Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson reacted to Friday’s Rittenhouse acquittal with a scathing rebuke of the media for its portrayal of Kyle Rittenhouse, which based on the trial proceedings turned out to be incorrect.
Carlson also said it showed the diminished role the media play in America.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Here is how the story started, just so we all remember.
Seventeen-year–old Kyle Rittenhouse wound up on the street in Kenosha in the first place with a gun for one reason. He was there because in the summer of 2020, the leadership of the Democratic Party endorsed mob violence for political ends. That’s why there were riots in Kenosha that night, because people like Kamala Harris supported those riots.
More than a year later, as Rittenhouse stood trial for murder, those very same people implied there would be more violence if he was acquitted.
So imagine being a juror on that case, imagine the pressure and the fear. It would take enormous moral courage for any juror to ignore the threats and follow the evidence to its logical conclusion, so much courage that at times we doubted it was even possible in a country as politicized as ours now is.
But as we learn today, it is still possible, thank God.
This afternoon, the jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse on all charges. The jury affirmed what was obvious from the very beginning, he acted in self- defense. It was a wonderful moment.
Anyone who believes in impartial justice was vindicated. Here’s what that moment looked like.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As to the first count of the information of Joseph Rosenbaum, we, the jury, find the defendant, Kyle H. Rittenhouse, not guilty.
As to the second count of the information, Richard McGinnis, we, the jury, find the defendant, Kyle H. Rittenhouse not guilty.
As to the third count of the information, unknown male, we, the jury, find the defendant, Kyle H. Rittenhouse not guilty.
As to the fourth count of the information, Anthony Huber, we the jury, find the defendant, Kyle H. Rittenhouse not guilty.
As to the fifth count of the information, Gaige Grosskreutz, we the jury find the defendant, Kyle H. Rittenhouse not guilty.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Remarkable. Months of relentless lying from the media about this case, in the end had no effect whatsoever on the jury. Propaganda doesn’t always win. Today, it was soundly defeated. Thank God.
Our documentary team was there in Kenosha when it happened. They’ve been there for days putting together an installment of our “Tucker Carlson Original” series on this case and they captured Kyle Rittenhouse’s first moments outside the court today after being acquitted.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KYLE RITTENHOUSE, ACQUITTED FROM CHARGES: It’s the stuff that keeps you up at night, like once you finally do get to sleep, your dreams are about what happened and you’re waking up in a in a dark, cold sweat.
QUESTION: You had dreams about what happened?
RITTENHOUSE: Every single night. It’s — it’s quite scary actually because the dreams feel so real and they’re not the same at all, they’re all different, they’re the different scenarios that run through your head during the day like what could have happened, like, I’m alive, but what could have happened?
Like what if I wasn’t alive or what if I did let Mr. Rosenbaum steal my gun. It’s those type of dreams. The outcome, it’s bad, like almost every outcome is either me getting seriously injured or hurt or dead.
Those are just the dreams I have on a daily basis.
JUDGE BRUCE SCHROEDER, KENOSHA COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT: The defendant will rise to face the jury and hearken to its verdicts.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The State of Wisconsin versus Kyle Rittenhouse. As to the first count of the information of Joseph Rosenbaum, we, the jury, find the defendant, Kyle H. Rittenhouse, not guilty.
As to the second count of the information, Richard McGinnis, we, the jury, find the defendant, Kyle H. Rittenhouse not guilty.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How are you feeling, man?
RITTENHOUSE: The jury reached the correct verdict, self-defense is not illegal. And I believe they came to the correct verdict and I am glad that everything went well. It’s been a rough journey, but we made through it.
We made it through the hard part.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: If you watch that clip, you’re reminded that maybe the one person in America who hasn’t yet weighed in on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is Kyle Rittenhouse himself. So for months, CNN and MSNBC and Kamala Harris have been allowed to define him. That ends Monday. We’re sitting down for a long interview with Kyle Rittenhouse. You can see it on this show, Monday night. We hope you will.
So technically, as a legal matter, this case is over. Kyle Rittenhouse has been proclaimed innocent in a court of law. He is free to resume his life.
But for the authoritarians among us, this is a disaster, they can’t let it go. Why? Because they understand that the Rittenhouse case is a referendum on the most basic right of all, the ancient right of self-defense.
