Here's how the story started, just so we all remember. 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse wound up on the street in Kenosha in the first place with a gun for one reason: He was there because in the summer of 2020 the leadership of the Democrat Party endorsed mob violence for political ends. That's why there were riots in Kenosha that night, because people like Kamala Harris supported those rights.
More than a year later, as Rittenhouse stood trial for murder, those very same people implied there would be more violence if he was acquitted. So imagine being a juror on that case. Imagine the pressure and the fear. It would take enormous moral courage for any juror to ignore the threats and follow the evidence to its logical conclusion. So much courage that at times we doubted it was even possible in a country as politicized as ours now is.
But as we learned today, it is still possible, thank God.
PROTESTS ERUPT FROM NEW YORK TO CALIFORNIA AFTER RITTENHOUSE ACQUITTED ON ALL CHARGES
This afternoon, the jury acquitted Rittenhouse on all charges. The jury affirmed what was obvious from the very beginning: He acted in self-defense. It was a wonderful moment. Anyone who believes in impartial justice was vindicated. Here's that moment:
COURT CLERK: As to the first count of the information—Joseph Rosenbaum—we, the jury, find the defendant, Kyle H. Rittenhouse, not guilty. As to the second count of the information - Richard McGinnis - we the jury, find the defendant, Kyle H. Rittenhouse, not guilty. As to the third count of the information - unknown male - we the jury find the defendant, Kyle H. Rittenhouse, not guilty. As to the fourth count of the information - Anthony Huber - we, the jury, find the defendant, Kyle H. Rittenhouse, not guilty. As to the fifth count of the information - Gaige Grosskreutz - we the jury find the defendant, Kyle H. Rittenhouse, not guilty.
Remarkable. Months of relentless lying from the media about this case, in the end, had no effect whatsoever on the jury. Propaganda doesn't always win. Today it was soundly defeated, thank God.
LAW EXPERT HAS SOME BAD NEWS FOR BIDEN ABOUT HIS RITTENHOUSE TWEET
Our documentary team was there in Kenosha when it happened. They've been there for days putting together an installment of our Tucker Carlson Originals series on this case, and they captured Kyle Rittenhouse's first moments outside the court today after being acquitted.
KYLE RITTENHOUSE: It's the stuff that keeps you up at night. Once you finally do get to sleep, your dreams are about what happened, and you're waking up in a dark cold sweat.
REPORTER: You have dreams about what happened?
KYLE RITTENHOUSE: Every single night. It's quite scary, actually, because the dreams feel so real, and they're not the same at all, they're all different. They're the different scenarios that run through your head, what could have happened? I'm alive, but what could have happened? Like, what if I wasn't alive, or what if I did let Mr. Rosenbaum steal my gun. It's those type of dreams of the outcome, it's bad, but almost every outcome is me getting seriously injured or hurt, or dead. Those are just the dreams I have on a daily basis.
…
REPORTER: How do you feel, man?
KYLE RITTENHOUSE: The jury reached the correct verdict. Self-defense is not illegal. And, I believe they came to the correct verdict. And I'm glad that everything went well. It's been a rough journey, but we made it through it, we made it through the hard part.
As you read that, you're reminded that maybe the one person in America who hasn't yet weighed in on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is Kyle Rittenhouse himself.
For months, CNN, MSNBC and Kamala Harris, have been allowed to define him. That ends Monday. We're sitting down for a long interview with Kyle Rittenhouse. You can see it on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Monday night. We hope you will.
Technically as a legal matter this case is over. Kyle Rittenhouse has been proclaimed innocent in a court of law. He’s free to resume his life. For the authoritarians among us, this is a disaster, they can’t let it go. Why? Because they understand the Rittenhouse case is a referendum on the most basic right of all, the ancient right of self-defense. If Kyle Rittenhouse can save his own life from the mob, then you can too. That drives them insane.
FOX EXCLUSIVE: KYLE RITTENHOUSE TO APPEAR ON ‘TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT’
So insane that the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee today, Jerry Nadler of New York, implied Kyle Rittenhouse may face federal charges. Nadler wrote, "Today’s verdict justifies federal review by the DOJ." So will Joe Biden’s Justice Department indict Kyle Rittenhouse now that he’s been acquitted by a jury in Wisconsin, it’s hard to believe. You have to be deranged to consider that. What would be the effect on the country?
