Kyle Rittenhouse, Who Did Not “Want to Participate in Politics,” Turns to Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump

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In the early part of the Kyle Rittenhouse homicide proceedings, Judge Bruce Schroeder told lawyers that the case focused partly on the facts and the law. “This is not a political test,” he said in September. “It’s not going to be a political test.” Obviously that would not be possible — especially not in a case where an armed minor, claiming to have helped protect private property during racial justice protests in a city he did not live, was shot when two men were killed and a third was wounded.

But Schroeder didn’t really warn lawyers to leave politics at the door as much as he warned them to leave their politics at the door — the kind of politics that, say, would treat the men Rittenhouse shot and killed in Kenosha in last year as “victims.” In fact, so much politics was allowed in the case, inside the courtroom and outside: The Rittenhouse team was allowed to describe those killed as “rioters” and “looters,” urging jurors to applaud a witness in defense because it happened he to become a veteran, and the teen’s mother appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program to defend her son before sentencing. He also defended Schroeder in that interview: The judge was “very fair,” he said, and “didn’t allow nonsense” in the courtroom.

Schroeder’s court also seems to have treated one type of politics as neutrality and another as “nonsense” is, of course, an example of the very bias in the legal system that critics have complained about in the wake of Rittenhouse’s acquittal. Insisting something is not political in nature does not do so. But Rittenhouse continued to do so on its post-trial media tour. Speaking to Ashleigh Banfield in an interview with NewsNation on Tuesday, the 18-year-old said she “didn’t want to get involved in politics” and her case was just about the right to self-defense— “not where you are. fall., left or right. “

“I’m not a reason person,” Rittenhouse told Banfield. “I was just someone who attacked and defended myself.”

But while he may not have accepted any of those internship offers from Matt Gaetz and other right-wing lawmakers trying to fool each other, Rittenhouse hasn’t really distanced himself from politics. of his case. Before he spoke to Banfield, he sat down for a compelling interview with Tucker Carlson, who accompanied the film crew along with Rittenhouse and his defense during the trial for the upcoming documentary on Fox Nation. And, after talking to Carlson, he and his mother went down to Mar-a-Lago to visit Donald Trump, who posed for one of his traditional thumbs-up photos with the smiling teenager. (The photo-op, oddly enough, took place in front of a photo of the former president meeting with Kim Jong Un.) “Really nice young man,” the former president said of Rittenhouse in an interview Tuesday with Hannity. “What he went through … that was prosecutorial misconduct.”

“Mar-a-Lago just left a while ago,” Trump said, describing Rittenhouse as a “fan” of his. “He shouldn’t have experienced that,” the former president said. “That was wrong prosecution behavior, and it’s happening all over the United States right now with Democrats.”

Trump in 2020 described the riots, which stemmed from protests over the shooting of Jacob Blake by a white police officer, as “anti-American” acts of “domestic terror.” He also defended Rittenhouse at the time while denouncing violence in “Democratic cities.” Last week, after Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all counts, Trump applauded not only the verdicts, but the teen’s actions: “If that’s not self -defense, nothing!” he wrote.

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