Source: Politics<\/p>\n
A jury in Wisconsin found 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty on Friday for shooting and killing two men, and wounding a third, during the riots in Kenosha in the summer of 2020. <\/p>\n
But well before he was acquitted on the five counts he faced, Rittenhouse had found absolution elsewhere. A wide swath of conservatives had turned his case into an example of a social justice system run amok and Rittenhouse himself into an avatar of Second Amendment virtuosity. They treated the trial outcome as vindication, perhaps divine. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis case has veins that go to every major political issue and contemporary political issue that we are facing as a nation right now,\u201d said a spokesperson for the Rittenhouse family outside the courthouse in Wisconsin. \u201cWe are not going anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since Rittenhouse\u2019s arrest, legal defense funds have been formed in his name, right-wing commentators have blasted media coverage for allegedly mishandling facts of the case, memes depicting Rittenhouse as a hero \u2014 or even Captain America \u2014 have cropped up on Twitter, and T-shirts have been made with the silhouette of Rittenhouse shooting his gun with the words, \u201cDon\u2019t Tread on Me,\u201d and \u201cFree Kyle.\u201d Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz offered Rittenhouse an internship in Congress if acquitted. <\/p>\n
Republican strategist Gregg Keller said he could see a future in which Rittenhouse becomes a featured speaker at the conservative confabs where activists congregate. A CPAC invitation \u201cwould not surprise me. … I think there will be every effort made to turn him into conservative hero,\u201d Keller said. \u201cI think given the situation he found himself in, what he did appears to be justified \u2014 but I would stop short of lionizing him as a hero, a 17-year-old kid who found himself in that situation.\u201d <\/p>\n
Neither CPAC nor Turning Point USA commented on any potential invitation to Rittenhouse. <\/p>\n
The trial of Rittenhouse, who faced multiple felony charges for those fatal shootings in 2020, was the latest event to split a deeply divided country. According to a new Economist\/YouGov<\/a> poll, 76 percent of Democrats believed Rittenhouse should have been found guilty of homicide, while 65 percent Republicans did not. The left has painted the teen as reckless and even racist<\/a> for going to Kenosha armed with an AR-15 as violence erupted in the wake of Jacob Blake\u2019s death by shooting at the hands of the Kenosha police.<\/p>\n The right, in response, largely and boisterously rallied around Rittenhouse. They argued that the media had mischaracterized his motives and the specifics of the case, largely by dismissing his claims that he feared for his life, was acting in self-defense, and that the men killed were white. Fox News commentators like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity have dedicated nightly monologues to blasting media coverage of the Rittenhouse trial and defending the teen.<\/p>\n “This is what happens when powerful people in the media, in Washington, in the swamp \u2026 rush to judgment,\u201d Hannity said. \u201cAnd sadly, it happens every single time over and over again [with] the same cast of characters. The media mob \u2026 get it wrong and innocent people \u2026 pay the price.” <\/p>\n Those same commentators seized on a Joe Biden campaign tweet <\/a>from over a year ago casting Rittenhouse as a white supremacist. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said she wouldn’t comment on an ongoing trial or the president\u2019s previous words. She also did not comment immediately on the verdict. <\/p>\n The totality of developments led conservatives to not just rally to Rittenhouse\u2019s defense but portray him as a victim of a political hit job. <\/p>\n \u201cKyle is clearly innocent,\u201d conservative activist Charlie Kirk told POLITICO. \u201cBut this trial is about more than just Kyle. It\u2019s about the rule of law, it\u2019s about the Constitution, the 2nd Amendment, and the right to defend yourself when a violent mob is attacking you. It\u2019s about whether an American citizen will be afforded an impartial jury of their peers that won\u2019t cow to threats of riots if they acquit an innocent man.\u201d<\/p>\n Rittenhouse\u2019s lionization on the right has not been universal. Some conservatives recoiled at the idea that they were celebrating, what they saw as, vigilantism. They have argued it is \u201cdangerous\u201d to paint Rittenhouse as anything but a teen whose reckless behavior resulted in the deaths of two men, and they have cautioned that while Rittenhouse may have acted in self-defense, killings are still morally wrong. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen you turn a foolish young man into a hero, you\u2019ll see more foolish young men try to emulate his example,\u201d wrote conservative commentator David French in The Atlantic<\/a>. \u201cAnd although the state should not permit rioters to run rampant in America\u2019s streets, random groups of armed Americans are utterly incapable of imposing order themselves, and any effort to do so can lead to greater death and carnage.\u201d <\/p>\n But those voices have been in the minority. More common has been a refrain that Rittenhouse has been a victim of media hysteria like others before him. Kirk pointed to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Nick Sandmann, the Kentucky teen falsely accused of trying to intimidate a Native American drummer at the Lincoln Memorial, as similar cases of media \u201csmear jobs.\u201d <\/p>\n Sandmann\u2019s case, in particular, looks instructive for Rittenhouse. He sued CNN and The Washington Post for defamation and became a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre on the right for it. The lawsuits were settled and Sandmann was eventually invited to speak at the 2020 Republican National Convention, where he warned about \u201ccancel culture.\u201d In the days before the Rittenhouse verdict, he penned a Daily Mail op-ed<\/a> in which he encouraged the 18-year-old to sue for defamation. \u201cGive it a shot and hold the media accountable,\u201d Sandmann wrote. <\/p>\n