Kyle Rittenhouse has been found not
guilty in the shooting and
killing of two men and
the attempted killing of a third by
a Wisconsin jury after four days
and over 25 hours of deliberations.
The panel also cleared him of
attempted intentional homicide for
severely wounding
Gaige Grosskreutz, a 27-year-old
paramedic from Suburban Milwaukee.
Who was there that night
volunteering his medical services.
Rittenhouse was also
acquitted on two counts of
recklessly endangering safety.
I mean they say there that
he's a paramedic but
he wasn't holding an assault rifle.
So it doesn't seem like
an authentic medic in this context.
In any event, we want to show you
a little bit from the announcement.
>> The first count of
the information, 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.
>> Member of the jury,
these are your unanimous verdicts,
is there anyone who does not agree
with the verdicts as read,
would you wish the jury pool.
>> So bear in mind that previously
they had gotten some sort of length
technicality that got rid of the
weapons charge from the perspective
of our judicial system.
He did nothing wrong,
absolutely nothing wrong.
Don't get into his motives,
his actions were perfect.
He shouldn't have made any
different choices,
everything he did is fine.
And that is unfortunately, I think
the lesson that some individuals
are going to take away from this.
If you had had an interest in
grabbing a gun and
going somewhere and ending up in
some sort of situation, well, you
can now be assured on two things.
You already knew that you'd be able
to raise millions of dollars to
crowdsource your defense.
You'd become a celebrity on
the right.
And now you've been told by
the state that it's probably
totally fine legally too.
So, I know we might disagree about
some of the specifics of this, but
the incentives of this is providing
for more potential vigilantes.
And Fox News is doing everything
they can every day to encourage
more people to do this is that,
you do not have to fear legal
consequences.
>> Yeah, so look, there at
least two different issues here and
we'll have to talk through both of
them at a minimum.
I think there's a bunch of other
peripheral issues
like the world's worst mom.
So I want to get back
to that later.
But the two issues are,
did the jury rule correctly and
should he have been convicted
should he have been acquitted in
the case as a matter of law?
And Morgan I'm curious about your
thoughts on that in a second as
well.
And then the second issue is what
he did okay.
Okay, now if I don't think that
it's quite sending the message that
John said and
from a legal perspective.
When someone is not proven guilty
beyond a reasonable doubt,
that doesn't mean that the state is
saying what they did was okay.
So O.J Simpson was also acquitted
because they could not prove beyond
a reasonable doubt that he did it.
It doesn't mean the state of
California thought that it was
great what O.J Simpson might
have done.
Okay, now I think he did it.
And in the case here Rittenhouse
just because he gets acquitted does
not mean the state thinks it was
hunky dory.
They just couldn't prove
it beyond a reasonable doubt.
It's going to lead to the second
issue in a second.
But why did they rule the way that
they did?
Well, we told you all along, it was
a tough case as we were covering it
because look, there was,
first of all, the legal standard is
a really important guys.
And we didn't get this completely
raised throughout.
And I want to clarify it here.
Most states say that when you go to
a self defense argument as
Rittenhouse did,
the burden of proof then shifts and
you've got to prove an affirmative
case of self defense.
That is not the case in Wisconsin,
which greatly helps Rittenhouse and
makes this ruling even more
understandable from a legal
perspective.
In the Wisconsin,
you still have to disprove self
defense beyond a reasonable doubt,
which makes it much harder.
Now, in the case of the first
person that he shot,
it was Rosenbaum who had thrown
a plastic bag at him, but
someone has shot nearby.
He heard the gun sound that he
apparently thought something was
being thrown at him.
He kills the first guy, the second
guy hit him with a skateboard.
Now, I wouldn't kill anyone if they
hit me with a skateboard, but
I know the right wing they're very
fragile, very weak.
And so they think if you look at me
kind of wrong, I'm afraid for
my life and I'll murder you.
But in the case of the law and
the jury here, I don't
think the jury is the issue.
I don't think
that this was an atrocious ruling.
I'm curious what you guys think
because they're put in a situation
where one guy, they have to say
beyond a reasonable doubt, that
he did not act in self defense.
I think the the real issue is as a
matter of precedent in the country,
do we want people walking around
with weapons provoking people.
And then as soon as they're
threatened in any way,
start to kill people
because if this is the standard,
we're going to have massive
vigilante violence in this country.
So, but before I move on to that
topic, Morgan, what do you think
about the legal ruling?
>> Yeah, I mean, I think you're
right in the sense that we have
now put laws on the books all over
this country that do green light.
Exactly what you're saying
vigilante justice.
We have individuals that
are serving as the jury executioner
all in one based on some kind of
feeling that they're having.
And so that's not exactly
the jury's fault.
