The mother of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager facing murder charges for the deaths of two people shot this summer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, slammed Joseph R. Biden for including her son in a campaign ad.
“I will take him down,” Wendy Rittenhouse said about Mr. Biden, the presumptive Democratic president-elect, while talking to Fox News host Tucker Carlson during a television interview aired Thursday.
“Cheaters don’t win, and he used my son’s image to get votes,” she said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
Mr. Rittenhouse, 17, of Antioch, Illinois, faces murder charges and other counts stemming from the shooting in nearby Kenosha, which took place amid the city experiencing protests in late August.
Lawyers defending the teen argue he acted in self-defense and predict he will be acquitted. He’s been held for more than two months in Kenosha County Jail, his mother said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
A still image of Mr. Rittenhouse holding a semi-automatic rifle on the streets of Kenosha on the night of the shooting appeared briefly in an ad released by the Biden campaign the following month.
In the ad, the image of the gun-toting teen appears while audio plays from a recent presidential debate in which moderator Chris Wallace referenced the Kenosha shooting while speaking to Mr. Trump.
“Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to stay that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities, as we saw in Kenosha.”
Mr. Rittenhouse’s lawyers allege the ad smears him as a white supremacist and said they will sue for libel. He is neither a white supremacist nor a racist, his mother said on Fox News.
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to messages requesting comment.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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