Kyle Rittenhouse is lucky that conservative media were there and recording him at the Kenosha riots on August 25, 2020. If they hadn’t been, who knows where he would be now; maybe in a January 6-like political gulag.
Showing their malicious consistency for getting major stories wrong and portraying them always in one direction, the mainstream media shifted into hyper-drive, amplifying the Left’s narrative of the events. They told their viewers:
- That Kyle Rittenhouse was a white supremacist and a fascist, when there was no, repeat N-O, evidence for such a libel.
- That he carried his weapon “over state lines.” Nope.
- That his “victims” were unarmed. Hardly. If two of the men who attacked Rittenhouse, one of whom bashed him in the head with a skateboard, succeeded in taking his gun, they wouldn’t be unarmed, would they? Rittenhouse’s third “victim” was armed and aiming his gun at the 17-year-old, as the video taken by conservative media showed and as “victim” Gaige Grosskreutz testified at trial.
- That the police cadet was a member of the Proud Boys. There’s no evidence for that, either. For those keeping book, however, there is a photo of Rittenhouse with what we are assured by prosecutors are Proud Boy supporters, taken four months after the shootings. They met him at a restaurant/bar with his mom and asked for a photo.
- That the “protesters” were peaceful. Laughable.
But, of course, this fits the narrative of the media: Armed white supremacist/fascist goes hunting for poor, misunderstood “anti-fascists,” who just want to set fires and loot as “reparations” for police incidents involving black people.
Let’s hope Rittenhouse is keeping a complete list of all the material lies told about him by the politicians, anti-gun groups, Leftist lawfare nabobs, and media, and that he’s already hired a civil attorney who is ready to press “send” when this miscarriage of justice is over.
The New Yorker’s piece labeling Rittenhouse a vigilante who “killed two people in Kenosha” only to have “opportunists [turn] his case into a polarizing spectacle” might be a place to start.
Very true, and I suppose an existential argument could be made for that. However, they are not the ones flanked by their attorney, sitting in the courtroom, and on trial in this case. This gets to the crux, and I’d suggest you read it.https://t.co/zE53AR0fj2
— Sal Appetica (@SAppetica) November 5, 2021
They didn’t know what to do with the real Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man, not their caricature.
Here is another photo I saw on another thread pic.twitter.com/DQR6V4E6fp
— Randy Conner (@randy_conner) November 14, 2021
Their narrative was just too good to check.
Especially when the prosecutors were only too willing to help set the narrative, which they knew was not based on fact and prejudiced the jury pool.
Thank God for our Townhall.com colleague Julio Rosas, the Daily Caller’s Richie McGinnis, Brendan Gutenschwager of “BG on the Scene,” and independent videographer Drew Hernandez. All these journalist were there and shooting video. Both McGinnis, who prosecutors said was a victim that night, and Drew Hernandez testified during the trial.
Video taken by those reporters that night showed Kyle Rittenhouse running for his life after the shooting of Joseph Rosenbaum and being jumped and beaten by others.
🚨🚨🚨: Multiple gunshots are fired after people chased a guy with a rifle. Rifle dude tripped and fell. He fired his gun at a guy who jumped on top of him. pic.twitter.com/BfV244MMnc
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) August 26, 2020
By August 25, 2020, this crew of reporters had been covering Antifa and BLM for more than three straight months in Portland, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. By this time, they were familiar with the rioters’ tactics and what these professional “crisis actors” and agents provocateur were capable of.
Gutenschwager, who appears to have taken down his Kenosha Twitter posts for August 25, 2020, that were heavily used during the trial, began retweeting them this week.
Kyle is then seen running northbound, towards the police on Sheridan Road pic.twitter.com/qqsYWmngFW
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) November 9, 2021
His video was one of the star witnesses of the Rittenhouse trial. If he and Julio hadn’t captured video of Rittenhouse being chased, kicked in the face, beaten, and treated with a gun in his face by a “victim,” it’s doubtful the 17-year-old would have gotten a fair shake at all.
Indeed, one of his former attorneys claims he didn’t get a fair trial at all.
Robert Barnes says Assistant DA Thomas Binger used bail and other hearings to lie about Rittenhouse to prejudice a potential jury. His polling showed that 2/3 of Kenosha residents thought Rittenhouse was guilty, in no small measure helped by Binger’s pre-trial mischaracterization of the case.
Barnes says Binger “lied about the address disclosure issues, lied about Proud Boy associations, lied about a whole bunch of things that he knew Kyle knew nothing about. Lied about the ‘OK’ gesture … then lied in evidence, said certain evidence was going to prove certain things that it didn’t; introduced it solely to create pre-trial prejudice, knowing that the judge was never going to allow it in. Then on top of that, misleads in opening statements, tried to suborn perjury … and successfully did suborn perjury.”
But the video showed the facts on the ground.
Richie McGinnis testified he never felt he was in the line of fire by Rittenhouse, though he was right there when the 17-year-old shot the first man, Joseph Rosenbaum. McGinnis testified that the crazed Rosenbaum chased Rittenhouse and grabbed his gun while yelling expletives at the teen.
In the closing days of the trial, the prosecution would try to change the jury’s mind about that first-hand witness account. The “evidence fairy,” as self-defense attorney Andrew Branca put it, deposited a drone video in the prosecution’s inbox. Prosecutors used the poorly vetted video to get a fuzzy photo that the judge himself said looked like a blob. Defense attorneys, apparently not bothering to vet that video (and several other items for that matter), gave it a pass.
Then prosecutors changed their story. They said the video showed Rittenhouse showing his gun to another player in the drama, the man who started it all, shooter and arsonist Joshua Kiminski. He’s a man who was conveniently never called to testify. By allowing in the fuzzy photo and video, prosecutors were given a gift of a legal theory that potentially could wipe out Rittenhouse’s self-defense claims.
I’ve seen the Antifa and BLM mob attack a journalist in Portland in 2016. The journalist was brought up on charges instead of the mob. The judge, in that case, hid video from public view, and the “white supremacist” false media and Leftist narrative took hold in the court of public opinion. He was convicted of multiple felonies. In that case, Antifa and BLM mob members admitted to a conspiracy to attack him, and then carried out an attack. Mike Strickland also drew his weapon and didn’t fire, and a judge found him guilty and sentenced him to jail. Two years after that, the same Portland mob attacked journalist Andy Ngo.
Julio, Drew, Richie, and BG could have stayed away from covering the mob. They knew it was dangerous and fraught with peril. After Strickland and Ngo, it’s completely understandable if these reporters would want to tap out and save themselves the aggravation. Instead, through their work, they probably saved Kyle Rittenhouse — and the truth.
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