If Kyle Rittenhouse can save his own life from the mob, then you can, too, and that drives them insane, so insane that the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee today, Jerry Nadler of New York implied that Kyle Rittenhouse may face Federal charges.
“Today’s verdict,” Nadler wrote, ” … justifies Federal review by the DOJ” So will Joe Biden’s Justice Department indict Kyle Rittenhouse now that he’s been acquitted by a jury in Wisconsin? It is hard to believe, you’d have to be deranged even to consider something like that. What will be the effect on the country?
But you never know with these people. At the very least, this case will be used to justify taking your guns away. Bet on it.
But if this does go to the Feds, if Kyle Rittenhouse is prosecuted by the DOJ, the case will likely be handled by Kristen Clarke. She is the black nationalist who runs the so-called Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, the division that does not protect your Civil Rights, in fact, it is trying to take them away.
Last year, Clarke weighed in on the Rittenhouse case and immediately, not surprisingly, zeroed in on Rittenhouse’s color, like his race was some kind of crime. She described him as a quote, “Armed white man” murdering innocent protesters, at quote “point-blank range.”
What does his race have to do with anything? Well, it doesn’t have anything to do with anything, of course, but it’s been a fixation of the Democratic Party from the first moments. They’ve tried to racialize this case.
And by the way, Kristen Clarke is far from the only member of the party to try and do that. Just hours after the jury’s verdict, the Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Sean Patrick Maloney, a Congressman released this statement, quote: “It is disgusting and disturbing that someone was able to carry a loaded assault rifle into a protest against the unjust killing of Jacob Blake, an unarmed black man,” end quote.
Savor that for a minute. That’s from the head of the Democratic Party’s Congressional Campaign arm. Everything about it is wrong, not just to lie, but factually, I’m sure Jacob Blake was not killed. He was also not unarmed. He was carrying a knife, we know that because he said he was carrying a knife.
He was allegedly trying to kidnap a child, that’s why the police showed up and when he grabbed a knife, they shot him. Again, that’s not in dispute and he is still alive. But it doesn’t matter, because to these people, facts don’t matter, clearly.
Sean Patrick Maloney has no interest in what actually happened.
Kamala Harris said that she was proud of Jacob Blake last year. The Democratic Party is sticking with that, too. They are trying, and they have from the very beginning, to make this case into a racial divide, to further divide the country.
Kamala Harris today said that the outcome of this case, the jury’s verdict was proof that our judicial system is not quote, “equitable.” Whatever that means. It needs to be changed.
The Attorney General of the State of New York said it needs to be completely torn down and rebuilt, our justice system that we’ve had for 250 years, it is the best thing in our country, the idea that you are tried on the basis of the facts, not on the basis of what you look like. But they’d like to change that.
ABC News by the way just reported the same thing. They told us — ABC News — a news corporation has told us that in fact, Jacob Blake was killed in Kenosha. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it’s very significant, first for the community of Kenosha, this city was traumatized by the police killing of a black man, Jacob Blake.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: The police killing of a black man who is in fact still alive. So what are they doing when they tell lies like this? Lies that you can check very easily or if you have a memory that extends into last year, you recall very well. Well, they are inciting people, of course. They’re trying to whip people into a frenzy on the basis of claims that are totally provably untrue.
What kind of a frenzy? Well, consider this. This is from a senior advisor at the DCCC, the Democratic Campaign arm. His name is Dyjuan Tatro. He just issued an explicit call for riots. “No justice, no peace,” he wrote, in the wake of the verdict.
Who is Dyjuan Tatro? Well, he, according to news reports spent a decade in prison after he shot two people. Now, he works for the Democratic Party, just in case you’re interested in whose side they’re on. But you knew that.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Congressman Val Demings, another Democrat offered this assessment: “The core of the far-right movement is that they should be able to kill you if they want to.” That’s the official line of the Democratic Party tonight.
Keep in mind, and if you watched the trial, you know this. Kyle Rittenhouse was walking down the street when he was charged by a convicted child rapist, and then charged by a number of other people.
He sought no conflict. There was never any evidence that he was the aggressor in any case. He was aggressed against.
So Joe Biden also weighed in on this and he gave two versions of his views on it. First, he said we’re going to respect the jury’s verdict; and then, of course, when his advisers took over and wrote a new press statement, he told us how upset he was by the verdict and that’s what aired on MSNBC all day.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHUCK TODD, MSNBC HOST: The next time there is a protest of some sort, and it may get politicized, that gun owners with a certain ideology may feel incentivized now, may feel even emboldened.
