Tucker Carlson: Kyle Rittenhouse's trial is the most bizarre court proceeding ever caught on camera

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Tucker Carlson reacts to Kyle Rittenhouse trial: it's a disaster

Tucker Carlson discusses the Kyle Rittenhouse trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and says it has been a 'disaster after disaster' for prosecution

Illinois teenager Kyle Rittenhouse is on trial right now in Kenosha, Wisconsin. You may have read about it. Lots of people are watching it. It's an event packed with all kinds of political and social implications, but it's also as a pure legal matter, maybe the single most bizarre court proceeding ever caught on camera. 

The outline of the case itself is pretty straightforward. Kyle Rittenhouse went to the BLM riots in Kenosha last summer, armed with a rifle. While he was there, he shot three people. He killed two of them. The prosecution claims this was murder. Kyle Rittenhouse says it was self-defense, so it's pretty simple. 

But here's the amazing thing: Every single witness the prosecution has called so far has wound up making Kyle Rittenhouse’s case for him. That would include even Gaige Grosskreutz. He's the avowed communist who Rittenhouse shot in the arm. Grosskreutz was supposed to be the prosecution's star witness in this trial. But once he got on the stand, he admitted that Kyle Rittenhouse only shot him after he pointed a loaded gun in the boy's face. 

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CHIRAFISI: That’s a photo of you, Yes. 

GROSSKREUTZ: Yes. 

CHIRAFISI: That is Mr. Rittenhouse? 

GROSSKREUTZ: Correct. 

CHIRAFISI: Now, You would agree your firearm is pointed at Mr. Rittenhouse correct? 

GROSSKREUTZ: Yes. 

CHIRAFISI: Okay and once your firearm is pointed at Mr. Rittenhouse, that’s when he fires his gun. Yes? 

GROSSKREUTZ: No. 

CHIRAFISI: Sir, does this look like right now your arm is being shot? 

GROSSKREUTZ: That looks like my bicep being vaporized, yes. 

CHIRAFISI: OK. And it’s being vaporized as you’re pointing your gun directly at him, yes? 

GROSSKREUTZ: Yes. 

CHIRAFISI: Okay. So, when you were standing three to five feet from him with your arms up in the air, he never fired, right? 

GROSSKREUTZ: Correct. 

CHIRAFISI: 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? 

GROSSKREUTZ: Correct.

So that's kind of it right there, that's pretty much the end of the trial, because when someone runs up and points a loaded gun in your face, you are allowed to shoot that person that is called self-defense. That's the rule. It has been the rule throughout human history, in every society on Earth since people lived in caves. 

Kyle Rittenhouse and defense attorney Corey Chirafisi after a break during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse on November 9, 2021 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse is accused of shooting three demonstrators, killing two of them, during a night of unrest that erupted in Kenosha after a police officer shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back while being arrested in August 2020. Rittenhouse, from Antioch, Illinois, was 17 at the time of the shooting and armed with an assault rifle. He faces counts of felony homicide and felony attempted homicide. 

According to the prosecution's star witness, self-defense is exactly what happened here. So as a matter of law, in addition to custom and common sense, Gaige Grosskreutz just proves that Kyle Rittenhouse acted to defend himself from harm. So we're done. 

But the trial kept going, and as it did keep going, things got even weirder and much worse for the prosecution. Gaige Grosskreutz, for example, admitted that he was carrying his gun illegally. He'd been arrested for felony burglary. Of course, he had. So his gun permit was invalid. 

Grosskreutz also admitted under oath that when he sued the city of Kenosha for $10 million, which for some reason he thought he was owed, he failed to mention the fact that he was carrying a firearm and pointing it in people's faces. Devastating, really. But the whole trial has been like that. Disaster after disaster, after disaster for the prosecution. 

