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Nov. 16, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show

46:16

The Kyle Rittenhouse Case Reaches Its Conclusion | Ep. 1377

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	We review the complete timeline of the Kyle Rittenhouse case, the prosecution makes its dishonest and absurd closing argument, and the defense makes its last stand.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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	Defend your rights at expressvpn.com.
	The jury is currently out in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial considering guilt or not guilt.
	That is the obvious legal standard, of course.
	And I think it's important to go back for a walk down memory lane and retrace how this became a national issue.
	Because it is fascinating to see which stories in the United States become national stories and which ones simply do not.
	Which crime stories become national stories that every American must have an opinion on, and which ones just sort of, they sail under the radar.
	They are local news stories.
	So to take an example, Kermit Gosnell, an abortionist from Philadelphia who's responsible for Essentially infanticide.
	That was not a national news story.
	And the media covered it as though it was national.
	It was not a national news story.
	It was a local crime story.
	It didn't receive front page coverage nearly anywhere because it didn't mirror a narrative that the media were attempting to tell.
	Whereas Kyle Rittenhouse, that story was a national news story.
	And the reason it was a national news story, if you go all the way back, is because it was part of a broader democratic narrative.
	That narrative was the true threat to America was white men who were running around trying to shoot People who are either black or who are allies of Black Lives Matter.
	The conflict in 2020 was between racists and the Democratic coalition.
	And Kyle Rittenhouse was used as the face of racism.
	That was always an awkward attempt.
	It was awkward because Kyle Rittenhouse had shot a guy who was a convicted child molester.
	Had shot another person who had a pretty significant criminal record.
	Had shot a third person with a significant criminal record.
	And all three of the people he shot were attacking him.
	And all three of the people he shot were white.
	But, the narrative had to be drawn.
	And because Kyle Rittenhouse was present, In Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the middle of a Black Lives Matter slash Antifa riot, this meant that Kyle Rittenhouse was the bad guy.
	Remember, the media spent all of 2020 trying to pretend that rioters were not, in fact, rioters.
	They were simply mostly peaceful protesters and that the things that they were, quote-unquote, protesting for were good and honorable and noble, like defund the police.
	That was somehow a decent idea in 2020.
	Meanwhile, the murder rate kicked up in America's major cities by 20, 30, 40 percent in some major American cities.
	And let's not pretend that this was not pushed by the Democratic Party.
	In the middle of the campaign, you'll recall in September of 2020, Joe Biden put out an ad linking Kyle Rittenhouse to white supremacists in Charlottesville.
	And frankly, it seems like if Kyle Rittenhouse gets acquitted, he's going to have a hell of a lawsuit on his hands against the Democratic National Committee.
	Here is the ad including Kyle Rittenhouse from September of 2020.
	Are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we've seen in Portland?
	OK, so you see that interspersed in this in this little question from Chris Wallace to Donald Trump in the 2020 campaign is a picture of Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha.
	And linking him with white supremacists and evil militia groups.
	Kyle Rittenhouse, who was there, as we will see, by all available evidence, to provide medical aid and to protect property and his own life, as it turns out.
	He was linked directly by the Biden campaign to white supremacy and racism.
	It was all part of the broader narrative, which was that Trump and anyone who was voting for Trump was secretly a racist and sometimes not so secretly a racist.
	Hey, so Peter Doocy of Fox News asked Jen Psaki about the Rittenhouse trial yesterday at the White House.
	And now it's real awkward because as it turns out, Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense.
	As it turns out, Rittenhouse is not a white supremacist.
	He's a 17-year-old young man at the time of the shooting.
	Now he's 18.
	Who was acting in self-defense after having provided medical aid to some of the rioters.
	And Jen Psaki tries to dodge the question.
	Even so, she can't help but kind of sneer at Rittenhouse.
	As you know, closing arguments in this particular case, which I'm not speaking to, I'm just making broad comments about his own view.
	There's an ongoing trial.
	We're awaiting a verdict.
	Beyond that, I'm not going to speak to any individuals or this case.
	But the president has spoken to it already.
	And his mom now, Kyle Rittenhouse's mom, came out saying that the president defamed her son.
	And she claims that when the president suggested her son's a white supremacist, he was doing that to win votes.
	Is that what happened?
	I just have nothing more to speak to an ongoing case where the closing arguments were just made.
	Oh, weird, weird how now you have nothing to say because he's president now.
	You got what you wanted.
	Biden got elected on the basis of a lie.
	That lie was that America is broadly speaking racist and you needed Joe Biden to come in and reestablish equity.
	And one of the key features of these systemic racism Blanketing America was Kyle Rittenhouse.
	And now that the evidence is coming out, now Jen Psaki wants to avoid the consequences of Joe Biden's lies.
	We'll see how that holds up in court in a defamation trial, which should certainly take place after this one.
