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.
Why are we giving this guy a platform? He’s basically a grifter who got famous from walking into a Black Lives Matter protest to stir shit up, shooting three (and killing two) protesters and then somehow being acquited by a jury.
Nitpick: It wasn’t a BLM protest. It was protests and unrest following the shooting of Jacob Blake. The events over many days in Kenosha included some organized BLM protests, but also outside agitators who wanted to stir shit up. BLM protests took place in daylight hours. Rittenhouse went there for the unorganized unrest in the nighttime hours.
I mention this because it’s a right-wing rhetorical tactic to link BLM to violence in people’s minds to discredit the organization and movement, and it’s bogus.