Tucker: Kyle Rittenhouse facts are different than what we were told
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host examines the role the media played in the homicide case.
People are totally absorbed in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, and you have to ask, why is that? Why is it so fascinating? Well, part of the reason it's just so interesting is because the facts are so different from what we've been told for more than a year, completely different. And it's shocking to compare reality against the version of reality we've been force-fed.
Here's one example. Just days after Rittenhouse was first arrested, that was back in August of 2020, a pro-censorship organization called PolitiFact published what it called a fact check of the case. In a posting on its website, PolitiFact claimed that Kyle Rittenhouse had committed a crime by carrying a firearm in the state of Wisconsin. Here's the quote. "It is against the law in Wisconsin for someone younger than 18 to possess a dangerous weapon. Period."
Now you notice in that statement complete unwavering certainty, and this is common for PolitiFact, which issues opinions like they're edicts from God himself. They do this because the social media companies use PolitiFact edicts as a pretext to censor any speech online that contradicts the official line of the Democratic Party. The so-called narrative.
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So PolitiFact disagrees with what you're posting, then you are, by definition, spreading misinformation and you must be silenced. That's how it works. So naturally, other media organizations echoed this position immediately. "Kyle Rittenhouse, 17," declared the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "was not old enough to legally carry the assault-style rifle he had." Just stating it as fact. And then the entire national media followed suit and told us the same thing.
The problem was it was a lie. In fact, under Wisconsin law, which apparently no one in any newsroom in America had even bothered to check, 17-year-olds are allowed to carry rifles as long as their barrels meet a minimum length requirement, and Kyle Rittenhouse’s rifle met that requirement. So no, Kyle Rittenhouse did not violate Wisconsin's gun laws. Today, even the prosecution at the trial was forced to admit that. And so immediately, the judge dismissed the firearms charge.
JUDGE: Is it legal?
PROSECUTION: It is not a short-barreled shotgun or a short-barreled rifle.
JUDGE: Either by barrel or by overall length?
PROSECUTION: Correct.
JUDGE: All right, then count six is dismissed.
Oh, well, that couldn't be clearer. The prosecution is admitting in open court that it was legal. He had not committed a gun crime, and that means that for more than a year, Big Tech and its lackeys throughout our media have spread misinformation about Kyle Rittenhouse. Well, that's embarrassing. What are they going to say? Well, they're not going to admit it, of course. They're going to make certain you don't learn about it.
Kyle Rittenhouse listen as his attorney, Mark Richards, give his closing argument during Rittenhouse's trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Wisconsin on Monday, Nov. 15, 2021. (Sean Krajacic/Kenosha News/Pool via USA TODAY NETWORK)
Just minutes after the judge in the case dismissed the gun charge, YouTube, which is owned by Google, censored the video streams of several independent legal experts who were commenting on the trial in real time. These were knowledgeable attorneys, many of whom were critical of the obvious weaknesses in the prosecution's case.
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Now, hundreds of people were watching those streams at the moment they were canceled, but over concern that Americans might conclude that Kyle Rittenhouse is innocent, YouTube shut them down, citing policy violations. In other words, God forbid people think for themselves. That's not allowed anymore. If you want to know what's happening in your world, you've got MSNBC to tell you.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: We have a 17-year-old kid underage, said he bought an AR-15 because he thought it was cool. He drove across state, had his mother drive him across state lines. He appointed himself a militia member. He goes around and he ends up unloading, what, 60 rounds?
Of all the people, you could find a comment on a killing, it's interesting who they chose. But just listen to the words, consider how totally dishonest the summary you just heard is. Virtually every word is a lie.
Kyle Rittenhouse wasn't a militia member. He was a lifeguard. Kyle Rittenhouse did not fire 60 rounds, not even close to that. He was not underage, as we just told you, He was not in illegal possession of his gun. But most amazing is the claim, which you're hearing everywhere right now, that Kyle Rittenhouse is bad because he "drove across state lines."
Think about that for just a second. So the very same people who have told you for years that borders are by definition White supremacy now claim it's some kind of moral offense for an American citizen to enter a contiguous state. You're making it sound like Kyle Rittenhouse snuck into a foreign land under cover of darkness to murder people. That's not quite what happened.
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If you look at the map, you can see Kyle Rittenhouse’s drive from his mother's home in Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha, Wisconsin. Our map says 17 miles, probably shorter than your commute to work every morning. As Kyle Rittenhouse explained on the stand last week, when mobs set fire to Kenosha, he had every reason to want to defend the city because his father lives there.