PAUL BUTLER, MSNBC LEGAL ANALYST: What some may take from this verdict is that vigilante justice prevail.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Knowing the history of vigilante justice in this country all the way back to times of enslavement when people would be deputized to go out and track down enslaved persons who ran away, to lynching mobs — and this is 2021.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM, MSNBC ANALYST: It is to tell the current and future Kyle Rittenhouse’s of the world that they can engage in white vigilantism and be let off for it, be defended and protected for perpetuating white supremacy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: White vigilantism, white supremacy, white, white, white, white, white — that was all over media all day long, explicit racial attacks. What does that have to do with this case and in what kind of country is that allowed when the most powerful people in the country level explicit racial attacks against one of their countrymen.
Most of us didn’t grow up in a country where people talk like this. It’s very ominous that they’re talking like this now. Just as a reminder in case you’re tuning in for the first time in a year, everyone involved in this case is the same color.
The people of the Council on American Islamic Relations offered this take, which was very common today on the left, quote: “It is difficult to imagine a black or Muslim defendant engaged in the same conduct being found not guilty.” Really?
Did you hear from the OJ trial? It’s ridiculous.
MSNBC, the network that was banned from the courthouse for following jurors around broadcast this racial screed today from a relative of Jacob Blake’s.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JUSTIN BLAKE, RELATIVE OF JACOB BLAKE: Now you tell us why he got a free ride? Because their money was raised by the Proud Boys, the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazis, the skinheads.
Are the plugged up in this courtroom? Do we know the history of this Judge? I heard he has been racist as hell to these people in Kenosha for many years.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It’s really, really dark. The rest of us should not allow them to get away with racializing this, allowing them to get away with attacking people on the basis of their skin color that is always wrong. We would never engage in that, never have and no one should do that because it divides the country and it is immoral, flat out.
But somehow, for the crazy logic that governs their positions and their deeds, they wind up defending child rapists and domestic abusers, elevating them to some sort of hero status.
The former mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio wrote this today, quote, “Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum are victims. They should be alive today.” Maybe we will get a statue, a very small statue to Joseph Rosenbaum in New York someday.
Meanwhile, the ACLU, which you’d think would be in favor of self-defense that’s the most basic of all civil liberties suggested that crossing state line is somehow a crime. “Stay in your own state.” Here is what they said, quote: “Despite Kyle Rittenhouse’s conscious decision to travel across state lines and injure one person and take the lives of two people protesting the shooting of Jacob Blake by police, he was not held responsible for his actions.”
This is insanity. And by the way, the continuous references to crossing state lines are not insignificant. Legally, they are meaningless. You have a right to cross state lines if you’re an American because it is your country. You in fact can go to all 50 states and you’re not breaking a law.
So why are they bringing that phrase into every analysis of the case? Crossing state lines? Because they want to use this to change gun laws. That’s why. You watch.
So if you want to know what the worst people in the world are saying, obviously, you’re going to tune into Jeb Bush’s former flack on MSNBC. She told us today that anyone who crosses state lines is a domestic terrorist.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC HOST: The Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal today, not guilty on all counts, did not happen in a cultural vacuum. There is some alarming context to this moment worth considering and talking about.
Just last week, the Department of Homeland Security released its latest bulletin warning Americans again of the ongoing threat posed by domestic violent extremists.
We should also point out, conservative media for many, many months has been priming its audience for this moment, framing Rittenhouse as a hero.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So why are we inflicting tape like that on you on a day when all of us should be celebrating? We’ll tell you why. Because none of that made any difference to the jury and if you’re totally absorbed in American media, you get the impression that American media are in charge of our country, and it turns out they’re not.
Most people don’t watch that crap. They don’t care what people like that say. They don’t care at all.
There are a lot of rational, decent, thoughtful people on all sides of all races in this country who are still willing to think clearly about what is right, what is wrong, what is factual, what is false, what is just, and what is not. And today they did, so that’s the real lesson here.
In the face of all of that propaganda, a group of jurors in Kenosha, Wisconsin were brave enough to reach the right and obvious conclusion anyway. Amen. Yay for America.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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