Former Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann offered sympathy and advice to Kyle Rittenhouse amid speculation that the recently acquitted teenager could file defamation lawsuits against media organizations that labeled him a white supremacist.
Sandmann, who was also labeled a racist and a white supremacist when he was confronted by a Native American activist in 2019, told Fox News’s Sean Hannity Friday that being castigated by the media “unfortunately makes you grow up in a lot of ways.”
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“I think he should sue the media, but it’s really a personal call that’s up to him,” said Sandmann, who recently settled defamation lawsuits with CNN and the Washington Post and has six more in the works. “In January, it will be three years since everything happened at the March for Life, and I’m still looking at another two years until the cases that go to trial are resolved, so it’s really a personal call.”
Sandmann said that while he would like to see Rittenhouse sue President Joe Biden for calling him a white supremacist on the campaign trail, he does not “think Kyle’s in the case where he can be making lawsuits just to see what happens.”
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Sandmann was 16 when the media firestorm targeted him, while Rittenhouse was 17 when he fatally shot two men and injured one man during riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse, now 18, pleaded not guilty, arguing that he acted in self-defense, and a jury acquitted him on all five charges Friday.
“To deal with this overload of stress where you feel like half of the country, hundreds of millions of people, hate you for something you were innocent of […] can do a lot to you mentally,” Sandmann told Hannity. “It takes a very strong will to be able to resist that and keep a level head, and I know that Kyle is probably dealing with that right now.”