PROSECUTION: But you decided you needed to run because of the fire on the Duramax?
RITTENHOUSE: Yes.
PROSECUTION: Why? What was so urgent?
RITTENHOUSE: It was a fire.
…
PROSECUTION: Why did you feel that you should go around off the 59th Street car service property and put out fires.
RITTENHOUSE: To make sure my community didn't get burnt down and help.
PROSECUTION: And how do we say your community, You mean Kenosha?
RITTENHOUSE: Yes.
PROSECUTION: Again, you're from Antioch. You're not living in Kenosha at this time when this all happens, right?
RITTENHOUSE: My dad lives in Kenosha.
How dare you put out fires? Well, my dad lives in Kenosha.
Bet you didn't know that, bet you hadn't heard it on CNN. Nor have any of the people hyperventilating about crossing state lines explained why it's OK for the BLM rioters and the Antifa creeps to come from around the country to burn Kenosha down, as many of them did. Haven’t even addressed that. It’s kind of weird. Wasn't a crime for them to cross state lines. We could go on.
Kyle Rittenhouse testifies during cross examination in his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Wisconsin on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. (Mark Hertzberg /Pool Photo via AP)
But if there's one thing this trial has taught us, it's how completely dishonest and totally misleading so many of the news accounts of what Kyle Rittenhouse did have been. We've known for more than a year, for example, how Rittenhouse first encountered convicted child rapist Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man he shot. There are multiple witnesses to that. Most of it's on video, actually.
Joseph Rosenbaum had just been released from a mental hospital and for some reason decided to join the riot. So first he lit a fire. Then he began to swing a chain like a weapon. When he saw Kyle Rittenhouse, he threatened to kill Kyle Rittenhouse. Then he chased Rittenhouse in a full sprint, cornered him, and then tried to snatch his gun from his hands.
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It was at that point that Rittenhouse fired. Who wouldn't fire at that point? After shooting Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse tried to turn himself in to police, but he couldn't because a mob howling for his death chased him down a city street.
One rioter knocked Kyle Rittenhouse to the ground, another smashed him in the head with a skateboard, and a third rioter drew a loaded pistol, which he was not allowed to have, unlike Kyle Rittenhouse, and pointed it in Kyle Rittenhouse’s face.
So at no point was Kyle Rittenhouse the aggressor in the sequence of events. Every move he made was defensive. That's not our interpretation of it. That's what came out from prosecutors and witnesses in court. None of these facts are disputed. They all happened.
So that's a very tough problem for the prosecution. With facts like those, What exactly do you say? What they said is really interesting. Today the prosecutor was left trying to argue that convicted child rapist mental patient Joseph Rosenbaum, whose criminal record you can read online, and you should get a sense of who they're defending here, that this guy had threatened to murder Kyle Rittenhouse in front of witnesses, and yet actually, he was not a threat to Kyle Rittenhouse. And to prove it, the prosecutor showed a video.
PROSECUTION: Here is the defendant running in between those parked cars slowing down, and you can see just how close or rather how far away Mr. Rosenbaum was when the defendant shot him.
I mean, seriously, "You can see just how close. I mean, sorry, just how far away he was." Right. Yeah. So everyone whose eyes were open could actually see it because you just played the tape, Dumbo.
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Apparently, the prosecution is hoping the jury had its eyes closed for that part of the proceedings. The whole thing is ridiculous. And it got more absurd as the day progressed. The prosecutor Thomas Binger explained that if you take steps to defend yourself, you have by definition given up your right to self-defense.
BINGER: They have to convince you that Joseph Rosenbaum was going to take that gun and use it on the defendant because they know you can't claim self-defense against an unarmed man like this. You lose the right to self-defense when you're the one who brought the gun.
Kyle Rittenhouse testifies during his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse on Nov. 10, 2021, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. (Mark Hertzberg-Pool/Getty Images)
Who’s writing the rules here? Let's just pause for a second and go through what he said. There's no such thing as self-defense against a man who has no gun. Really? Well, according to the federal government's own statistics, far more people in this country are beaten to death every year than are killed by AR-15s. So that is a, by definition, ridiculous claim.
If an ex-con with a history of violent crime informs you that he is going to murder you and then tries to grab your gun from your hands, you are allowed to respond. In fact, you have to respond because it would be suicidal not to, obviously. But as a legal matter, all that matters here is whether Kyle Rittenhouse reasonably believed that his life was in danger.
