'The Five' on Rittenhouse closing arguments

close

Video

'The Five' react to trial of Kyle Rittenhouse closing arguments

'The Five' panel react to Monday's back and forth closing arguments between prosecution and the defense in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial

This is a rush transcript of "The Five" on November 15, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

DANA PERINO, FOX NEWS CHANNEL ANCHOR: Well, you've been watching the murder trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. This is closing arguments day. It has taken all day. They're obviously being very detail-oriented. The jury is listening to all of this. And is expected to get the case tonight, we're going to -- we're in a 10-minute break in the trial, so we'll take it around the table here.

Katy Pavlich, Jessica Tarlov, Jesse Watters, and Greg Gutfeld are all here for THE FIVE.

GREG GUTFELD, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: He said not to talk about the case.

PERINO: What would you rather talk about?

GUTFELD: I don't know.

PERINO: I mean, I don't want to -- you know, I hate to get in trouble.

GUTFELD: Yes.

PERINO: I don't want to get in trouble. I don't want to do anything that would be wrong. Jesse, get your opening argument.

JESSICA TARLOV, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: Your opening statement.

JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: I love that you can see in this country the wheels of justice turn like this. There's not other countries that you can just watch a live trial see all the evidence, see the testimony in the video. There's really no reason if this looks like it's going the way it's going for anybody to be violent if you've watched this case closely.

Kyle was there trying to help the community. The people that were shot were there to harm the community. Kyle did not have a criminal history. These people did have a criminal history. Kyle gave up his body armor. The defense counsel made a great point. Why would you give up your body armor if you were some sort of active shooter looking for trouble.

And they searched Kyle's phone. I didn't even realize that they searched and seized his phone. It didn't have anything in there about militias, white supremacy. The phone was clean. But the one guy's phone they had a subpoena for they didn't search, the one guy changed his case about three times and is a stone-cold liar, the Antifa medic.

This guy Rosenbaum the convicted pedophile who was chasing him, using the N-word at a BLM rally. Do you really think he was with that crowd if he's using the N-word at a BLM rally? He's chasing him down. He's physically grabbing the weapon.

And then again assaulted with a skateboard, kicked in the head, punched, and then he's got a loaded Glock aimed at him. This whole time, Kyle is on the ground. So, the case is cut and dry. And the prosecution knows they indicted too early. They know they overcharged. So, what do they do? They lie.

They get up on close today and they say yes, he shot Rosenbaum in the back. No, he didn't. They had expert witnesses testify. He didn't shoot him in the back. And then, remember, he got caught coaching that one witness to lie and says you don't have the right to self-defense if you're the one that brings the weapon. Straight up not true.

And then he says he's an active shooter and you're watching video that is clear as day this guy had ample opportunity to cap anybody. And Katie and I were in the break talking about he had 30 rounds. The Democrats won't -- what do they want, 10 tops. If he had had less than 30, he might not have survived that night.

So, it's a political case the guy says out there, defense counsel. He wants to nail Kyle's hide to the wall because he needs a scapegoat for the violence in Kenosha. Think about it. The whole city burned down and the guy that went in to protect the city from burning, he's now supposed to rot in jail for the rest of his life? It's preposterous.

If you don't -- if you don't like the system, leave, all right. The judge appointed by a Democrat, appointed by a Democrat. And then he ran for reelection. The people put him there. The jury, half of them were selected by the prosecution. If you have a problem with that, go live somewhere else, OK. This is a great system of government we have. It is extremely transparent. We expect justice. He was allowed to have that Ar-15 as a 17- year-old that night. This is as clear a cut a case as self-defense I have ever seen.

PERINO: And Katie, you are in particular knew a lot about the weapons charges here.

KATIE PAVLICH, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR: So, the question that we were discussing during the trial is why did the judge drop the dangerous weapons charge. And the defense which has been very good for Kyle, read the law and brought it to the judge and said, you're allowed to have a rifle so long as it is not a short-barreled rifle.

And the rifle, the AR-15 that Kyle Rittenhouse had that night was not a short-barreled rifle. And therefore, it was legally allowed to possess that weapon. They throw out the dangerous weapons charge. And now the prosecution has practically nothing to go on at this point.

