Joe Biden tweeted out a video during his 2020 presidential campaign in which Kyle Rittenhouse’s image was spliced with infamous images of tiki-torch-bearing white supremacist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. Along with that video, Biden’s tweet stated, “There’s no other way to put it: the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night.”
Biden very clearly called Rittenhouse a white supremacist. And he is hardly alone in doing so — many journalists did so from the moment the incident happened, despite a lack of any evidence that this was ever the case. Indeed, the immediate urge by Biden and others to connect this case to white supremacism is almost pathological. It speaks to their need to make excuses for the rioting and lawlessness that broke out in 2020, causing a billion dollars in damage and leaving some cities in ruins.
No one has even found a stray post on the internet suggesting that Rittenhouse espoused white supremacist ideas or had any real affiliation with groups that do.
Biden and everyone else who defamed Rittenhouse owes him a personal apology. In case it matters, the three men he shot in self-defense were all white. That can’t be their excuse.
The acquittal is unrelated to the separate question of Rittenhouse’s good name. Even if he had been convicted, his shooting of three white men, one of them a convicted child molester, would not be evidence that he is a racist.
As matters stand, Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges. The jury had little choice but to acquit given the abundance of video evidence. Rittenhouse is fortunate that there were so many cameras there to document accurately what happened. He was pursued and violently attacked by the same unruly mob that had been in the process of laying waste to Kenosha. Many liberals were making excuses for them as they destroyed this proud city.
During the incident, Rittenhouse was ambushed, then chased, attacked, knocked to the ground, drop-kicked in the face, and hit with a skateboard — all caught on video. Amid all this violence, Rittenhouse fired at four assailants and hit three. One of the men Rittenhouse shot, the one who survived, admitted at trial that Rittenhouse had refrained from shooting at him until he had pointed his own gun at Rittenhouse.
Even if Rittenhouse made a mistake in showing up that night to defend businesses in the town where he worked and his friends lived, he had a right to defend himself under Wisconsin law.
President Joe Biden’s contribution to this fiasco is an embarrassment to his office. His statement that he is “angry and concerned” at the verdict demonstrates only that his handlers did not pay close enough attention to the trial to see the video evidence.
Biden continues to divide the country. In exchange, its voters are increasingly likely to give him exactly what he deserves for his trouble.
