Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted last week on charges that he murdered two white men and wounded another at the Kenosha, Wisconsin protests last summer.
Since his acquittal, Rittenhouse has already visited former President Donald Trump, who gave him a glowing review, Fox News and several other right-wing outlets and figureheads.
He is has become somewhat of a Republican poster child. Despite being embraced by the right-wing community, Rittenhouse claimed that he supports the Black Lives Matter movement in a recent interview.
The Kenosha protests were in response to a Black man, Jacob Blake, being shot by a white police officer in the back seven times at close range.
“This case has nothing to do with race. It never had anything to do with race. It had to do with the right to self-defense,” the 18-year-old told Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
One of the Black Lives Matter co-founders took issue with Rittenhouse’s remarks (as many of us did.)
“They’re using tools, they are a propaganda machine that’s used to make the nonsensical seem to make sense,” Melina Abdullah told TMZ. “And so they want to make Kyle Rittenhouse both a young hero of white supremacy but also not be a blatant white supremacist. He’s declaring this support for Black Lives Matter… We see all over his social media him throwing up white supremacist signs and people know what it is.”
“It’s very clear what he is and what he’s doing. Again, they’re trying to make nonsense make sense.”
At the time, Rittenhouse was armed with an AR-style semiautomatic rifle. Prosecutors argued that Rittenhouse, who was just 17 at the time, was a “wannabe soldier” on the hunt for trouble that night. Still, despite being armed with a war-ready rifle, his self-defense argument worked for the jury and he walked away, scot-free.
Rittenhouse appears to be playing both sides of the fence, cozying up to his right-wing supporters while loosely supporting the left.
However, Abdullah made it crystal clear that Black Lives Matter does not need nor want Rittenhouse’s support.