But you never know with these people. At the very least, the case will be used to justify taking your guns away. You can bet on it. But, if it does go to the Feds, if Kyle Rittenhouse is prosecuted by the Department of Justice, the case will be handled by Kristen ClarkE, the Black nationalist who runs the so-called Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. The division that does not protect your civil rights, in fact, it’s trying to take it away.
Last year Kristen Clarke weighed in on the Rittenhouse case and zeroed in on Rittenhouse’s color like his race was some kind of crime. She described him as an "armed White man," murdering innocent protesters at "point-blank range." What does his race have to do with anything? It doesn’t have anything to do with anything, of course, but it’s been a fixation of the Democratic Party from the first moments. They’ve tried to racialized this case.
And by the way, Kristen Clarke is far from the only member of the Democratic Party trying to do that. Just hours after the verdict, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Sean Patrick Maloney, a congressman, released this statement: "It is disgusting and disturbing that someone was able to carry a loaded assault rifle into a protest against the unjust killing of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man." Savor that for a minute.
That’s from the head of the Democratic Party’s congressional campaign arm. Everything about it is wrong, not just a lie, but factually wrong. Jacob Blake was not killed. He was also not unarmed. He was carrying a knife. You know that because he said he was carrying a knife. He was allegedly trying to kidnap a child. That’s when the police showed up. When he grabbed a knife, they shot him. Again, that’s not in dispute. And he’s still alive. But it doesn’t matter. Because to these people, facts don’t matter, clearly.
HARRIS: RITTENHOUSE VERDICT SHOWS THERE IS ‘A LOT MORE WORK TO DO’ ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE EQUITY
Sean Patrick Maloney has no interest in what actually happened. Kamala Harris said she was proud of Jacob Blake last year, the Democratic Party is sticking with that too. They are trying and they have been from the beginning to make this case into a racial divide, to further divide the country. Kamala Harris today said that the outcome of this case, the jury’s verdict, was proof that our judicial system is not "equitable," whatever that means. It needs to be changed. The Attorney General of the state of New York said it needs to be completely torn down and rebuilt, our justice system, that we’ve had for 250 years, the best thing in our country. The idea that you are tried on the basis of the facts, not on the basis of what you look like. But they would like to change that.
ABC News, by the way, just reported the same thing. ABC News a "news corporation" told us that Jacob Blake was killed in Kenosha.
ABC NEWS: Well, it’s very significant, first for the community of Kenosha, this city was traumatized by the police killing of a Black man, Jacob Blake.
The police killing of a Black man who is, in fact, still alive. So, what are they doing when they tell lies like this? Lies that you can check very easily or if you have a memory that extends into last year, you recall very well. Well, they’re inciting people, of course. They’re trying to whip people into a frenzy on the basis of claims that are totally, provably untrue. What kind of a frenzy? Well, consider this: This is from a senior advisor at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic campaign arm. His name is Dyjuan Tatro, he issued an explosive call for riots. "No justice, no peace," he wrote in the wake of the verdict. Who is Dyjuan Tatro? He, according to news reports, spent a decade in prison after he shot two people. Now he works for the Democratic Party, in case you’re interested in whose side they’re on. But you knew that.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Congresswoman Val Demings, another Democrat, offered this assessment: "The core of the far-right movement in America is they should be able to kill you if they want to." That’s the official line of the Democratic Party tonight. Keep in mind, if you watch the trial, you know this, Kyle Rittenhouse was walking down the street when he was charged by a convicted child rapist and charged by a number of other people. He sought no conflict. There was never any evidence he was the aggressor in any case. He was aggressed against.
Joe Biden also weighed in on this. He gave two versions of his views on it. First, he said we’re going to respect the jury’s verdict. Then when his advisors took over and wrote a new press statement, he told us how upset he was by the verdict. And that’s what aired on MSNBC all day.
NICHOLAS SANDMANN OFFERS ADVICE TO KYLE RITTENHOUSE IN ‘HANNITY’ EXCLUSIVE
CHUCK TODD, MSNBC: The next time there’s a protest of some sort, and it may get politicized, that gun owners, with a certain ideology may feel incentivized now, may feel even emboldened.