	Again, this is part of the broader Democratic narrative.
	So Cori Bush, a Black Lives Matter activist who's been elected to Congress and is now an adjunct member of the squad, she tweeted out yesterday, quote, When we marched in Ferguson, white supremacists would hide behind a hill near where Michael Brown Jr.
	was murdered and shoot at us.
	They never faced consequences.
	If Kyle Rittenhouse gets acquitted, it tells them that even seven years later, they can still get away with it.
	So, number one, I feel like I'm gonna need like one shred of evidence from the Congresswoman that this ever happened.
	I feel like that would have been a national story if there had been Black Lives Matter protests in 2014 and a group of Nazis had shown up on a nearby hill and sniped into a group of black protesters.
	I feel like that might have been, like we might have heard about that just a little bit.
	I'm gonna need some evidence, like one single solitary shred of evidence that this ever happened from Cori Bush.
	It's like Brian Williams under fire in Iraq.
	Just until I see a shred of like any evidence at all.
	So that's a lie.
	But then the idea is that even if that happened, Kyle Rittenhouse has something to do with that.
	He's a white supremacist who is what out to shoot other white people that night in order to harm blackness or something.
	But this is the narrative.
	And because it's the narrative, it became a national story.
	The narrative always determines what is a national story, invariably.
	Local crime stories are white people shot wrongly by the cops.
	Local crime stories are black people killing white people.
	Those are all local crime stories.
	White person killing black person is a national crime story.
	And white person killing white person, if it's in the service, the narrative of the Democratic Party, that's also a national story.
	So, bottom line is, if it's in the interest of the Democratic Party and a broader narrative about systemic American cruelty and racism, then it becomes a national news story because the media are just the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party.
	It's the only reason that you know about Kyle Rittenhouse.
	It's the only reason that we've spent all this time on Kyle Rittenhouse.
	It's the only reason, frankly, why this prosecution was brought, because it is 100% clear at this point that Kyle Rittenhouse acted in self-defense.
	There is really no doubt.
	I mean, normally, all the defense has to do in these cases is establish reasonable doubt.
	By the use of a self-defense privilege or a self-defense defense, right?
	That's all you have to do.
	You have to show reasonable doubt as to whether the defendant acted in self-defense.
	In this case, it is 100% clear that the defendant acted in self-defense.
	Not 70%, not 80%, not 90%, 100%.
	We have it on tape.
	But again, the prosecution can't let go of it.
	And it is a dangerous situation when the media turns something into a national issue and then prosecutors feel the necessity to bring a case because of national pressure.
	That is indeed akin to mob justice.
	It's just done by using the prosecutor as the tool of the mob.
	If a mob arrives at a jail to hang somebody, and they make the sheriff their tool, that doesn't make it any less of a mob.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second.
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	Okay, so, let's go through the Kyle Rittenhouse timeline here because you can see, by the way, how the media made this part of a broader narrative and why it became a national story.
	So here's the New York Times timeline leading up to Kyle Rittenhouse.
	They begin with the killing of George Floyd.
	Now you might say to yourself, what the hell does Kyle Rittenhouse defending himself have to do with George Floyd?
	That's a completely separate criminal trial involving Derek Chauvin.
	By the way, another criminal trial where I truly believe that national media sentiment played a massive role in how that trial was performed and how the verdict came down.
	I do not believe that the evidence in even the Derek Chauvin trial was sufficient to support the finding of the jury.
	But put that aside, one trial really has nothing to do with the other.
	And George Floyd has nothing to do with the shootings of Anthony Huber or Jacob Rosenbaum or Joseph Rosenbaum or any of the other characters in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
	But the New York Times starts its story, of course, with George Floyd, because this is all part of the protest story.
	Okay, then they move forward to August 23rd, 2020.
	And this is what led things off in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
	So, there's a guy named Jacob Blake.
	Jacob Blake was a black resident who, according to the New York Times, was shot and seriously wounded by a white police officer.
	Now, the question is, why was he there?
	The reason that the police officer was there is he was called there by Jacob Blake's ex-girlfriend.
	And Jacob Blake's ex-girlfriend had called the cops because he showed up at the door.
	He was not supposed to.
	There was a restraining order against him.
	She had previously reported alleged rape against Jacob Blake.
	So the police show up, and they try to take him into custody on an outstanding warrant issued in July on charges of third-degree sexual assault, criminal trespass, and disorderly conduct.
	Blake fights the cops, and then he has a knife.
	And they tell him to put down the knife, repeatedly.
	And then he doesn't, so they shoot him.
	Here's tape of that particular incident.
	Right, this is the story and people are shouting and screaming.
	Okay, so here's the thing.
	The media immediately covered this as another wrongful shoot because the media were in search of the narrative.
