Tucker Carlson breaks down Kyle Rittenhouse testimony: he already won
‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ host reacts to the ‘intentional perversion of justice’ from the prosecution.
The Kyle Rittenhouse trial continued today in Wisconsin. In a move that surprised lawyers everywhere, Rittenhouse took the stand in his own defense. That is unusual in criminal cases, and it's especially unusual in murder trials. And the reason is simple: the stakes are too high. One wrong answer in a cross-examination, and you could wind up spending life in prison.
But this case was different. By the time he testified today, Kyle Rittenhouse had already won the case. At this point, there was no remaining doubt that Kyle Rittenhouse acted in self-defense during the riots last summer in Kenosha. Every shot Rittenhouse fired was captured on videotape, and from multiple angles. Every single witness who testified this week at the trial confirmed exactly what happened.
And here are the facts of it.
KYLE RITTENHOUSE TAKES THE STAND IN HIS OWN DEFENSE
A convicted child rapist called Joseph Rosenbaum was released from a mental hospital, then went directly to join the mob that was burning downtown Kenosha. Once he got to the riot, Rosenbaum saw Kyle Rittenhouse and immediately threatened to kill him. Rosenbaum then chased Rittenhouse and tried to pull the gun from his hands. When he did that, Kyle Rittenhouse shot him.
So Joseph Rosenbaum died as he had lived, trying to touch an unwilling minor. At this point, Rittenhouse ran to find police. A mob then chased him down the street, howling for his death. A rioter jumped on Rittenhouse and knocked him to the ground, another smashed him in the face with a skateboard. Yet another drew a loaded gun and pointed it in his face. Kyle Rittenhouse shot the second two men, one of them fatally.
So those are the facts, and there's no way to interpret them, except for what they are. The exercise of self-defense. Kyle Rittenhouse shot people so he would not be killed.
But if you take a step back from the Rittenhouse story, you see something else entirely, you see violent insanity completely out of control in the middle of an American city. And the question is how did that happen in our country and why did nobody stop it?
And it wasn't just happening in Kenosha, of course. Violent mobs at the same moment overwhelmed New York and Minneapolis and Portland and many other cities. They killed at least a dozen people. They caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. They burned businesses. They torched police stations. They bombed courthouses. They invaded suburban neighborhoods in the middle of the night purely to intimidate people because of their race.
Democrats applauded all of this as it happened. Most Republicans just ignored it. And of course, the media lied about it. In Kenosha, the police barely even showed up. Officers in armored cruisers sat and watched as rioters torched a car lot with more than 100 vehicles in it. And they did nothing to stop the chaos.
The question, then, is how exactly are we surprised when a 17-year-old lifeguard from Illinois decides to step in? They hate it when you say that, but it's an entirely fair question. When legitimate authority refuses to do its duty, its sworn duty, others will fill the vacuum. That is always true. It's a physics principle.
Kyle Rittenhouse testifies during cross examination in his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. Rittenhouse is accused of killing two people and wounding a third during a protest over police brutality in Kenosha, last year. (Mark Hertzberg /Pool Photo via AP) (Mark Hertzberg /Pool Photo via AP)
But rather than acknowledge that obvious truth and accept the responsibility they bear, the people who made these riots possible in the first place decided instead to crush Kyle Rittenhouse. Joe Biden publicly called him a White supremacist, something for which someday we very much hope he is sued, because it's totally outrageous and false. Members of Congress called him a domestic terrorist.
Today, Kyle Rittenhouse spoke for himself. See what you think.
WHO IS THE WISCONSIN JUDGE IN KYLE RITTENHOUSE TRIAL?
RITTENHOUSE: Once I take that step back, I look over my shoulder and Mr. Rosenbaum was now running from my right side and I was cornered from in front of me with Mr. Kaminski. And there were three people right there.
So after a 10-minute break to compose himself, Kyle Rittenhouse returned to the courtroom and proceeded to blow up the prosecution's claim that he had racked his rifle in a threatening manner. It turns out he didn't rack his rifle at all. And video proved that. And then Rittenhouse explained why he turned himself in to police after the shootings.
RITTENHOUSE: People were saying, cranium him and get him, kill him. The people were screaming, and I just was trying to get to the police running down Sheridan Road.
DEFENSE: You say ‘I'm trying to get to the police.' Why were you trying to get to the police?
RITTENHOUSE: Because I didn't do anything wrong. I defended myself.
DEFENSE: Did you feel as though there was safety where the police were?
RITTENHOUSE: Yes.
So they didn't really have a response to that since it's all on videotape. It's provably true. So instead, the lead prosecutor in today's case, who is essentially an NPR pledge drive donor called Thomas Binger, took a very different tact. He went on to imply that Kyle Rittenhouse must be guilty because he had exercised his constitutional right to remain silent after he was arrested.
BINGER: Since August 25th, 2020, this is the first time that you have told your story. Since August 25th, 2020, you've had the benefit of watching countless videos of your actions that night, correct? … You've also had the opportunity to listen to the testimony of all 30-some witnesses that have testified in this trial so far. Correct?
RITTENHOUSE: Yes.
BINGER: And after all of that, now you are telling us your side of the story. Correct?
RITTENHOUSE: Correct.
BINGER: I am making the point that after hearing everything in the case now, he's tailoring his story to what has already been introduced.
JUDGE BRUCE SCHROEDER: The problem is, this is a grave constitutional violation for you to talk about the defendant's silence, and that is, your right, You're right on the borderline, and you may be over, but you'd better stop.
