On Friday, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges related to him fatally shooting two people, and injuring a third, on August 25, 2020, amidst protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin after the shooting of Jacob Blake. By Monday night, the 18-year-old had already sat down to give his first post-acquittal interview, with his longtime cheerleader, Tucker Carlson.
Carlson, who once memorably claimed that Rittenhouse was “maintain[ing] order when no one else would,” provided some color commentary while teeing up his pre-taped interview on Monday’s show, where he described Rittenhouse as “bright, decent, sincere, dutiful, and hard-working. Exactly the kind of person you’d want many more of in your country.”
As the baby-faced shooter told his tale of woe, he took some more shots—these ones only figuratively, fortunately—at, well, pretty much everyone. According to Rittenhouse, the police where nowhere to be seen and “the City of Kenosha failed the community. The governor, Tony Evers, failed the community.” If Carlson’s facial expressions throughout were any indication, he was clearly intrigued.
As for that weapon of war Rittenhouse was carrying? Carlson pretty much dismissed that, noting that a lot of other people were carrying guns so, hey, why not?
As Rittenhouse tells it, his only goal that evening was to help protect his community. And after that required him shooting a few people, he desperately tried to turn himself in. He told Carlson about how he found a police officer and, after confessing to having just killed someone, was told to “go home.” He also explained how he attempted to go to the Kenosha police station to turn himself in, but he wasn’t able to “because they weren’t accepting visitors apparently.”
After having a chuckle about Rittenhouse driving “across state lines, as we’re now calling it” (LOL!), Rittenhouse explained that “I agree that everybody has the right to protest and assemble, but… I don’t appreciate that people are burning down American cities to try and spread their message.”
There are a few other things Rittenhouse doesn’t appreciate, including a September 2020 tweet from then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, which criticized Trump’s refusal to disavow white supremacists and included a video that featured footage of Rittenhouse and his rifle.
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. pic.twitter.com/Q3VZTW1vUV
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 30, 2020
“It’s actual malice, defaming my character, for him to say something like that,” Rittenhouse claimed, adding that, “the lies that they can get away with spreading is just sickening and it is a disgrace to this country.” Carlson—one of the biggest perpetrators of falsehoods and misinformation—agreed, clearly unaware of the irony. Rittenhouse went on to lament the fact that his case became political in any way:
“No matter what your opinion is or where you stand, this wasn’t a political case, it shouldn’t have been a political case, it was made a political case. It has nothing to do with race and the ways people are twisting this is sickening. I’m not a racist person. I support the BLM movement, I support peacefully demonstrating. This case has nothing to do with race. It never had anything to do with race. It had to do with the right to self-defense.”