	The narrative was police everywhere are racist and horrible because America is racist and horrible.
	And so anytime there's a shooting of a black man by a white police officer, this is evidence of systemic racism.
	Now, again, even if you go back to George Floyd, there's not a single allegation that was made anywhere in the trial.
	There's not a single piece of evidence to suggest that Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd because Derek Chauvin is a racist.
	That just does not exist.
	That was not even alleged in the trial.
	And yet it became the predicate for the broader claim that America is racist.
	And then that broader claim was used in order to characterize the Jacob Blake shooting.
	And it was a bad, it was a bad example because Jacob Blake was a criminal who refused to comply with police commands and was carrying a weapon at the time.
	That is what they call in police parlance a good shoot.
	It did not matter.
	The media decided to treat it as though it was a bad racist shoot and indicative of the broad level of suspicion and racism that black Americans live under thanks to the predations of American police officers each and every day.
	And this resulted, of course, in Kenosha burning.
	This is where you saw the famous video of members of the press standing outside burning buildings talking about how it was all mostly peaceful.
	Here's some of the video from Kenosha.
	You can see cars being set on fire, people wandering the streets in the middle of the night, videoing it.
	It's just good times all over in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
	OK, so these burnings continue and Kyle Rittenhouse shows up.
	OK, so the protesters began August 24th.
	They say protesters, but what we mean really is rioters.
	Rioters started setting fire to cars, looting and burning buildings and knocking over street lamps.
	Okay, and Kyle Rittenhouse shows up on August 25th.
	And we have video of exactly why Kyle Rittenhouse was there.
	Okay, Contra, the prosecution's claim that he was there to shoot people, Kyle Rittenhouse explained.
	Again, this is before the shooting.
	Richie McGinnis was the reporter on scene asking Rittenhouse why he was there.
	This is before the shootings occurred.
	And here is Kyle Rittenhouse explaining.
	People are getting injured, and our job is to protect this business, and part of my job is to also help people.
	If there's somebody hurt, I'm running into harm's way.
	That's why I have my rifle, because I need to protect myself, obviously.
	I also have my med kit.
	We're protecting from the citizens, and I just got pepper sprayed by a person in the crowd.
	So you had non-lethal, but you didn't respond?
	We don't have non-lethal.
	So you guys are full on ready to defend the property?
	Yes, we are.
	Now, if I can ask, can you guys step back?
	Medical!
	AMF right here!
	Okay, so he was pepper sprayed, didn't shoot anybody.
	He's asked, are you there to defend the property?
	He says yes.
	Because the prosecution tries to make it out that he's going to shoot anybody who threatens the property.
	But he literally says in the prior sentence that if somebody threatens him with non-lethal force, he can't shoot them.
	Right?
	He immediately says that.
	And so this is all the predicate to the actual events of that night.
	And the reason we're going through this in detail is to demonstrate how this didn't fit into the media narrative, but he had to be prosecuted anyway because the narrative matters more than anything else.
	This is why when people say that the media lying, well, what difference does it make?
	What difference does it make if we just create these broad narratives from false circumstances?
	The answer is it makes a hell of a lot of difference for individuals like Kyle Rittenhouse who ends up wrongfully wrangled into a legal trial for his life.
	Based on non-existent evidence.
	Because the narrative matters more than the actual evidence.
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	Alrighty, so all of this leads up to the actual shooting.
	So the night of the shooting, there's a fire and There are many fires in the city, and in the middle of the fires, Rittenhouse runs over to the fire.
	And on the way, he's confronted by Rosenbaum, Joseph Rosenbaum.
	Joseph Rosenbaum is a career criminal.
	He's a child molester.
	He's a convicted child molester.
	And Joseph Rosenbaum is acting crazy all night long.
	According to witness testimony, he literally said, if I find you alone, I will kill you to Rittenhouse earlier in the evening.
	So this is not a guy who is out there doing good.
	He was a crazy person and a dangerous person.
	He was swinging chains.
	He was lighting things on fire.
	He was using the N-word.
	So the only person in this trial, by the way, who there's any evidence was a racist, is actually Joseph Rosenbaum.
	And then there's a confrontation where Rosenbaum apparently accosts Rittenhouse.
	And Rittenhouse, seeking to avoid the conflict, even though he's the guy with the gun, starts to run away.
	He's running away.
	Another man starts chasing him.
	And that man fires into the air.
	A man who police identified as Rittenhouse runs across the parking lot of an auto service shop, followed by a shirtless man who was later identified as Joseph Rosenbaum.
	And so he shoots him.
	That is what this video footage demonstrates.
	And again, it is about as clear cut as video footage is going to get.
	It is pretty rare that you have contemporaneous video in a circumstance like this, but you do.
	A man who police identified as Rittenhouse runs across the parking lot of an auto service shop, followed by a shirtless man who was later identified as Joseph Rosenbaum.