I want to talk about um you know how the defense has gone back to the evidence in this. Maybe we can get to this -- to the defense attorney line --

PERINO: Sure. Which one -- which number --

PAVLICH: Thought number.

PERINO: There's a call for number two control room, if you could pull that one up. And Tom -- Thomas Binger basically is the -- he's the prosecutor and the defense is talking about him lying here. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARDS: Think back to back on November 2nd when this case started. Did you hear one word out of Mr. Binger's mouth about provocation? You didn't, because it was never said. But when his case explodes in his face, now he comes with provocation. One, he's lying. Two, he's misrepresenting or he wasn't prepared when he started this trial. And his closing argument has been a change to try and fit what has come up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PERINO: Katie?

PAVLICH: So, the defense has been able to go back to the evidence with the jury to show them, to let them see what happened, whereas the prosecution has repeatedly changed their story based on their own witnesses blowing their case. Gaige Grosskreutz, for example, admitting that he was fired upon by Kyle Rittenhouse after he pointed his Glock-19 in his face. And so, therefore proved the self-defense case for the jury.

One thing that's happening in Kenosha right now, there's been a lot of public opinion about this. Kyle was tried in the court of public opinion. There are National Guard troops on guard to make sure that the place isn't burned down again. Watching all the footage and watching the evidence from this trial brings up last summer again and how this was allowed in city after city completely, you know, buildings burned to the ground, private business. People were killed as a result of this rioting. And it was excused over and over and over again. And tonight, people are threatening to riot if Kyle is not convicted.

Well, who are they defending in this case? Are they defending Rosenbaum who is a convicted sex offender, child rapist? Are they defending Huber who was a domestic abuser, who was charged with felony strangulation? Is that what we're doing here? Because then it really points out right versus wrong in this country.

And are you on the side of Kyle Rittenhouse who was there to clean up graffiti and defend his community or are you going to defend the guys who ended up, you know, attacking him -- this band of criminals who attacked him in the street -- is that who you're going to defend and burn the city down again for? I mean that's what this comes down to at this point in the threats that are being made.

PERINO: Yes. There are 500 National Guard troops that were ordered to the area in anticipation of the verdict.

GUTFELD: Yes, I mean, you have the media saying we're bracing for riots but they're pretending to be ignorant of their role in setting this all up. And they're telegraphing it as always that somehow it is acceptable to riot or wage some kind of violence in the streets because there is no justice.

And you have to take a time machine and go back and remind people about Jacob Blake, right, a knife-wielding brute who attempted to kidnap an ex and her kids. She called the police and the police came and did their job. They shot him. That was their job. He had a knife.

Yet the media, in collusion with the activist class, you know, greenlit the violence like you said and the riots. And that later exposed this void where there was no law enforcement. And when that happens, you end up with citizens and the Second Amendment coming together to fill that vote -- void.

But it goes back -- so we've been covering this stuff for like almost seven to eight years. There's a bigger problem. These are parts of the problem. The bigger problem is the refusal to look at the handful of deadly outcomes between police and suspects as individual cases, right?

We can count them. It's really easy. There's maybe 20 to 30 a year. Any journalist could spend an hour a day and figure out how each one is different. If you actually looked at these 25 or 30 cases, more than half are white. If you did that, you wouldn't be able to have riots because you'd see that each one is different.

For example, if you looked at Jacob Blake individually, you never would have had these riots. You would have seen he was a knife-wielding fiend. But what you have now and what we've fallen prey to is everything is grouped under one heading. All these cases fall under systemic racism created by police brutality in a system that doesn't allow for justice for Blacks.

It creates this whole -- this narrative of hopelessness and rage. There's no justice, no equality, no opportunity, and that replaces achievement with angst in which -- and what it really is, is if you just took the damn time and looked at each case, you would see that all of this pain and suffering is unnecessary.

