Ten Lies about Rittenhouse

As protests break out in cities across America in the wake of the Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal one wonders how many of the protestors have fallen for one or more of the falsehoods about the case that have been perpetrated by our media.

In a column written before the verdict was announced, Miranda Devine at The New York Post wrote about ten false claims that have appeared in either print, broadcast or social media, all of which were debunked in court.

She opens with this: Of all the willful lies and omissions in the media’s coverage of the Steele dossier, Brian Sicknick, the Covington kids, Jussie Smollett, the Wuhan lab, Hunter Biden’s laptop and so on, nothing beats the evil propaganda peddled about Kyle Rittenhouse.

They try to make the Rittenhouse case about race, but it’s about class, punching down at the white working-class son of a single mother because they don’t see him as fully human, and it makes them feel good.

They lie about him because they can.

The central media narrative is that Kyle Rittenhouse is a white supremacist whose mother drove him across state lines with an AR-15 to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters. All lies.

“A white, Trump-supporting, MAGA-loving Blue Lives Matter social media partisan, 17 years old, picks up a gun, drives from one state to another with the intent to shoot people,” was typical from John Heilemann, MSNBC’s national affairs analyst.

Here's Devine's list. Every one of these claims, to which she provides links, has been shown to be false. Read her column for her explanations:

1. He killed two black BLM protesters.
2. He lived out of state and had no connection to Kenosha.
3. He illegally took an AR-15 across state lines.
4. He illegally possessed the rifle he used.
5. His mother drove him across state lines to the riot.
6. He was an “active shooter” who took his gun to a riot looking for trouble.
7. He's a “white supremacist,” as then-candidate Joe Biden labeled him in a tweet showing the teenager’s photograph.
8. He “flashed white power signs” with Proud Boys.
9. He wore surgical gloves “to cover his fingerprints.”

Right up there among the most ridiculous allegations Devine lists is her last, that the judge in the case, Judge Bruce Schroeder, "is a 'Trumpy' racist biased toward the defense." Here's what Devine says about this canard:

This slur is based on the fact he would not let the prosecution use the term “victim” — common practice when the jury has not ruled on a case.

He told a lame joke about Asian food for lunch being held up by the supply-chain crisis, and his phone’s ring tone sounds like a 1980s ditty played at Trump rallies. Ridiculous.

In fact, Schroeder is a Democrat, has run as a Democrat for the Wisconsin Senate and was first appointed by a Democratic governor.

Bias was also perceived in what the Chicago Tribune said was his “highly unusual” decision to allow Kyle to draw names randomly out of a container at the end of the trial to determine which 12 of the 18 jurors would decide his fate. [But that's] something this judge always does, he told the court.

Devine makes an interesting point in her conclusion:

On the second day of jury deliberations Wednesday, the judge railed against media distortions, although he seemed most aggrieved about attacks on his reputation, rather than Kyle’s. He threatened to stop trials from being televised, but that’s exactly the wrong solution.

Only because the public was able to hear the evidence for themselves did they become aware of the malevolent dishonesty of the media coverage, which has threatened a fair trial and ensured riots if Kyle is justly acquitted.

It's contemptible, actually, that so many supposed professionals in the media are apparently more interested in smearing people they don't like, even if they ruin the life of an 18 year-old kid, than in reporting the truth, but I guess we shouldn't be surprised. It's the same thing they did to high school student Nicholas Sandmann two years ago, the Duke lacrosse players before that and numerous others in between. One might almost think that there are a lot of people in our media who hate young, white, right-leaning males.