	Moments later, shots ring out.
	So he's calling the police?
	man falls to the ground. A figure who appears to be Rittenhouse continues running.
	Seconds later, he comes back into view and bystanders arrive to help the victim.
	Rittenhouse can be seen standing by the body, making a phone call.
	As more people arrive, he runs away out of frame and someone seems to be heard saying, I shot somebody.
	So he's calling the police. He's calling for medical help and he's calling the police.
	And the reason he starts running away is because other Antifa rioters start showing up and he thinks to himself, OK, they're going to attack me, which is exactly what happens.
	They start chasing him.
	OK, so the next video you'll see is Rittenhouse running down the street and and falling down as he's running.
	And then he's attacked by several people.
	One of whom he does not shoot.
	He just sort of brandishes his weapon at the person who's trying to attack him.
	A second person, Anthony Huber, will attack him with a skateboard and he will shoot him.
	And Anthony Huber will be shot dead.
	And then, a third person, Gage Grosskreutz, will run up to him, unholster his weapon, start raising the weapon at Kyle Rittenhouse, and Rittenhouse will shoot him.
	That's what this video shows.
	You're suspectable!
	Get him out of the car!
	Get him out of the car!
	No!
	Okay, and then Rittenhouse gets up and he starts walking toward the police.
	And toward safety.
	So, that's the case.
	And it's not as though this is wildly unclear.
	Gage Grosskreutz was one of the people who was shot, right?
	He was shot in the bicep.
	And the original story is that he was shot, but the prosecution suggested that he was shot because he was just kind of standing there, right?
	That his gun had fallen out of his pocket or something.
	He lied to the cops.
	He told the cops the reason that his gun was out is because it had fallen out of its holster.
	It's not true.
	We have video evidence it's not true.
	Here's Gage Grosskreutz admitting on the stand, on the stand, that he had unholstered his gun and was trying to point the gun at Rittenhouse when Rittenhouse shot him.
	That is like point-blank a case of self-defense.
	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?
	Correct.
	And if you continue that clip, what you will see is the prosecutors with their face in their hands.
	Because they realize their entire case is a big nothing.
	It is a big nothing.
	And so the media had to look for some alternative rationale for why this case had collapsed.
	They tried to blame Rittenhouse for crying on the stand.
	Rittenhouse got up, his lawyer was asking him questions about what happened that night, and Rittenhouse had a bit of a panic attack on the stand.
	Once I take that step back, I look over my shoulder and Mr. Rosenbaum Mr. Rosenbaum was now running from my right side.
	And I was cornered from in front of me with Mr. Zeminski.
	and there were there were three people right there okay naturally the media treated this as evidence of his guilt not evidence of his innocence All right, so that brings us to the closing argument.
	And we'll get to those closing arguments in just one second.
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	Alrighty, so closing arguments happened yesterday.
	This is preceded by the judge in the case dropping the the.
	Charge, the gun charge, against Kyle Rittenhouse.
	According to ABC News, Rittenhouse was 17 when he shot three people, killing two with a semi-automatic rifle on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, during a protest against police brutality last year.
	I love how they characterized that.
	Not a bunch of people running around rioting.
	It was just a protest against police brutality.
	Prosecutors brought multiple charges against him, including first-degree intentional homicide, attempted homicide, reckless endangerment, and the firearm possession count.
	With legal experts saying prosecutors struggled to counter the Illinois man's claims of self-defense, the best bet for a conviction looked like the gun charge.
	But Rittenhouse defense team dug up an exception to the prohibition.
	Judge Bruce Schrader dismissed the count Monday, just hours before the jurors got the case.
	Under Wisconsin law, anyone under 18 who possesses a dangerous weapon is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by up to nine months behind bars.
	On its face, convicting Rittenhouse on that count looked like a legal slam dunk because he was 17 years old and obviously had the rifle strapped to his chest before the shooting.
	But Rittenhouse's attorney seized on a subsection of Wisconsin law that states the ban on minors possessing dangerous weapons applies to minors armed with rifles or shotguns only if those weapons are short-barreled.
	That language stems from a bill then-Republican Governor Tommy Thompson signed in 1991.
	Lawmakers were trying to find ways to curb gang violence around that time.
	The goal was to prevent youths from carrying sawed-off shotguns.
	The AR-15 was not short-barreled.
	They asked Schrader to dismiss the possession counts on those grounds at a pretrial hearing in October.
	The judge refused to toss the charge at that point.
	And then he did toss the charge.
	Because, again, the law is pretty specific.
	I mean, the law says that you're not allowed to carry a short-barreled shotgun or a short-barreled rifle.
	But it does not include these.
	I mean, if you draw the law that way, that is what the law is.
	So that charge was ruled out by the judge immediately.
