Conservatives Defend Kenosha Suspect Kyle Rittenhouse

Tucker Carlson. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Kyle Rittenhouse does not seem like a sympathetic figure. The teenager, who has been accused of fatally shooting two protesters in Kenosha on Tuesday, then fleeing the state of Wisconsin to avoid arrest, was taken into custody in Antioch, Illinois. He now faces a charge of first-degree intentional homicide. But since his arrest, right-wing commentators have tried to justify his behavior. Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense, or at least didn’t deserve a charge of first-degree murder. Protesters chased him; he must have felt threatened. And really, shouldn’t we blame Kenosha officials for letting everything get out of hand? There was property to protect, and protests to repress.

“How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would? Everyone can see what was happening in Kenosha. It was getting crazier by the hour,” Tucker Carlson said during his Wednesday night broadcast.

On Twitter, others made excuses for the teen. Here’s the vice-president of government affairs for the Club for Growth:

1. Why leave out the fact that "Lunging man" threw a Molotov cocktail at Rittenhouse prior to "First Shooting"?

1/ https://t.co/M7LkTl6Yaq — Scott T. Parkinson (@ScottTParkinson) August 27, 2020

2. Why leave out during the 2nd shooting, after Rittenhouse trips, he was jumped by several men, including another armed protester, attacked by a skateboard - prior to firing more shots?

2/ — Scott T. Parkinson (@ScottTParkinson) August 27, 2020

Video of the moments leading up to the first shooting does appear to show an object being thrown in Rittenhouse’s direction. But it doesn’t resemble a Molotov cocktail; it doesn’t appear to be on fire at all. In fact, it looks like a white plastic bag with a bottle of water or soda inside. That matters quite a lot if the argument is that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense:

If the kid in Wisconsin was firing on people who were attacking him, he's not the bad guy. — Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) August 27, 2020

Others pointed out that protesters had pursued Rittenhouse. We still don’t know why they were following him. Barring evidence that they’d actually tried to harm him, all we can tell from the video is that they appeared to consider him a threat, and that they’d tried to take his firearm (which he may have been carrying illegally).

This is correct from the reports I’ve heard directly from eyewitnesses and video evidence. This man chased the shooter down. https://t.co/6bqhkRMjOY — Geoffrey Ingersoll (@GPIngersoll) August 27, 2020

Judging from the NYT video there is no way that Rittenhouse incident is *first-degree murder* -- in fact, it looks a lot like self defense. (though there may be more evidence we aren't aware of yet) — David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) August 27, 2020

Rioters previously incited violence against Kyle, saying "shoot me ni*****", before attempting to grab him and seize his firearm. This resulted in the attacker to be shot in the head in self-defense during the scuffle.

He was then chased by anarchists and attacked further. — Mike Coudrey (@MichaelCoudrey) August 26, 2020

I'm not here to tell you what to do, but generally I think it's good advice to avoid chasing people carrying loaded guns. — Kelb Hull (@CalebJHull) August 26, 2020

Here are the facts as they stand on Thursday: The aspiring police officer and Trump supporter drove to Kenosha from his home in Illinois, after a local militia, the Kenosha Guard, put out a public call to arms on its Facebook page. The Kenosha Guard says that Rittenhouse didn’t belong to their group, but the teenager certainly seemed to think he did, or that he’d joined another organization like it. In a video taken before the shootings, he identified himself as a militia member and said, “People are getting injured, and our job is to protect this business. And part of my job is to also help people.”

Then, the shootings. The Times video analysis referenced by Parkinson is indeed helpful, though the details don’t necessarily support his conclusions. This is what it appears to show: A group of protesters pursued the teenager when someone (it’s not clear who, or whether he was even part of the original group) fired a handgun into the air some distance away. When someone reached out, either to tackle him or take his weapon, Rittenhouse fired multiple times, shot the man in the head, and killed him. He ran away a second time, followed by more protesters; then he killed another man and injured someone else.

There’s a lot we still don’t know about the incident. But based on what we’ve got, we can reach a reasonable explanation: A teenage vigilante with a gun he wasn’t legally allowed to possess sought out confrontation. He found it, and killed two people. He walked right past the Kenosha police after the killings, and they didn’t arrest him; as a result, he was able to flee back to Illinois.

Obscured, of course, by all the right-wing concern for Rittenhouse is the incident that drew him to Kenosha in the first place. Protests are rocking the city because a police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, seven times in the back, in front of his children. He may never walk again. While conservatives started developing Rittenhouse’s self-defense plea, they seized on another item of news from Kenosha. Wisconsin’s attorney general says that Blake had a knife.

Jacob Blake was armed with a KNIFE when cops shot him says Wisconsin AG https://t.co/Q3xbwgUtfJ — Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) August 27, 2020

Nobody knows whether he tried to use it. Only that the knife allegedly existed, and belonged to Blake — so maybe he deserved those seven shots in the back and a life in a wheelchair. Maybe those protesters left Rittenhouse no other choice; maybe they invited a shooting. These emerging lines of argument bear a revealing similarity to each other. The right wing is treating Rittenhouse the way it already treats cops. A gun is all the authority a white man needs. He doesn’t even need to be sworn law enforcement. After all, someone’s got to put down the rabble.