That's a problem of our legal
system and these types of
inconsistencies one or
what continue to breathe extreme
distrust of our justice system.
But then also, yeah,
I think this is a scary moment.
Where we continue to unleash people
who believe that they can take
matters into their own hands based
on their individual impression
of any given perceived
threat of danger.
That's really, really scary.
>> Yeah, the whole thing, look,
I care about the implications of
this far more than the individual
details of the particular case.
But there's just, this leaves us
with 1,000 interesting questions.
So like if it's just self defense
of the first case,
so someone shoots nearby so
he gets to kill someone nearby.
So you can just carry a gun at any
time you hear a loud noise you
get to shoot someone that's insane.
You should have to prove that
there was a good and then after he
shoots the first person,
anyone else nearby with a gun would
have presumably heard that shot.
So they get to shoot someone that's
standing near them too.
This is insane and one of the most
frustrating things for me about
the right wing responses, is many
of them will immediately say, well,
it's self defense, it's the law.
You're not allowed to express any
issue with the way self defense is
defined generally in this
individual state.
The way that it's adjudicated,
who generally gets to use that
defense and we're just supposed to
take it as given.
We're supposed to just
accept that the law
as written is obviously right.
It's not designed nor in effect
does it have particular outcomes.
And we're being told this,
I tweeted something to this effect
earlier by people who have spent
the last half-century trying to
strip away women's
reproductive rights.
They've never just complied with
the law and thought, well, if it's
the law then we can never question
it whatsoever, we can never wonder
if it should be the way it is.
And here it's just the law,
everyone shut up and let's only
focus on the last 30 seconds.
So anything before 30 seconds
before he started killing people,
you can't question.
So you can't show him talking
on video about how he'd like to
kill someone.
You can't wonder why he would bring
a gun to this sort of situation.
Why did he have to be there in the
first place, what media had he even
been consuming that was encouraging
these sorts of vigilante things.
You should only pay attention
to the three or four seconds before
the shot and that's it.
Well, I'm sorry, I can't be so
idiotic as that.
I have to wonder what went into it,
what decisions were made and
whether it's the law in Wisconsin
that you should consider that or
not, I think we should.
And I would say by the way,
they generally don't want you to
think about any of this stuff.
And yet they've all settled on this
bizarre, not even legal argument.
Because they'll never be explicit
about it that, you should not be
bothered by the murders because
hey, it turned out one or
two of the people he shot had done
bad things.
Never mind that he didn't know
about that.
Never mind that even if he did,
he doesn't get to just execute bad
people when he comes across them on
the street.
But they think the motivations of
the people who died should go into
our evaluation of this.
But not the motivations of the guy,
who took a gun he never should
have had across state lines and
went to this protest.
All of that is worthy
of at least a discussion and
possibly legal reform, I think.
>> So now let me fully agree with
John on the societal points at play
here.
So first of all guys,
think about one
of the points that John just made.
So it's self defense.
If you hear a gunshot,
you could just turn around and
shoot someone.
Well then under that theory,
someone nearby could have shot
Rittenhouse and said, well I
heard a gunshot and he had a gun.
So Rosenbaum didn't have a gun at
that point, he didn't have a
plastic bag he'd already thrown it.
So he had no weapon at all.
And a jury just ruled it self
defense to shoot that
unarmed man and kill him.
Okay, because you heard a gunshot.
Well, a lot of people heard
Rittenhouse's gunshot, could they
have just executed him on the spot?
Just and the answer is yes.
According to the ruling,
we just heard,
if you hear a gunshot.
Now what if the person you're
shooting is a cop.
What if you heard a cop shooting
but you didn't bother looking and
you just turn around just like
Rittenhouse did, you just
turn around boom, execute the cop.
Well you heard a gunshot,
that's self defense, okay.
And guys the skateboard,
it's insanity.
The one good job
that the prosecution did was
it was in the closing argument when
they said, does anyone else have
a right to self defense?
Or is only the person with
the weapon allows self defense?
>> Well, one of them had a gun.
So presumably only the person with
the biggest gun has the right to
self defense.
Yeah, so did that guy have a right
to self defense as Rittenhouse was
literally shooting him, right?
Then the guy with the skateboard,
did he have a right to defend
himself from he heard shots right,
just like Rittenhouse did.
They say Rittenhouse
can kill someone if he heard shots.
Well Huber heard shots and
he was defending himself
with a skateboard.
So does he have no rights at all?
Does that mean as a society now and
the gun manufacturers are going to
be thrilled with this decision.
Does that mean as a society now, we
all have to be super heavily armed,
otherwise we lose the right to
self defense and
we could be killed at any time.