	So basically, you are now down to the reckless endangerment charge.
	Reckless endangerment would be essentially shooting a gun in a crowded place, knowing that it might hit somebody.
	But that is going to be obviated by self-defense in this particular case, legally speaking.
	So the prosecution has nothing.
	And they really demonstrated that they had nothing yesterday.
	It was a bad closing argument for the prosecution.
	So the prosecutor, the chief prosecutor here is a guy named Thomas Binger.
	Binger made a mockery of himself throughout this trial.
	I mean, so much so that earlier in the trial, the judge reamed Binger for being bad at his job.
	Binger literally, I mean, he almost attempted to get a mistrial declared through his own activity.
	And he realized things were going so badly that it's almost hard to read this as anything except for him attempting to get a mistrial.
	He suggested in open court that Rittenhouse not talking to the cops was an admission of guilt, which has not been the case pretty much ever in common law and certainly has not been the case in American case law for something like 40 or 50 years.
	Here was the judge reaming Binger earlier in the trial.
	You are already, you were, I was astonished when you began your examination by commenting on the defendant's post-arrest silence.
	That's basic law, it's been basic law in this country for 40 years, 50 years.
	I have no idea why you would do something like that.
	I said I had heard nothing in this trial to change any of my rulings.
	That was before the testimony, Your Honor.
	Pardon me?
	That was before the testimony.
	Don't get brazen with me.
	You're an experienced trial attorney and you're telling me that when the judge says, I'm excluding this, you just to take it upon yourself to put it in because you think that you've found a way around it?
	Come on!
	Okay, so, it was a rough road for the prosecutors here.
	And they just demonstrated, again, I don't know where they got their law degrees.
	Binger, I think, went to the University of Michigan Law School, which really does not speak highly of University of Michigan, for sure.
	Okay, so yesterday, he just made a mockery of himself.
	It was truly a terrible closing argument.
	He began by saying something just patently false, which is, if you bring a gun to a situation, and then somebody attacks you, and you shoot them, this means that you do not have the defense of self-defense available to you.
	That's not true in any way, shape, or form.
	If I bring a gun to an area where I'm legally allowed to bring a gun, even if I bring a gun to an area where I'm not legally allowed to bring a gun, you might get me on a gun charge, but if somebody attacks me with a knife and I shoot them, that is still self-defense.
	If somebody attacks me without a knife and I shoot them, that is still self-defense, depending on if I am in legitimate and reasonable fear for my life.
	Here is Binger just completely botching the law.
	Again, did he send like Cracker Jack box tops into the bar association to get a law degree?
	I don't understand how this guy is even practicing.
	And one of the things to keep in mind is that when the defendant provokes the incident, he loses the right to self-defense.
	You cannot claim self-defense against a danger you create.
	That's critical, right here.
	The defendant decided to pull the trigger on his AR-15 four times.
	That was his decision.
	And he is responsible for every bullet that comes out of that gun.
	So, it is true that if you provoke a confrontation, you cannot then use self-defense.
	That part is true.
	But he literally said, this is a direct quote, you lose the right to self-defense when you're the one who brought the gun.
	Nope!
	False.
	Actively false.
	So, the prosecution's case relies on the idea that Rittenhouse started a fight essentially with Joseph Rosenbaum, and that everything that thereupon followed was Rittenhouse's fault.
	But there's no evidence that that's the case.
	And so instead, you see the prosecutor making just, I mean, Binger was just, it was bizarre.
	Here he was defending Joseph Rosenbaum.
	Joseph Rosenbaum spent the evening being totally insane.
	Spent the evening burning things, threatening people with chains, literally saying, according to witness testimony, that he would kill Rittenhouse if he found him alone.
	He just happens to stumble into it.
	to prosecute Rittenhouse is to pretend that Joseph Rosenbaum was actually like a wonderful dude. So here he is clip 14 explaining that Joseph Rosenbaum really didn't do anything that night. He's just, you know, a non-threatening kind of silly, idiot little guy who really, you know, there was nothing to fear from Joseph Rosenbaum while he was like threatening people with chains and burning cars and such.
	He just happens to stumble into it. So what does he do that night? Oh, let me tell you all the awful things Joseph Rosenbom did.
	He tipped over a port-a-potty that had no one in it.
	He swung a chain.
	He lit a metal garbage dumpster on fire.
	Oh, and there's this empty wooden flatbed trailer that they pulled out in the middle of the road and they tipped it over to stop some bearcats and they lit it on fire.
	Oh, and he said some bad words.
	He said the N-word.
	What the hell is wrong with this guy?
	Like really, I don't know what's wrong with him.
	And by the way, all of the offenses that he mentions before the N-word offense, which by the way, according to the media, is the gravest defense in American public life.
	If you use the N-word, we bar you from public society.