And of course, he believed that. Why wouldn't he? You would believe that too if you were him. But it's the second part of the prosecutor's lie that tells you the most about how these people think. Here's the quote. "You lose the right to self-defense when you're the one that brought the gun."
Really, Mr. Binger. So no one with a concealed carry permit is allowed to defend himself? What's the point of having a gun if you can't save your own life with it?
Well, that's exactly what they're telling you. They're telling you you don't have that right? You have no right to resist. That's the whole point of this whole proceeding. So the next time BLM sweeps into your town, your neighborhood, your house to burn and loot and brandish weapons, you had better not try to protect yourself or your family. Try to protect yourself or your family, and we will charge you with murder. And while we're at it, we'll have the national media call you racist.
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MSNBC GUEST: In the court of public opinion, they're really arguing that White men, especially White men with a gun, are allowed and have the space to defend and protect a country and a social order that keeps them at the top, and a country that they stole from indigenous folks and built with Black people's labor. … The media is participating in perpetuating this charade because as far as I can tell, the only reason why any of this is allowed is because of the Whiteness of it all.
So who emptied the gender studies department and put them all on television all at once? How destructive is this to the country? Seriously, putting crap like that on television. If you're wondering, can they racialize anything? The answer is yes, they can.
In this case, there is, to restate the obvious, no racial angle to the story. And if you're looking for proof, consider the fact that everybody involved in the story is the same color. And in fact, in point of fact, the only bigot on the scene appears to have been Joseph Rosenbaum, the child rapist. For some reason, and it's on video, don't take our word for it, Rosenbaum kept screaming the N-word, huh? And yet it's Kyle Rittenhouse who Joe Biden accused of being a White supremacist on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. And let's hope at some point he gets sued for that. Now they're calling the judge the same thing too.
JUDGE: Let's hope for one o'clock, I don't know, hope the Asian food isn't coming. This is not one of those boats in Long Beach Harbor.
MSNBC HOST: Yes, that was the judge. Make an off-color joke about Asian food during a murder trial. … I want to ask you how unusual is the judge's conduct currently?
MSNBC GUEST: Well, I think some of the things were way out of line. So, you know, the comment about the Asian food, for example.
Oh, yeah, that's racist. But really, it's only racist if you were exercising your right to self-defense or if you're trying to conduct a fair trial. If you don't inject equity into the trial and judge people on the basis of their skin color rather than what they actually did.
If you dare to do that in this post-equity country, this post-BLM nation, you are by definition, a racist.
So they won't admit to the public that they lied to all of us for more than a year. This is all they have left. You're a racist. MSNBC is by far the worst offender. It's shocking, actually, when you look at it carefully.
But it's not the only offender. They're all doing it. CNN’s so-called race and equity team – can you even imagine what those people are like – just published a piece entitled, and we’re not making this up, "Judge in Kyle Rittenhouse trial makes inappropriate Asian food joke." Inappropriate being the favored word of people who want to slur someone, you want to attack someone's reputation without explaining exactly why. Inappropriate. What does that mean? It’s entirely subjective.
But according to the piece, as it gets more specific, the judge's joke about supply chains and food puts Asians "in the crosshairs of microaggression, as well as actual physical violence."
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So when you make a joke about Chinese takeout, which, by the way, if you were a bigot, you probably wouldn't be eating in the first place, but if you dare to make that joke, you're dangerous. If you're the judge and you haven't already unilaterally given Kyle Rittenhouse the death penalty for offending MSNBC and Joe Scarborough, then you're a physical threat to Asian people.
These people are demented and they're dangerous, and that kind of talk degrades the social fabric faster than everything. Anything you can imagine. But if you're looking for true crazy, no one beats the race lady over at MSNBC.
JOY REID: Earlier today, the teenager accused of murdering two men and wounding a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year took to the stand in his own defense. And the circumstances are almost built for an actual CRT course. The White, now 18-year-old, faces an almost entirely White jury of his peers, with the exception of one Black man. Dream with me, Paul. Could any child of color, young person of color ever, ever, ever, ever do that on a stand and get away with it?
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MSNBC GUEST: You already know, Joy, of course not, this is White privilege on steroids.
Again, there's no racial angle here. Everybody's the same color. So if a White guy shooting another White guy is an example of racism, maybe you should tell us how. This is insane. Just so you know,
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the November 15, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
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