'It's About Unequal Justice': Fallout From the Rittenhouse Verdict Begins
MAGA crowd erupts into cheers at shooter's acquittal
The aftershocks of the acquittal of Kenosha, Wis., shooter Kyle Rittenhouse on all charges have begun to spill over across the United States.
Right-wing extremists appeared to be emboldened by the decision to allow the teen to walk on all charges in connection with his killing of two men and wounding another last year.
The right-wing crowd at a “MAGA” church gathering in Phoenix, Ariz., this weekend erupted into cheers and chants of “USA!” when the Rittenhouse not-guilty verdicts were announced.
As anti-Trump content organization MeidasTouch ironically captioned the video on social media, “Well, good thing the Bible doesn’t say anything, or perhaps offer some sort of commandment, about killing. That would be awkward.”
The heavily armed Proud Boys extremist group made sure to depart following a rally Saturday in New York City by bypassing subway tolls by using emergency doors.
And political leaders on the right are falling over themselves to lionize Rittenhouse.
“3 GOP Congressmen (Gaetz, Cawthorn, Gosar) offered Rittenhouse a job A 4th wants to make Kyle Rittenhouse Day a federal holiday Tucker Carlson is airing a puff piece documentary about him In Rittenhouse they lionize a murderer. In Trump they lionize a rapist & genocidal maniac,” tweeted Democratic influencer and former Joe Biden delegate Lindy Li.
Elsewhere on the political spectrum, thought leaders and others took a decidedly less-sanguine approach to the verdicts.
“It would be useful for people who work in and report on the legal system to spend 5 minutes today thinking about what each stage of the Rittenhouse case would have looked like had a Black teen living in poverty crossed state lines with an assault rifle and shot three protestors,” tweeted civil rights advocate Alec Karakatsanis.
“It’s partly about a judge’s bad behavior. But the outrage isn’t about a decision; it’s about all the decisions. It’s about a legacy of impunity for vigilante justice that only one side receives. It’s knowing this will inspire more right wing violence. It’s about unequal justice,” tweeted Walter Shaub, former top federal ethics official.
“Imagine if a kid with an AR-15 had shown up on the capitol steps to defend federal property and then killed two of the insurrectionists as they pounded a police officer who would die later that day. I don’t see Rittenhouse fans defending him, and I don’t see him being acquitted,” Schaub added.
Filmmaker and journalist Steven Beschloss said that he sees returning to the matter of the nation’s gun laws as the answer.
“May the expanding danger of the Rittenhouse decision intensify the commitment of the majority to demand change in the nation’s lax gun laws,” he said.
Rittenhouse's gun play belies his stated intentions of ostensibly being in Kenosha as a “medic,” according to many, including MSNBC legal analyst and former US attorney Joyce Vance.
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