	We basically brand you and say that you are no longer allowed to participate in public society in America.
	He's like, well, he said the N-word.
	But also, like, all the other stuff that you're saying is criminal.
	Okay?
	It's actual criminal activity.
	It's like, so he was rioting.
	So he was burning things.
	So he was setting up barricades to prevent the cops from getting in.
	So he's doing—I mean, was that that big a deal?
	Like, he seems like a nice guy.
	Was he just—I mean, it's like a bad night.
	How many times have you just been walking down the street and you saw a metal dumpster on fire tipped over a porta potty, started waving around chains, shouting the N-word, and tried to block the cops from coming?
	Happens all the time.
	Happens all the time.
	That's the prosecutor.
	Remember, prosecutors are supposed to be angry at people for violating the law.
	That's kind of their job.
	It's like, well, his violations of law are no big deal.
	And then he goes even further.
	He suggests that this is a mob of heroes.
	Now you watch the tape.
	Did that look like a mob of heroes to you?
	The people chasing Kyle Rittenhouse?
	Did that look like a group of people out for justice that evening?
	Or did that look like a bunch of people who are out to make trouble and burn things and create violence and havoc?
	And did it look like they were chasing down Kyle Rittenhouse to beat the living hell out of him?
	Like before the shooting.
	Remember, he's being chased by Rosenbaum and other people before he shoots anyone.
	Literally for not doing anything.
	So here is the prosecutor trying to make the case that this is a group of heroes.
	Who are you going to believe?
	The narrative or your own eyes?
	We've had several police officers testify that in an active shooter situation, their first instinct, their first training is to go in and stop the threat.
	They don't sit there and wonder, well, maybe it was self-defense.
	I don't know.
	I'm gonna, you know, wait and see.
	And every day we read about heroes that stop active shooters.
	That's what was going on here.
	And that crowd was right.
	And that crowd was full of heroes.
	That crowd was full of heroes?
	The actual F?
	What in the world?
	It gets worse from here, by the way.
	Binger decided it'd be a great idea to point a gun at, like, the entire room.
	So, number one, he's violating pretty much every standard of gun safety right now.
	Like, there are pictures of Rittenhouse walking around in the middle of the riots and obeying the basic rules of gun safety, like, don't have your finger inside the trigger guard.
	Here's Binger with a— I mean, it's like Alec Baldwin over here.
	He's pointing an actual AR-15-style weapon at the jury.
	Because guns are scary, guys.
	And if Kyle Rittenhouse had a gun, and guns are scary, that means he's guilty in some way.
	And he's got his finger inside the trigger guard!
	Like, what?
	I'm sorry, this guy's a mockery.
	And then his deputy shows up.
	His deputy prosecutor is a guy named James Krause.
	And honest to God, if this guy Binger got his law degree from the University of Cracker Jack boxes, then James Krause, the ADA, apparently got his degree from a Special K mail-in game.
	Because, my God, he then makes the case that Rittenhouse should have fought these people with his fists.
	He says that if somebody attacks you with their fist, they're obviously not going to do anything deadly to you, so you're a coward if you shoot them.
	If they're trying to beat the hell out of you with a skateboard.
	You have to take the beating.
	Clearly, if there is provocation, he's guilty.
	But even outside of provocation, why do you get to immediately just start shooting?
	As Mr. Binger said, he brought a gun to a fist fight.
	And he was too cowardly to use his own fist to fight his way out.
	Okay, so a few things.
	I noticed that he brought a gun to a gunfight considering that Gage Rose was showing up with a gun.
	Also, he brought a gun to a being smashed in the face with a skateboard fight.
	Also, he brought a gun to a somebody grabbing for his gunfight.
	I have a question.
	Since when in American law is the rule that if somebody threatens your life with not a gun, you are not allowed to use a gun to protect your own life?
	When is that the rule in American law, ever?
	It was a real bad day for the prosecution.
	The defense, by contrast, had a pretty easy day because all they had to point out is the obvious.
	This is a political case.
	Here's the defense attorney, Mark Richards, making the point that this is a political case, which it clearly was.
	Ladies and gentlemen, this is a political case.
	We can take politics out of it as a Democrat and Republican.
	But the district attorney's office is marching forward with this case because they need somebody to be responsible.
	They need somebody to put and say, we did it.
	He's the person who brought terror to Kenosha.
	Kyle Rittenhouse is not that individual.
	The rioters, the demonstrators who turned into rioters, those are the individuals who bring us forth.
	That is correct.
	And then Richard says, very controversially, that he's glad he shot Joseph Rosenbaum.
	Well, I mean, I don't know about being glad that anybody got shot, but if somebody's grabbing for a gun and they get shot, that is the predictable result of grabbing for somebody's gun.
	Kyle shot Joseph Rosenbaum to stop a threat to his person.
