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.