Miranda Devine: Kyle Rittenhouse should be acquitted of murder charges

America’s left-wing media and politicians are portraying teenager Kyle Rittenhouse as an evil white supremacist, but he was acting in self-defence, writes Miranda Devine.

If there is any justice in the United States, by the time you read this Kyle Rittenhouse should have been acquitted of all charges in his murder trial, on the grounds of self-defence.

The jury was deliberating on Tuesday in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the fate of an innocent 17-year-old who should never have been charged but who has been unjustly framed as a white ­supremacist vigilante by the US President and the media.

American justice being so politicised, the outcome has never been certain, although his innocence is ­obvious to anyone who saw what happened that awful night of August 25, 2020, when he was chased by a murderous Antifa mob and ended up shooting dead two of his attackers and wounding a third.

Then-candidate Joe Biden prejudged Rittenhouse as a “white ­supremacist,” although all the men he shot were white.

Kyle Rittenhouse breaks down on the stand as he testifies in his murder trial. Picture: AFP

Rittenhouse, now 18, lost his composure in court last week when he had to recount the moment he was ­cornered by two men — Joshua ­Ziminski, who was advancing on him with a pistol in his hand, and Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, a deranged paedophile just out of a psych ward, who had already twice threatened to kill him, lunging at his rifle.

“If I would have let Mr Rosenbaum get my gun, he would have killed me,” he told the court.

“He was chasing me. I was alone. He threatened to kill me earlier in that night. He was going to take my gun and kill me. I wanted him to stop. I didn’t want to have to kill Mr ­Rosenbaum.”

Evidence in court corroborates what Rittenhouse says happened next.

Rosenbaum was “coming at me. I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun”.

That was the first time Rittenhouse fired his gun, killing Rosenbaum.

Then he ran toward police to surrender but was chased and attacked by the mob for two blocks.

People were screaming: “Cranium him, get him, kill him.”

Anthony Huber, a protester killed by Kyle Rittenhouse in Wisconsin

Anthony Huber, 26, a convicted criminal with a record of assault and domestic abuse, hit him with a skateboard held like a baseball bat. Rittenhouse deflected the blow with his arm, but it struck him in the neck.

Someone threw a lump of concrete at the back of his head. He felt faint and stumbled and fell.

A man dubbed “Jump-Kick man” took a running leap and kicked Rittenhouse in the face as he lay on the ground and ­immediately Huber hit him again in the head with the skateboard and tried to grab his gun.

That’s when ­Rittenhouse fired the single shot that killed Huber.

Everyone else chasing him backed away with their hands in the air, except antifa medic Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, who has admitted in court having an “affiliation” with Marxist militia group, the People’s Revolution.

Grosskreutz lunged at Rittenhouse with an illegal, loaded Glock pointed at his head and Rittenhouse shot him in the arm before rising to his feet to run and surrender to police, who ­ordered him away.

Under cross-examination by the defence, Grosskreutz agreed. “It wasn’t until you pointed your gun at him, advanced on him with your gun, now your hands down, pointed at him, that he fired, right?”

Grosskreutz replied: “Correct.” The memory of taking two lives, ­albeit in self-defence, clearly rests heavily on Rittenhouse, as it would on anyone with a conscience. His lawyer told the court on Friday that the teen is in therapy and has post-traumatic stress disorder.

As he shook with anguished sobs while testifying, sociopathic ghouls on Twitter accused him of faking it and serial racist, MSNBC host Joy Reid, sneered at his “white crocodile tears”.

“Kyle Rittenhouse put on quite a show for the nearly all-white jury in his murder trial,” she sneered

Her guest agreed the trial was “white privilege on steroids”.

Reid was outraged that Rittenhouse is “being prosecuted in front of a nearly all-white jury, before a white judge … in a country where white ­vigilantism is often excused, if not worshipped”.

Considering almost 90 per cent of Kenosha County’s population is white, as are Rittenhouse and the three men he shot, it’s hardly a surprise that a jury would be majority white.

The New York Times and most other media outlets have created the impression that the shootings were race-related, by continually referring to Rittenhouse as a “white vigilante” and omitting the race of the men he shot.

US President Joe Biden called Rittenhouse a white supremacist. Picture: AFP

Another lie is that he brought the gun “across state lines”, an outsider arrived to do mischief. In fact, Rittenhouse belonged in Kenosha, unlike the violent antifa terrorists who were bussed in from liberal wastelands far afield like Portland and Seattle to assault police and burn the town down.

His father, grandmother, aunt, uncle, cousins and best friend live there. He worked as a lifeguard in ­Kenosha and had just finished a shift on the day in question, before he ­volunteered to help clean rioters’ graffiti off a local school.

The AR-15 is kept in Kenosha in a safe. Nor was it illegal for a 17-year-old to possess a rifle in Wisconsin, as the prosecutor admitted on Monday before the judge threw out the charge. Kenosha police and prosecutors knew it was not illegal, but they still charged him with the crime.

Rittenhouse had been asked to help defend a used car dealership on the second night of riots in Kenosha, after outnumbered police let the town burn the night before.

The owners were desperate since more than 100 cars had been torched by BLM-Antifa rioters after a black man, Jacob Blake, was shot and ­injured by a white police officer.

The Kyle Rittenhouse murder trial has split the US along political fault lines and whatever the outcome, riots could result. Artwork: Terry Pontikos

It turned out that Blake, 29, was wanted on a warrant for sexual ­assault and domestic abuse of his ex-girlfriend and, at the time he was shot, had gone to her house in violation of a restraining order, threatened her and was trying to steal her SUV with three of their children inside.

That didn’t stop the media painting him as an innocent victim of racist police.

It didn’t stop Biden travelling to Kenosha to fete him as a martyr and pour more gasoline on the fire of racial division and anti-police fervour.

Rittenhouse was defending his life.

If the state and local authorities had done their jobs instead of abandoning Kenosha to the anarchists, this whole tragedy never would have happened.

He is paying the price for their cowardice and his life will never be the same.

Miranda Devine is in New York to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph