In a turn of events so familiar it was almost predictable, Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teen who brought an AR-15 to last year’s Kenosha, Wisconsin, Black Lives Matter protests and used it to kill two people and wound a third, is being hailed by Fox News stars as a “good kid” who “did the right thing.” Prosecutors have described Rittenhouse—who was 17 at the time of the shootings, and is currently on trial for various criminal charges, including first-degree intentional homicide—as a vigilante killer, though Rittenhouse himself took the stand this week to claim he had acted in self-defense.
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld seemed inclined to believe the vigilante argument, but said in this case, vigilantism was justified. “He did the right thing,” Gutfeld said. “He did what the government should have done, which was to make sure these dirtbags—these violent, disgusting dirtbags—weren’t roaming the streets.”
Amazingly, at least one person on the network has compared Rittenhouse to George Floyd. “I have a problem with the inconsistency that I see from the left and people that claim…to fight for the rights of the people,” said Fox News contributor Lawrence Jones. “If you agree that the state shouldn’t have the knee on someone’s neck and kill them, then how could you support the state intentionally targeting a young man that it shows in the video, that it’s self-defense?”
Rittenhouse, who drove from his home in Illinois to attend the Kenosha protests, has insisted he was there to defend property owners and act as a field medic. Jeanine Pirro, a former New York state judge turned Fox News host, is doing her best to advance Rittenhouse’s version of events. “He was a good kid, he went there to clean up the graffiti on the buildings,” she said, adding that his showing on the witness stand “exemplified” what a defendant should do. During the segment, Geraldo Rivera rejected Pirro’s description, saying that Rittenhouse is a “dopey kid with a hero complex” and had no reason to be at the protests. Pirro shot back: “First of all, I don’t think he’s a dopey kid. Just because he isn’t Mr. Cool from New York City doesn’t make him a dopey kid, okay? This kid practiced CPR training, he was a police explorer, he was a fire cadet.… That’s a good kid. That is the kind of kid who can grow up and have a moral core.”
On Thursday night, Sean Hannity attempted to gin up more sympathy for the teenage shooter by airing a softball interview with his mother, Wendy Rittenhouse. At one point, Hannity asked how it impacted her and her son when Joe Biden supposedly depicted Rittenhouse as a white supremacist during the 2020 election. (When Rittenhouse was released on bail prior to the trial, he publicly appeared with members of the Proud Boys—a far-right group that has drawn headlines for instigating violent brawls at leftist protests—and was spotted flashing the “okay” sign, a hand signal that can be code for “white power.” A close acquaintance of the Rittenhouses told The New Yorker that neither he nor Rittenhouse knew the men were Proud Boys, or the significance of the “okay” gesture.) “President Biden don’t know my son whatsoever, and he’s not a white supremacist. He’s not a racist. And he did that for the votes…. He defamed him,” Wendy Rittenhouse said after Hannity asserted that he has not seen “any evidence whatsoever that he is such a person.”
— In Major Shift, NIH Admits Funding Risky Virus Research in Wuhan
— Matt Gaetz Reportedly Screwed Six Ways From Sunday
— Joe Biden Reaffirms Trump’s Has-Been Status Over Jan. 6 Documents
— The Metaverse Is About to Change Everything
— The Weirdness of Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s Reluctant Leader
— The Jan. 6 Committee Is Finally Getting Trump Allies to Spill
— Jeffrey Epstein’s Billionaire Friend Leon Black Is Under Investigation
— Facebook’s Reckoning With Reality—And the Metaverse-Size Problems to Come
— From the Archive: Robert Durst, the Fugitive Heir
— Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.