In Tucker Carlson Interview, Kyle Rittenhouse Tells  Fox News He is ‘Not a Racist Person' and Backs BLM

Rittenhouse was 17 last year when he traveled 20 miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha, Wisconsin, and shot and killed two men and wounded a third during protests over the shooting of Jacob Blake

Published November 22, 2021

Kyle Rittenhouse during his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse on Nov. 17, 2021 in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted on charges stemming from killing two men and wounding another during the unrest that followed the shooting of a Black man by a white police officer, says in a new interview that he's “not a racist person” and supports the Black Lives Matter movement.

“This case has nothing to do with race. It never had anything to do with race. It had to do with the right to self-defense,” the 18-year-old tells Fox News host Tucker Carlson in an interview set to air Monday night. Rittenhouse is white, as were the men he shot.

Rittenhouse was 17 last year when he traveled 20 miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois, to Kenosha, Wisconsin, which had been racked with protests in the wake of the Aug. 23 shooting of Jacob Blake. That shooting and the response in Kenosha — protests that turned destructive — became part of the national reckoning over police use of force against Black people following George Floyd's death in Minneapolis the previous May at the hands of police.

Rittenhouse, armed with an AR-style semiautomatic rifle, joined others who said they were intent on protecting private property from potential damage on Aug. 25. During his trial, prosecutors argued that the teenager as a “wannabe soldier” who went looking for trouble that night. Rittenhouse countered that he fired in self-defense after he was attacked and in fear for his life. 

READ ON