The race card fails in Rittenhouse trial

OPINION:

To hear MSNBC hosts (especially Joy Reid), the network’s talking-head guests and others on the far left tell it, you would think Kenosha, Wis., in 2021 was no better than Neshoba County, Miss., in 1964.
 
Ms. Reid and other racial arsonists went apoplectic Friday after a Kenosha jury rightly acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse, 18, on all charges of homicide, attempted homicide, and reckless endangerment in the August 2020 self-defense killing of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz.
 
Suppose all you knew about the Rittenhouse case were what you could glean from MSNBC and some other left-wing media outlets. In that case, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Rosenbaum, Huber, and Grosskreutz were the modern-day incarnations of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
 
The latter were civil rights activists abducted and killed by members of the KKK and racist law enforcement officers in Neshoba in June 1964. The crime, investigation, and trials were the subject of a 1988 movie dramatization, “Mississippi Burning.”
 
Kenosha was indeed burning when Mr. Rittenhouse was attacked by — and subsequently shot — Rosenbaum, Huber, and Grosskreutz, but only because of arson committed amid anarchic Black Lives Matter/Antifa rioting that had broken out following the police shooting of a Black man.
 
But unlike in Neshoba in 1964, there was never any evidence presented at Mr. Rittenhouse’s trial that he was in any way racist or a “White supremacist,” as Ms. Reid, who is Black, and other anti-white bigots repeatedly asserted throughout the trial or that his actions were in any way racially motivated.
 
The accusations were as fallacious as they were counterintuitive because, like the defendant himself, those he shot were White.
 
Moreover, it was Mr. Rosenbaum, not Mr. Rittenhouse, who was hurling the “N-word” amid the melee, as even the prosecution flippantly admitted.
 
But that didn’t stop reflexive race-card players like Ms. Reid from trying to use the case to gratuitously inflame racial divisions, where there was no basis for it. She even attacked Mr. Rittenhouse for breaking down during the trial, ridiculing his “male white tears.” That’s not only racist, it’s also sexist, and if the situation were reversed, it likely would get a white male TV host suspended or fired.
 
“It seems to me it’s open season on human rights demonstrators,” said Jesse Jackson, another longtime race hustler, in a desperate attempt to make himself relevant again.

Since when do supposed “human rights demonstrators” attempt to severely injure or kill Mr. Rittenhouse, then 17, who did nothing to provoke their attacks?

Moreover, Rosenbaum, Huber, and Grosskreutz also all had lengthy, violent criminal rap sheets. Mr. Rittenhouse’s record, by contrast, was clean and— thanks to the jury—remains so.

But President Joe Biden and his staff either didn’t know that or didn’t care, judging by the irresponsible statement the White House issued Friday, second-guessing the jurors after they exonerated Mr. Rittenhouse for exercising his right to self-defense.

“While the verdict in Kenosha will leave many Americans feeling angry and concerned, myself included [emphasis added], we must acknowledge that the jury has spoken,” said Mr. Biden, who during the presidential race in September 2020 in a campaign video — without evidence — lumped Mr. Rittenhouse in with “White supremacists.”
 
We concur with Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who following the acquittal tweeted: “Joe Biden needs to publicly apologize to Kyle Rittenhouse.”
 
As for Ms. Reid, Mr. Rittenhouse should sue her and MSNBC for defamation and slander, taking his cue from Nick Sandmann. The MAGA hat-wearing Kentucky teen won settlements from CNN and The Washington Post after his January 2019 confrontation in Washington with a Native American activist, in which the media outlets falsely characterized him as the aggressor and the encounter as being racially motivated.
 
One other takeaway from the Rittenhouse acquittal: For whatever reason, the 12 jurors weren’t sequestered during their three-plus days of deliberations, and thus presumably were aware of the “racist” and “White supremacist” tropes being hurled by MSNBC and elsewhere on the left, but happily didn’t buy into them.

That gives us hope that playing the race card—which the left for so long has done so recklessly and indiscriminately—is finally losing its power to intimidate. As with the proverbial “boy who cried wolf,” few believe it anymore.