If anything became apparent during the Rittenhouse trial, it’s that there was a lot of misinformation out there. Unfortunately, like everything else, the trial was heavily politicized, pitting the right against the left — and as usual, the left got so much about this case wrong. Anyone who watched the trial would have realized from the evidence that Kyle Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense. But perhaps the most troubling thing is how some of the people with the strongest opinions about Rittenhouse and the verdict don’t seem to know a lot about the facts of the case. And frankly, I have seen little evidence that they want to. For them, the narrative is more important than the truth.
As PJM’s Rick Moran previously noted, there isn’t any evidence that Rittenhouse holds white supremacist views. The most significant “proof” the media could come up with was that he was at a bar at the same time as a member of the Proud Boys and that he was seen flashing the OK hand signal. While some left-leaning groups like the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center believe the Proud Boys to be white nationalists, their Afro-Cuban international chairman disagrees. As for the OK symbol — that is something people have done for years and still do today without controversy. In fact, Joe Biden recently used the OK hand signal, prompting PolitiFact to come to his defense by declaring it is not a white power symbol. The idea that it is a white power symbol came from a 2017 hoax started on the 4chan website.
Related: How a Hand Signal Allowed the Left to Define Kyle Rittenhouse as a White Supremacist
2. He didn’t kill black protesters
Perhaps to be consistent with the fiction that he was a white supremacist, many people seemed to believe that Rittenhouse killed black protesters. He actually shot three white men, wounding one and killing two.
And they weren’t exactly angels either.
The first one killed, 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum, was a convicted child molester who chased Rittenhouse before being shot. The second man, 26-year-old Anthony Huber, attacked Rittenhouse with his skateboard. Huber had prior convictions for domestic abuse and disorderly conduct.
Rosenbaum, Huber, and the man wounded by Rittenhouse, Gaige Grosskreutz, were all white, but, for some reason, the myth that Rittenhouse killed black men persisted even after the trial and the verdict. The British newspaper The Independent falsely described Rittenhouse as the teen who “shot three black men with rifle found not guilty on all charges.”
Imagine being a media outlet and getting the facts so incredibly wrong just because it fits the desired narrative.
3. The judge wasn’t a Republican
The right praised Judge Bruce Schroeder for his criticisms of the prosecution and overall fairness. The left, however, saw him differently. Between his patriotic ringtone, a lame joke about Asian food, and his refusal to let Rosenbaum and Huber be described as victims, the left dubbed him a Trump-loving racist.
It turns out Judge Schroeder is a Democrat who previously ran for the Wisconsin Senate as a Democrat and was first appointed to the bench by a Democratic governor in 1983. So could he be a Trump-supporting Democrat? It’s possible. But unlikely.
4. Kyle didn’t cross state lines with a gun
It never ceases to amaze me how many people still believe this, even after it was revealed during the trial that he did not take an AR-15 across state lines. The gun was already in Kenosha, and he got it from a friend. He was also legally in the clear to possess it under Wisconsin law which is why the gun charge against him was dismissed. But left-wing know-it-alls didn’t know that, even after the trial, because they didn’t watch it.
5. Kyle was a Good Samaritan
Hours before the shootings, Rittenhouse was in Kenosha, cleaning graffiti off a high school. Does that sound like a kid who went to Kenosha looking for trouble? On the contrary, Kyle not only selflessly went to Kenosha to help protect property from looters and rioters, but he also helped provide first aid to injured protesters. The left made Rittenhouse out to be a domestic terrorist with a taste for blood, but in reality, he was a lot closer to being a Good Samaritan who was simply put in the bad position of having to defend his own life from rioters and looters.