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 collegeās Turning Point USA chapter to speak at the campus. However, the event was met with backlash from a number of students who objected to Rittenhouseās presence.
The 21-year-old gained notoriety in August 2020 when, at the age of 17, heĀ shot and killed two menāJoseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, as well as injuring 26-year-old Gaige Grosskreutzāat a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
He said theĀ three shootings, carried out with a semi-automaticĀ AR-15-style firearm, were in self-defense. TheĀ Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest where the shootings took place was held afterĀ Jacob Blake, a Black man, was left paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot by a white police officer.
He says himself that he was there to protect businesses, but he had no relation to the business beyond that of a standard employee, and his help was never requestedāhe didnāt know the owners, his family didnāt own the business, and he wasnāt even a frequent customer IIRC.
The most charitable interpretation is that an untrained, underage civilian took a semiautomatic rifle across state lines, to a protest happening in a town he didnāt live in, to guard a business that he had no special relation to, and that never asked for his help.
The more probable interpretation, given posts on his social media before the shooting (that werenāt allowed to be shown in court), is that he wanted to play action hero and shoot some scumbags, and he got exactly what he hoped.
EDIT: Apparently he worked at the business he was guarding, but the point still standsāhe never got permission to defend the business, nor was it ever offered.
What bullocks technicality kept his social media posts from being shown in court?!