PERINO: If you could pull up call for number one for us. This is the prosecutor, Binger, on self-defense. We mentioned this briefly but I think it's worth playing this again. Let's listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THOMAS BINGER, PROSECUTOR: 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, when you're the one creating the danger, when you're the one provoking other people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PERINO: Jessica, we haven't had your thoughts yet, but I thought you know, that was something that a lot of people were like, wait, what, how could that be?

TARLOV: Yes. Blue checkmark Twitter was even like -- I mean, I joked with them in the break. Like, even i know that's not right and I'm no gun expert. I think the prosecution has not done a great job. And putting aside even inconsistencies in the story as we've gone from November 2nd, up until today, there just been -- have a few comments that have come out that have raised eyebrows. Like, do you know this case well enough? Do you know the laws in Wisconsin well enough because there's obviously a very specific set of laws especially governing self-defense and guns that this prosecutor seems to not be aware of.

And when the judge dropped the gun charge earlier this morning, I was like, OK, this is done, right? Because everybody had kind of assumed this was the only thing that he was possibly going to be held on, the possession of a dangerous firearm.

And we were talking also about whether we think there will be these riots tonight and how hopeful we were that it wouldn't or tomorrow night, whenever the verdict may come back. If it is that he's acquitted, that maybe we can move past this.

And to Greg's point about people not knowing the details of things, where you go for your source material matters so much because there are a lot of people -- it's not your fault necessarily that you didn't know that the two people who passed away in this were not Black. It was not advertised for a very long time that the victims were white -- or I should say three victims, two dead, one injured.

And to your point about, you know, are you on the side of a convicted pedophile. To me, that doesn't matter. I understand in the grand scheme of things that as someone who I don't want to know versus I would like to know you and, you know, continue to be friends. Those things aren't comparable. But it doesn't mean a death sentence for someone because they did something. And I think we need to move away from that because this idea of vigilantism is so dangerous and it's being used in so many different ways.

You know, the justice system, as Jesse has said, it plays out and it does its job. And Rosenbaum had whatever is coming to him -- he's been convicted of it already -- let that happen, but no one deserves to die in that particular instance because of something that happened before, and not just --

PAVLICH: But it goes to his character and the idea that he was more than willing to be there. He was rioting. He attacked Kyle Rittenhouse and said he was going to kill him. He had dangerous weapons like chains previously in the night.

So, you know, character matters and your history matters. And we've tried this case in the court of public opinion. And I think it's really important that people understand who these people are in terms of their character especially since people like the President of the United States smeared Kyle Rittenhouse as a white supremacist who was just a vigilante in this community, when really he was there trying to give medical aid, cleaning up his community, taking -- you know he was asked to be there to protect people's property and to protect people's lives quite frankly.

And so, if we're going to try Kyle in the court of public opinion, I think it's more than fair to try the people who attacked him violently in the street and to talk about their criminal records as well, which includes raping small children.

TARLOV: But you do -- obviously, it's terrible and I don't want to be the girl that's just defending a pedophile on national television, but you do - -

WATTERS: Well --

TARLOV: No, Jesse.

GUTFELD: Jesse.

TARLOV: But you do get into conversations then with how many people came out talking about George Floyd. Like, what drugs he was on, how many prior offenses --

PAVLICH: Well, we wouldn't have to talk about that if people hadn't convicted Kyle Rittenhouse --

PERINO: Or even at the beginning of this case, if there had been accurate and fulsome reporting about Jacob Blake in the --

GUTFELD: That's the key.

PERINO: -- in the first place. I want to have you call up number seven, but before that, Jesse, did you want to comment on the self-defense --

WATTERS: Well, it goes to if someone is a suicidal, bipolar maniac off his meds yelling the N-word and I'm going to F you up, lunging at a weapon and chasing this guy, that package has to be demonstrated to the jury.

TARLOV: And it was. And (INAUDIBLE)

(CROSSTALK)

WATTERS: And if you had a problem like this, you would want your defense counsel to make that exact argument.