MSNBC GUEST: What some may take from this verdict is vigilante justice prevailed.
MSNBC GUEST: Knowing the history of vigilante justice in this country all the way back to times of enslavement, when people would be deputized to go out and track down enslaved persons who ran away, to lynching mobs, this is 2021.
MSNBC GUEST: It is to tell the current and future Kyle Rittenhouse’s of the world that they can engage in White vigilantism and be let off for it, be defended and protected for perpetuating White supremacy.
White vigilantism, White supremacy. White. White. White. White. White. That was over the media all day long, explicit racial attacks. What does that have to do with this case? And in what kind of country is that allowed when the most powerful people in the country level explicit racial attacks against one of their countrymen? Most of us didn’t grow up in a country where people talk like this. It’s very ominous they are talking like this now. Just as a reminder in case you’re tuning in for the first time in a year, everyone involved in this case is the same color. The people of the Council on American-Islamic Relations offered this take, which was very common today on the left: "It is difficult to imagine a Black or Muslim defendant engaged in the same conduct being found not guilty." Really? Were you here for the O.J. Simpson Trial? It’s ridiculous. MSNBC, the network banned from the courthouse for following jurors around, broadcast this from a relative of Jacob Blake.
JUSTIN BLAKE: You tell us why he got a free ride. His bail money was raised by the Proud Boys, the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazis, the Skinheads. Are they up in this courtroom? Do we know the history of this judge? I heard he’s been racist to these people in Kenosha for many years.
It’s really, really dark. The rest of us should not allow them to get away with racializing this, allowing them to get away with attacking people on the basis of their skin color. That is always wrong, we would never engage in that, never have, no one should do that. It divides the country. It’s immoral, flat out. But somehow to the crazy logic that governs their positions and deeds, they wind up defending child rapists and domestic abusers, elevating them to some sort of hero status.
The former mayor of New York Bill de Blasio wrote, "Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum were victims, they should be alive today." Maybe we'll get a statue, a very small statue, to Joseph Rosenbaum in New York someday.
MSNBC GUEST SHUTS DOWN ANCHOR'S HOPE FOR FEDERAL PROSECUTION OF RITTENHOUSE
Meanwhile, the ACLU, which you would think would be in favor of self-defense - that's the most basic of all civil liberties - suggested crossing state lines is a crime. Stay in your own state. The ACLU said, "Despite Kyle Rittenhouse’s conscious decision to travel across state lines and injure one person and take the lives of two people protesting the shooting of Jacob Blake by police, he was not held responsible for his actions."
This is insanity. And by the way, the continuous references to crossing state lines are not insignificant. Legally they’re meaningless. You have a right to cross state lines if you’re an American because it’s your country. You can go to all 50 states and you're not breaking the law. So why do they bring that phrase into every analysis of this case? "Crossing state lines." Because they want to use it to change gun laws. That’s right. You watch.
If you want to know what the worst people are saying, tune in to Jeb Bush’s former flak on MSNBC. Nicole Wallace told us anyone who crosses state lines is a domestic terrorist.
NICOLE WALLACE: The Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal today, not guilty on all counts did not happen in a cultural vacuum. There’s alarming context to this moment we’re considering and talking about. Just last week, the Department of Homeland Security released the latest bulletin warning Americans, again, of the ongoing threat posed by domestic violent extremists. We should also point out conservative media for many, many months have been priming its audience for this moment, framing Rittenhouse as a hero.
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So why are we inflicting that on you on a day when all of us should be celebrating? We’ll tell you why.
Because none of that made any difference to the jury. And if you’re totally absorbed in American media, you get the impression that American media are in charge of our country. And it turns out, they’re not. Most people don’t watch that crap. They don’t care what people like that say. They don’t care at all. There are a lot of rational, decent, thoughtful people on all sides of all races in this country who are still willing to think clearly about what is right, what is wrong, what is factual, what is false, what is just, and what is not. And today, they did. So, that’s the real lesson here. In the face of all of that propaganda, a group of jurors in Kenosha, Wisconsin, were brave enough to reach the right and obvious conclusion anyway. Amen.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the November 19, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."