	And I'm glad he shot him, because if Joseph Rosenbaum had got that gun, I don't for a minute believe he wouldn't have used it against somebody else.
	He was irrational and crazy.
	And not just that, Richards then says that it's impossible.
	Binger had said it was impossible for Rosenbaum to have threatened Rittenhouse.
	That's, of course, untrue.
	And Richards points that out.
	We showed the video to start this.
	Clearly depicting Mr. Rosenbaum standing there at Car Source 2 shortly after the dumpster.
	Standing there with his chain, the shirt tied up over his head.
	But Mr. Binger says it's impossible for him to have threatened my client.
	That's garbage.
	Just like his case.
	Yep.
	And then Richards concludes by saying that Binger apparently lives in fairy tale land because he's just making up stories.
	This active shooter BS is something that Mr. Binger is trying to sell you people.
	Has he shot anybody since Car Source 3?
	No, he hasn't.
	He's running to try and get to the police.
	Mr. Binger must live in fairytale land to think that Kyle could stop, put his gun down, and say, hey, everything's good, leave me alone, I'm going to the police.
	Unfortunately, that's not how the real world works.
	Alrighty, so in just one second we'll get to the media's final take on this particular situation, because at a certain point you have to imagine that they want the riots.
	Mischaracterizing the case as poorly as they have done throughout this case demonstrates they want something out of this, and apparently what they want is more violence and more unrest, because the narrative uber-alice, the only thing that matters is the narrative.
	We'll get to that in just one moment.
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	All right, we're going to get to more in just one moment.
	First, It is no secret at this point that the left is attempting to force compliance across the board.
	Whether it's the media lying to push the left's narrative over the course of the Rittenhouse trial, or the federal government attempting to enforce VAX mandates on employers, it's patently obvious compliance is the goal.
	Why?
	Well, because the left wants compliance from you.
	They want you to just obey what they say.
	We don't want you to do that.
	We would like for you to still have liberty and freedom, which is why here at The Daily Wire, we are fighting every day against tyranny.
	From our honest coverage of the Rittenhouse trial to the lawsuit we've taken out against the Biden administration for their unconstitutional, tyrannical VAX mandate, we are applying the pressure and we're already creating change.
	The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay, preventing Biden's mandate from going into effect, citing grave statutory and constitutional issues.
	But Biden is determined to push these mandates forward anyway.
	We can't let our guard down.
	We have to continue marching forward.
	And we're not just fighting for our own employees, obviously.
	When we file lawsuits against the Biden administration, we're doing so on behalf of employees everywhere.
	It's important right now that everybody's voice is loud.
	It's an urgent matter.
	Your freedom depends on it.
	If you want to support our fight to make your personal medical decisions without governmental interference, sign our petition against Biden's authoritarian mandate.
	Hundreds of thousands of Americans have already signed the petition.
	But we need many more people to stand with us to reach our goal of one million.
	So please, head on over to dailywire.com slash do not comply to sign the petition today.
	You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	All righty, so as the jury considers what is going on right now, the media continue to press forward the notion that this is part of a broader world.
	Racism narrative.
	Article from the Washington Post today.
	Again, it just seems like they want riots.
	I don't know what else to say.
	When you lie about the fact of the case in order to promote a narrative that ends with people doing violence because they say the system is corrupt.
	I mean, honestly, this is the argument that the left made about Donald Trump in January 6th.
	The argument that they made is that Donald Trump kept saying all the systems were corrupt.
	If you say all the systems are corrupt and the election was stolen, people rebel against the system.
	That's the argument that the left made about January 6th.
	But they routinely make that argument about systemic racism in America.
	Policing is corrupt.
	The criminal justice system is corrupt.
	Our politics are corrupt.
	Capitalism is corrupt.
	The systemic racism narrative is all about getting people to quote-unquote rebel against the system.
	And apparently justified doing so in violent ways.
	And so you have the Washington Post yesterday.
	Here is the headline.
	No matter the verdict.
	It doesn't matter.
	If Rittenhouse were even convicted, they would still say that justice is elusive.
	Based on what?
	Jacob Blake was correctly shot.
	Legally, he was shot justifiably.
	What is your evidence here?
	And again, no one black was shot in the Rittenhouse case.
	Every single person who was shot was white.
	Still, the Washington Post presses forward with the narrative that this is all about race.
	Quote, more than a year after his nephew was shot seven times by a police officer, paralyzing him from the waist down, Justin Blake takes to this city's broad courthouse steps each morning and makes his case for justice.
	He wants Kyle Rittenhouse, the teen on trial here for murder after he brought an AR-15 to Kenosha amid the unrest that follows Blake's shooting, held to account.
	He wants the families of the three men Rittenhouse shot too fatally to know that their pain matters.
	But the thing he wants most will not come to be.
