Kyle Rittenhouse abruptly departed the stage during an appearance at the University of Memphis on Wednesday, after he was confronted about comments made by Turning Point USA founder and president Charlie Kirk.
Rittenhouse was invited by the college’s Turning Point USA chapter to speak at the campus. However, the event was met with backlash from a number of students who objected to Rittenhouse’s presence.
The 21-year-old gained notoriety in August 2020 when, at the age of 17, he shot and killed two men—Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, as well as injuring 26-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz—at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
He said the three shootings, carried out with a semi-automatic AR-15-style firearm, were in self-defense. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest where the shootings took place was held after Jacob Blake, a Black man, was left paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot by a white police officer.
He says himself that he was there to protect businesses, but he had no relation to the business beyond that of a standard employee, and his help was never requested–he didn’t know the owners, his family didn’t own the business, and he wasn’t even a frequent customer IIRC.
The most charitable interpretation is that an untrained, underage civilian took a semiautomatic rifle across state lines, to a protest happening in a town he didn’t live in, to guard a business that he had no special relation to, and that never asked for his help.
The more probable interpretation, given posts on his social media before the shooting (that weren’t allowed to be shown in court), is that he wanted to play action hero and shoot some scumbags, and he got exactly what he hoped.
EDIT: Apparently he worked at the business he was guarding, but the point still stands–he never got permission to defend the business, nor was it ever offered.
What bullocks technicality kept his social media posts from being shown in court?!