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’s clearly making a decent living from this, all because he murdered someone and got away with it. I feel much worse about the family of the dead, or people working minimum wage trying to get by. I feel just about zero sympathy for this kid. Sure, maybe he was raised in a bad position, but it was his choice to do what he did. Do you see many other people raised in bad situations doing what he did? That’s on him, not his parents.
His parents encouraged this bullshit. He was a young person who deserved better guidance. I’m not suggesting that he should be free, just expressing my thoughts on what a tragedy it is.