This is day one of law school stuff, but just to be clear, exercising your constitutional rights is not an indication that you are guilty. It is a sign that you are American. It is your birthright.
The government's own lawyer does not understand that, which you think might get the attention of Merrick Garland's Justice Department. Which, after all, is in charge of justice in this country. But no. Merrick Garland is not interested, just as he has ignored the thugs videotaping jurors outside the courthouse. The judge in this case seems pretty well fed up with all of it today. He ruled that prosecutors could not mention statements about shoplifters that Kyle Rittenhouse apparently made weeks before the shootings. Prosecutors asked Rittenhouse about them anyway, and once again, the judge was forced to shut down the trial.
JUDGE SCHROEDER: I indicated a bias towards denial is what I did. Held it open with a bias towards denial. Why would you think that that made it okay for you without any advance notice to bring this matter before the jury? … I was astonished when you began your examination by commenting on the defendant's post-arrest silence. That's Basic Law. It's been Basic Law in this country for 40 years, 50 years. I have no idea why you would do something like that, and it gives - well, I'll leave it at that. So I don't know what you're up to.
You can watch televised trials for the next 10 years and never hear a judge talk like that, that's how completely out of control the prosecution in this case is. At this point, it's not even clear it's going to make it to a jury. The defense has asked the judge to dismiss the case without the possibility of a retrial, and the judge indicated he might very well grant that request. So again, what you are watching is willful prosecutorial misconduct. It's an intentional perversion of justice, and the judge very well knows that.
JUDGE SCHROEDER: I had heard nothing in this trial to change any of my rulings.
BINGER: That was before the testimony, Your Honor.
…
JUDGE SCHROEDER: Don't get brazen with me. You knew very well, you know very well that an attorney can't go into these types of areas when the judge has already ruled without asking outside the presence of the jury to do so. So don't give me that.
Yeah, don't give me that. Exactly. Good for the judge. We should tell you we're so used to evaluating everything through a partisan lens that it's worth noting the judge in this case was appointed by a Democrat. The point is, however, he still believes in the Constitution. That's always the point. Kyle Rittenhouse should be very grateful he's the judge in this case.
KENOSHA, WISCONSIN - NOVEMBER 10: Kyle Rittenhouse testifies during his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse on November 10, 2021 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse shot three demonstrators, killing two of them, during a night of unrest that erupted in Kenosha after a police officer shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back while police attempted to arrest him in August 2020. Rittenhouse, from Antioch, Illinois, was 17 at the time of the shooting and armed with an assault rifle. He faces counts of felony homicide and felony attempted homicide. (Photo by Mark Hertzberg-Pool/Getty Images)
Yesterday, the prosecutors tried to bully a freelance photographer, Nathan DeBruin. In return, that turned out to be a mistake, DeBruin ratted them out on live television.
PROSECUTOR: Mr. De Bruin, you said there was a lot of tension in the room when you met with me and Mr. Binger and Ms. B. Is it fair to say that you were very nervous?
DEBRUIN: Yeah, absolutely.
PROSECUTOR: And had you read over your statement, right?
DEBRUIN: Correct.
PROSECUTOR: And we asked if you knew anything beyond that statement.
DEBRUIN: Correct.
PROSECUTOR: We didn't ask you to change it.
DEBRUIN: Yes, you did.
So pressuring a witness to change his statement? Right. That's exactly the kind of justice that Kyle Rittenhouse has received from the government so far. No one that has been paying attention is surprised by any of this. Ghouls, like Joe Biden, politicized this case day one.
What's terrifying and very unnerving to anyone who lives in this country is the number of institutions that joined the Democratic Party in trying to prevent Kyle Rittenhouse from getting a fair trial, which again, is your birthright as an American.
Here's one example. In Virginia, Police Lt. Col. William Kelly was fired from his job for daring to donate to Kyle Rittenhouse's legal defense. Kelly was a 20 year veteran of the Norfolk Police Department. He had three children and a wife with cancer. For disagreeing with Joe Biden's view of the Rittenhouse case the department dismissed him without a pension. That actually happened.
In Salt Lake City, a local news station decided to terrorize a paramedic called Craig Shepard. His sin? Giving ten dollars to Rittenhouse's legal defense. So reporters called Shepard's employer. Another reporter showed up at Shepherd's house with a camera crew and then bragged about it.
"ABC4 news investigator Jason Nguyen went to Shepherd's home to get his side of things. But those inside the home didn't want to talk."
Yeah, wonder why?
It is shameful and authoritarian, hurting the weak to appease the strong. That's the American media in 2021.
Having watched the trial, no honest person could fail to admit the obvious. The media were completely wrong about Kyle Rittenhouse. They slandered an innocent kid, but they're not admitting it.
There is at least one exception, though, and we want to highlight that person tonight. Her name is Anna Kasparian. She's a lefty. She's on a show called The Young Turk. She hates this show, and most of the time, we disagree with her. But on the question of this trial, Anna Kasparian was bravely honest, and good for her.
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KASPARIAN: Look, these details matter, because if you're going to make an argument that you acted in self-defense, there needs to be some proof that there was an imminent threat. … Now what really mattered to me was how all of this unfolded. What was the thing that sparked it? What started all of it? And initially, I was under the assumption that Rittenhouse was the person who was chasing after Joseph Rosenbaum, that that's how it started. But I was wrong about that. OK, so I want to correct the record. I was in fact wrong about that.
Wow. You don't see that too often, but it's not hard, by the way. Tell the truth. Let reality be your guide. It feels good. That's what decent people do. There are too few of them.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the November 10, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
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