Left-Wing Media Waged a Campaign to Vilify Kyle Rittenhouse and the Judge in His Case

Sean Krajacic-Pool/Getty Images.

With closing arguments on Monday, it is worth recalling that many in right-wing media have inexplicably celebrated Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man who traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin amid riots last year and ended up killing two people and wounding a third. But, as so often is the case in our hyper-polarized media climate, left-wing media is guilty of a similar kind of misinformation, which has had the effect of vilifying Rittenhouse and even the judge presiding over his trial, Bruce Schroeder.

Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time of the shootings, faces several charges. He has argued he acted in self defense.

The riots occurred in the aftermath of a police officer shooting Jacob Blake, a Black man, in the back, leaving him paralyzed from the waste down. The officer who shot Blake, who is White, was not prosecuted in the shooting, as the Justice Department determined he acted in self-defense, given Blake allegedly charged at officers with a knife and resisted arrest.

The particular circumstances of the Rittenhouse case have caused the media to put the emphasis on race. The protests were in response to the police shooting of a Black man, and Rittenhouse is White. The media has come to the conclusion that Rittenhouse must therefore be a white supremacist, ignoring the fact that the three people he shot were all White (as Matt Taibbi points out here, that inconvenient fact rarely gets mentioned in left-wing coverage of this case).

News outlets, including MSNBC and CNN and the broadcast networks, have aired segment after segment with guests attacking Rittenhouse and Schroeder.

Much of the criticism of Rittenhouse focused on him breaking down emotionally on the stand as he described shooting Rosenbaum.

The View co-host Joy Behar called it “one of the worst acting jobs I’ve ever seen.”

Larry Seidlin, who’s famous for presiding over the case regarding who would get custody of the body of the late model and actress Anna Nicole Smith, remarked on CNN, “Is that staged? Is that theatrical? Broadway’s ready.”

Watch the video of Rittenhouse breaking down on the stand and compare that scene to the callous way it was mocked by the media.

In addition to this mockery, numerous journalists and pundits baselessly labeled Rittenhouse a “white supremacist.”

Tariq Nasheed tweeted that “this trial is basically performative art white supremacist theater.”

“If you’re defending Kyle Rittenhouse you might be a white supremacist. Just sayin,” tweeted David Leavitt.

In all of these attacks on Rittenhouse, none of his critics noted that the three men he shot were White.

Regarding left-wing cable news network coverage of Schroeder, the judge presiding over the case, CNN analyst Bakari Sellers said, “It appears that this judge is auditioning for the cameras and looking for his next gig on Fox News or OAN or whatever, OANN or whatever it is.”

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough called Schroeder “absolutely disgusting” and “obviously playing for the audience, a certain audience.”

“What I know is the law, and what I know is what White people are willing to do to defend white supremacy,” said The Nation’s Elie Mystal, who accused Schroeder of being biased in favor of Rittenhouse and predicted “the boy’s going to walk.”

Mystal called Schroeder “a biased, racist judge with his Trump rally cellphone [ringtone],” referring to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” I should not have to point out that a judge’s ringtone has little bearing on his or her jurisprudence. Schroeder is no exception.

There is perhaps no better example of the frenzied bias against the judge in the Rittenhouse case than the media’s insane reaction to a benign joke he made about the supply chain crisis.

Stories with these headlines exemplify my point: “’How not to be a good judge’: Kyle Rittenhouse judge draws new backlash with ‘Asian food’ joke” (USA Today); “Judge in Kyle Rittenhouse trial makes inappropriate Asian food joke” (CNN); and “Kyle Rittenhouse Judge’s Asian Food Joke Opens New Front in Culture Wars Around Trial” (Newsweek); and “Kyle Rittenhouse trial: Judge’s off-colour ‘Asian food’ joke draws more scrutiny onto courtroom comments” (The Independent).

The United States is a country where there is due process and legal decisions are based on evidence. Rittenhouse may very well be acquitted in this trial on grounds of self-defense. That may shock those who consume left-wing media, and have been told that Rittenhouse is a murderous white supremacist who faked tears on the stand in order to dupe the jury. Rittenhouse had no business being in Kenosha with a rifle, but left-wing media issuing baseless verdicts in the case, in defiance of facts and journalistic principles, is indefensible.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.