This just became an incredibly
scary country if it wasn't already
very scary to begin with
Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman
and countless other cases, Morgan.
>> Well yeah, and just a lot of
the names that are coming to mind
for me as we're looking at what our
laws on the books,
what are we allowing, what is
certain laws open the gateway to.
I mean Tamir Rice, Tyrant King,
Henry Greene people
who have been killed in Ohio in
interactions with law enforcement
that have also been justified to
an extent by the laws on the books.
And what is the end result of this?
It is chaos, we are living through
chaos and that
is no way to run a country and but
it is exactly the plan of people
who profit off of that chaos.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah, go ahead John.
>> The way that I forget who put it
this way.
But the way I read it was the last
person alive is innocent.
That's what it is.
You better be the last person alive
and then you were the one
defending yourself.
Everything else is just
collateral damage along that path.
>> Well, John let me
agree further with you.
So everybody saw Rittenhouse crying
on the stand and
everybody wondered, is it real,
is it fake, etc?
But there was a lot of people have
sympathy for, my God, the poor kid.
Well, how about Huber?
So he never got to cry on the stand
because he was murdered or
now killed, officially killed,
not murdered.
And so you never got to see him
crying, you never got to see him
do anything.
He was killed as a young man in
the streets because a maniac
was running around with an AR-15.
Shooting anything that he perceived
to be a threat after he started
going in there in my opinion
with the confrontation of bringing
weapons to a protest in the first
place, right?
So now that leads us to two other
things.
Just let me dispense with this
real quick.
The mom is the world's worst
parent.
She drove a 17-year-old with
an AR-15 into what she perceived to
be a dangerous riot.
You want to go into the middle of
a dangerous riot?
My 17 year old son here, I'll drive
you across state lines to do it.
Here's an AR-15, so
in case a butterfly floats by,
you just murder everyone.
Okay, I'm sorry, kill everyone.
Okay, he's a despicable parent.
No sane parent would ever do that,
but the right wing in this country
is crazed.
They're crazed,
they can't wait to shoot people.
Which leads me to the biggest
culprits of all,
the Rittenhouse fans or supporters.
Yes, that includes all of them, all
of the Alex Jones, the Tim Pools,
the Joe Rogans, the millions of
crazed Rambo wannabe right wingers
in this country.
Who are like, yeah,
I just bring weapons, self defense,
murder, murder, murder, murder,
they just want to kill.
So they go into the middle of
protest with these goddamn weapons,
looking to pick a fight and
then a minute Rittenhouse actually
shoots these people.
They're ecstatic,
they love that he killed him,
that's why they're his fans.
What is there to be a fan of if
the shoe's on the other foot and
some guy goes into the middle of
a right wing protests with an AR-15
and he's progressive.
And he goes, well they provoked me,
somebody threw a plastic bag.
Another one the skateboard, so
I killed him,
I don't become a fan of that guy.
I say that's insane to go in
the middle of a protest with
an AR-15 looking to pick a fight so
you can kill people.
But the right wing in this country
steeped in violence,
they're soaked in blood and
they can't wait to kill.
So guys, America, I hate to say it
because I love this country, but
America has now become a super
scary place.
Where people are constantly
killing each other and
getting away with it.
>> Yeah, and it's by the way,
it's convenient for
the right because look, just today
you will be thinking about this and
not about the fact that the house
passed bill beck better.
So the fact that you might save
$1,000 a month on insulin,
they don't want you thinking about
that sort of thing.
Because it might lead you to
believe that the government can
make your life better than perhaps
it owes you something and
generally you should be terrified.
You should be terrified.
We're going to tell you all
the people you should be scared of
so that you will never, ever again
think about your economic
situation, how the government
has failed you and why.
Who it's actually serving.
They love the focus
on all of this stuff.
They scare people like
Kyle Rittenhouse constantly
with their nonsense and
then use the murders of people
like him to scare you further.
Now we're going to be talking about
both because we have an obligation
to, we believe that there is some
sort of ethical obligation when
you're involved in journalism.
But they don't,
they love the idea that you will
just constantly be lusting for
blood, terrified, jealous,
suspicious, that's what they want.
They turn people into these crazed,
bloodthirsty terrified individuals
knowing that sort of population is
never going to pose any sort of
risk to the most powerful and
wealthy people in this country.
>> Well, that's the exact dynamic
we have here in Ohio.
I mean, on the other side of this
Republican Senate, on
the republican side of the Senate
race, J.D Vance, Josh Mandel.
I mean, these are people that
are just stoking the fire of this
hatred and violence and suspicion
of people around you and using it
for their own political gain.
So, I mean, that's the stakes of
things in Ohio, we have a lot
of these same types of laws on
the books and it is a scary time.
And why this Senate race is so
important.