	There will be no trial for the police officer who shot Jacob Blake.
	Now, if you just read all that without knowing any of the facts that we've told you about over the course of this particular podcast and show, then you might think that this guy is saying things that are not crazy.
	But everything he is saying is crazy.
	And Rittenhouse is being tried.
	He should not be tried because there is no evidence.
	But he wants the families of the people shot to know that he feels their pain.
	They were literally attacking the guy when they were shot.
	He wants the police officer who shot Jacob Blake put on trial.
	Jacob Blake was a criminal.
	Jacob Blake was at his ex-girlfriend's house.
	And there was a, again, there was a warrant out for his arrest because according to her, he had invaded her home and then digitally penetrated her without her consent.
	That is called digital rape.
	He had apparently performed that and then he showed up at the house again and she called the cops and the cops showed up and he resisted arrest and got shot for his trouble, which is usually what happens when you resist arrest with a weapon.
	And yet the Washington Post says black residents want justice.
	Do they, though?
	Because if people wanted justice, if this guy wanted justice, he would understand that justice would involve not trying the police officer who did the right thing in shooting Jacob Blake.
	Justin Blake had tears welling in his eyes as an icy wind rose off the nearby lakefront.
	I always love when the reporters start describing in transcendental fashion the weather.
	It's like, and then the rain began to pour down on his upturned face.
	It's like a bad movie.
	They took something from a young man we can never replace, and he hasn't had his day in court.
	I'm mad as hell, said Justin Black.
	Well, considering that one thing that that young man took was, you know, the consent of a woman and just allegedly raped her digitally, and then Threatened a police officer.
	I'm gonna go with the person who was the villain in that particular case is your nephew.
	I mean, by the way, it is an unbelievable thing how the entire media jumped to the defense of Jacob Blake in the middle of that.
	I mean, Joe Biden called the family.
	Kamala Harris went and visited.
	It was insane.
	It was insane.
	So many are among Kenosha's Black community, even though few have joined Justin Blake's often lonely vigil.
	Their absence from the courthouse steps, community leaders say, should not be confused with satisfaction about how things have gone in the city.
	They've just tried to channel their discontent in other ways.
	The shooting of Blake, according to the Washington Post, a now 30-year-old Black man, set off mass protests for racial justice here in August 2020 and added to an already febrile moment in cities nationwide following the murder of George Floyd.
	It also led to looting, burning, and upheaval that culminated in the Rittenhouse shootings.
	Well, it didn't just lead to looting, burning, I mean, just as a side effect.
	Nope, that was the effect.
	It was not a mass protest for racial... When you burn a car lot, that's not a protest for racial justice.
	And by the way, it's not a protest for racial justice when you are suggesting that the cops are racist for shooting an alleged rapist who's resisting arrest.
	But the media want their day.
	I don't understand.
	I'm loathe, honestly, I'm loathe to credit people with malice where stupidity would serve, but this is malicious.
	When you start publishing articles about how black residents of Kenosha look at the Rittenhouse trial and think that racial justice is not being done, I don't know how to, given the facts that we now know and are available to everyone, I do not know how that is not malice by the media.
	I can no longer attribute it to stupidity.
	I would prefer to attribute it to stupidity.
	I can no longer do that.
	This is now malice.
	According to the Washington Post, as a verdict nears in Rittenhouse's trial, there's widespread frustration that the original source of that strife remains unaddressed.
	Attempts in the city to confront systemic racism and police brutality have, residents say, proved underwhelming.
	Meanwhile, the trial that brought the national spotlight back to Kenosha is that of a white man who shot three other white men, even as the officer who shot Blake, Rustin Shusky, has been cleared of charges and resumed, serving on the force.
	It's evidence of an unjust, unfair system, said Alvin Owens, a Black community leader and business owner.
	This is something Black America sees all the time.
	But white Kenosha, white Wisconsin, white America don't get it.
	They don't know what Black America experiences.
	For a brief while, says the Washington Post, in the summer of 2020, as Americans of all races took to the streets to proclaim that Black Lives Matter, Owens thought that was poised to change in Kenosha.
	He helped organize protests.
	But, he says, that awareness came and left.
	It was a squandered opportunity.
	Again, the narrative must be preserved at the expense of the facts.
	And if a few individuals who are not guilty have to pay the price, whether it's the cop in the Jacob Blake shooting, or whether it's Kyle Rittenhouse, the left doesn't care.
	They are just obstacles.
	They are speed bumps on the road to utopia.
	Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
	In the meantime, go check out The Michael Knowles Show.
	That is available right now.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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	The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse comes to a close, though not before the prosecutor can embarrass himself even more.
	Kamala Harris' allies accuse Joe Biden of racism, and two-time loser Democrat candidate Beto O'Rourke throws his hat in the ring for Texas governor.

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