PERINO: So, last week, when the trial was underway, Kyle Rittenhouse did break down on the stand. Here is what the prosecutor said about that. This is -- as the jury is about to go to deliberate, when the first things that they saw was on that first day, Kyle Rittenhouse and his emotion, this is how the prosecutor described it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BINGER: Even on the witness stand, when he testified on Wednesday, he broke down crying about himself, not about anybody that he hurt that night. No remorse, no concern for anyone else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PERINO: I don't know what the jury is going to side, Greg, but I have to imagine that like, the prosecutor doesn't know that.

GUTFELD: Yes. This guy is in way over his head. He reminds me of me when I'm not prepared for this show. So, it's like you just say things and it's just like, you know, if he -- you know what? He's trying so hard not to do his job. It would have just been easier if he tried to do his job. But everything that he's been doing so far has been so off the mark.

It's clear that he just like, he's a terrible student. He's like somebody who slept in, missed his classes, and just said maybe I could wing this because this is all silly.

WATTERS: Some people think he was actually angling for a mistrial because of the way he acted earlier last week. And when he hold it held the gun, the AR --

GUTFELD: Yes.

WATTERS: I mean, obviously it's not loaded. But I mean, after Alec Baldwin, do you know for sure? And he pointed at the jury, and his finger was on the trigger, like on the trigger. Now, the jury is already probably getting death threats, getting photographs taken of them, going into the courtroom, maybe somewhere else, and you think you want the prosecutor pointing a weapon at you after the deadly accident at Rust.

Look at that. Look at that right there. He's pointing that at the jury. And this guy is the state's lead prosecutor, which is crazy. And then, he puts out this video which they worked days on to show that Kyle at one point had raised his weapon. He never raised his weapon. They never -- he never raised his weapon. And they made his huge showing of oh, he raised his weapon. It just wasn't true.

PAVLICH: Yes. My favorite part was when he today tried to compare this to a bar fight. And then he turns to the jury and goes, you of all have probably been in a bar fight before.

PERINO: Yes, let's play that, actually. Let's call for --

WATTERS: Way to insult the jury.

PERINO: Let's call for number three.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BINGER: Let's assume for a minute, yes, Joseph Rosenbaum is chasing after the defendant because he wants to do some physical harm to him. He's an unarmed man. This is a bar fight. This is a fistfight. This is a fight that maybe many of you have been involved in, two people hand to hand or throwing punches, or pushing or shoving or whatever. But what you don't do is you don't bring a gun to a fistfight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PERINO: Katie?

PAVLICH: All right, so the idea that he turned to the jury and essentially said, you're just like the people that we're talking about in this trial. It's probably pretty insulting to them. The other thing is he says, he was an unarmed man. Well, if we're taking this case and looking at the evidence, according to FBI statistics, more people are killed each year with hands, with fist, than people are killed with AR-15.

This idea that you could be an unarmed person and not be dangerous -- and also, if you're -- have a skateboard and you're threatened to hurt someone with it, you can kill somebody with a skateboard. So, this idea that someone was unarmed, and therefore they weren't a threat, was completely destroyed by all the evidence that people saw throughout the trial. PERINO: You want to comment because you hadn't seen that they actually put up that photograph.

WATTERS: Yes, I couldn't believe that was real. That's just -- it's the Roadhouse. I mean, that's a classic, maybe not the best prosecution element.

GUTFELD: He wanted -- initially, he wanted to go with Dirty Dancing.

PERINO: Yes, I mean, adding movie clips can sometimes be helpful.

WATTERS: Yes, that's -- leave the movie clips to me, Binger.

PERINO: I also wanted to play -- if you would call for number five because -- does the prosecutor have a point here? Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BINGER: The same set of rules apply to the defendant as everybody else. There's no exception in the law for Kyle Rittenhouse. There's no exception that says if anyone else has a gun, you're a danger except for Kyle Rittenhouse. There's no exception in the law that says if you point your gun at people, oh, that makes you a threat and I can kill you, except for Kyle Rittenhouse. I can do it all night long. The same rules apply to him as everyone else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PERINO: We're going to take you right back to the courtroom. They have resumed the prosecution. Now, it's starting its rebuttal.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

Content and Programming Copyright 2021 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2021 VIQ Media Transcription, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of VIQ Media Transcription, Inc. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.