as a lifeguard in Kenosha and worked a shift on Aug. 25 before helping clean graffiti left by rioters at a local school. There, he and his friend were invited to join other adults who had been asked by the owners of a used car lot in Kenosha to guard the property after 100 cars had been torched the previous night, when police abandoned the town to rioters. Kyle took his gun to protect himself, since the rioters were violent and armed, including, for instance, Antifa medic Gaige Grosskreutz, who lunged at him with a loaded Glock pointed at his head before he was shot in the arm.
3. Rittenhouse took an AR-15 across state lines. Esquire accused him of “terrorist tourism.” False. His rifle was kept in a safe at his best friend’s stepfather’s house in Kenosha.
4. The gun was illegal. Wrong. Under Wisconsin law, he was entitled to possess the AR-15 as a 17-year-old. The judge dismissed the gun charge, which the prosecution never should have brought.
5. Rittenhouse’s mother drove him across state lines to the riot. Wendy Rittenhouse, 46, never went to Kenosha. She slept late the morning of Aug. 25 after working a 16-hour shift at a nursing home near her home in Antioch, she told the Chicago Tribune. Kyle had already gone to his job in Kenosha when she woke up.
6. He was an “active shooter” who took his gun to a riot looking for trouble. “A 17-year-old kid just running around shooting and killing protesters,” said MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, “who drove across state lines with an AR-15 and started shooting people up.” On Friday, after evidence in court already had debunked his talking points, Scarborough called Rittenhouse a “self-appointed militia member … unloading 60 rounds.” When the defense called out the lie in closing arguments, Scarborough had the gall to tweet that he was “embarrassed” for the lawyer.
7. Rittenhouse is a “white supremacist,” as then-candidate Joe Biden labeled him in a tweet showing the teenager’s photograph. When White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked to explain why recently, she slyly slimed Rittenhouse again, without naming him, as a “vigilante.”
In one story, the Intercept used the term “white supremacist” 16 times. The accusation has become holy writ, but there is zero evidence. The FBI scoured Kyle’s phone and found nothing about white supremacy or militias, the court heard. All they saw were pro-police, “Blue Lives Matter” posts from a kid who had been a police and fire department cadet, wanted to be a police officer or paramedic and once sat near the front of a Trump rally. That was enough for the media to brand him a white supremacist.
8. He “flashed white power signs” with Proud Boys. After spending three months in jail, Kyle was freed on $2 million bail two days after his 18th birthday last year, and went to a bar for a beer, with his mother and other adults, which is legal in Wisconsin. He posed for selfies with strangers at the bar, who the media say are Proud Boys, and was pictured making the OK sign with his thumb and forefinger. The false claim that this is a white supremacist sign comes from a 2017 hoax on the website 4chan, to punk liberals, who keep falling for it. Biden uses the gesture frequently. It was unwise to pose for the photo, but it does not mean Kyle is associated with white supremacists.
9. He wore surgical gloves “to cover his fingerprints.” This pearl was spread by Matthew Modine, another celebrity bigmouth. Kyle wore gloves because he was giving first aid to protesters. His face was bare, so he was hardly hiding.
10. Judge Bruce Schroeder is a “Trumpy” racist biased toward the defense. This slur is based on the fact he would not let the prosecution use the term “victim” — common practice when the jury has not ruled on a case. He told a lame joke about Asian food for lunch being held up by the supply-chain crisis, and his phone’s ring tone sounds like a 1980s ditty played at Trump rallies. Ridiculous. In fact, Schroeder is a Democrat, has run as a Democrat for the Wisconsin Senate and was first appointed by a Democratic governor. Bias was also perceived in what the Chicago Tribune said was his “highly unusual” decision to allow Kyle to draw names randomly out of a container at the end of the trial to determine which 12 of the 18 jurors would decide his fate. It’s something this judge always does, he told the court.
On the second day of jury deliberations Wednesday, the judge railed against media distortions, although he seemed most aggrieved about attacks on his reputation, rather than Kyle’s. He threatened to stop trials from being televised, but that’s exactly the wrong solution.
Only because the public was able to hear the evidence for themselves did they become aware of the malevolent dishonesty of the media coverage, which has threatened a fair trial and ensured riots if Kyle is justly acquitted.
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