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At one point, a detective, a witness called by the prosecution, implicated the prosecution in a cover-up. The detective admitted that the police did not search Gage Grosskreutz's phone after the shooting, even though they had a valid warrant to do that. Well, why didn't they? Well, they didn't, because the prosecution ordered the police not to look at the phone, and that had never happened before. And you can see why it's baffling, really. Why would a government lawyer want less evidence in a case? According to the detective on the stand, the prosecutor cited something called Marsy’s Law.

CHIRAFISI: Have you ever relied on Marsy’s Law not to execute a search warrant since it’s gone into effect. 

ANTARAMIAN: We’ve had conversations in the aftermath but I don’t recall not searching one solely on that basis. 

CHIRAFISI:  So this is, if I’m fair, it is the only one you recall using Marsy’s Law? As the basis for not doing it? 

ANTARAMIAN: Correct. 

CHIRAFISI: And it’s the only one that you recall ever getting a direction from a prosecutor handling a case not to do it. 

ANTARAMIAN: Pursuant to Marsy’s Law, yes. 

CHIRAFISI: Ok 

So you're not allowed to look at the phone of the guy who got shot and was holding a gun. So why would an honest prosecutor ask a cop to ignore that? Why wouldn't an honest prosecutor want to see the phone? Apparently, the phone had video from that night, had relevant text messages, location data. So if you want to know what really happened that night, you would look at the phone. 

Kenosha Police officer Ben Antaramian shows the jury a tear gas canister that Gaige Grosskreutz testified he picked up out of the street before he was shot by Kyle Rittenhouse during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Monday, Nov. 8, 2021. Video of the shooting was shown on courtroom monitors. (Mark Hertzberg/Pool Photo via AP) (Mark Hertzberg/Pool Photo via AP)

But it turned out the prosecutor didn't want to know what happened that night. He wanted to declare Kyle Rittenhouse a murderer. He was under enormous political pressure to do that, so that's exactly what he did. It goes without saying this is not how American justice is supposed to work. But thankfully, like most webs of deception, it collapsed under scrutiny in a big way. 

This unintentionally hilarious exchange happened with yet another prosecution witness. This is Richard McGinniss of The Daily Caller. McGinnis was reporting from Kenosha that night. He was just inches away when Rittenhouse shot a convicted child molester called Joseph Rosenbaum. 

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Now, why was a convicted child molester at a riot on behalf of BLM? That's a whole nother story. A lot of people like that there that night, it turns out. But the prosecutor hoped to portray the shooting of the child molester Rosenbaum, as an act of senseless violence committed by a psychopath, Kyle Rittenhouse. Here's what Richard McGinness said he saw. 

PROSECUTOR: I mean you have no idea what Mr. Rosenbaum was thinking at any point of his life. You have never been inside his head, you never met him before. 

MCGINNISS: I never exchanged words with him, if that’s what your question is. 

PROSECUTOR: So your interpretation of what he was trying to do or what he was intending to do or anything along those lines is complete guesswork isn’t it. 

MCGINNISS: Well he said f--- you and reached for the weapon.

Well, there's that. So a convicted child molester with a long and violent criminal history runs up to Kyle Rittenhouse out of nowhere in the middle of a riot and tries to take his gun away. So Rittenhouse shot him. That's what happened. Those are the facts. Again, according to the prosecution’s own witness. And not just one witness. 

Today, the prosecution's medical expert, a man called Doug Kelly, testified that Joseph Rosenbaum appeared to be grabbing the barrel of Kyle Rittenhouse's rifle when Rittenhouse fired. Then yet another prosecution witness, this one called Ryan Balch, testified that Joseph Rosenbaum said out loud that he intended to kill Kyle Rittenhouse. 

BALCH: And I stepped in and told everybody, "chill out, calm down, stop doing that." I turned and had an exchange with one of the protestors and I kind of explained to that protester, I get what you’re trying to do but not this. And when I turned around, Rosenbaum was right there in front of my face yelling and screaming. And I said dude, back up chill, I don’t know what your problem is. And he goes you know what,  if I catch one of you guys alone tonight I’m going to f---ing kill you. 

BINGER: And he said that to you?

BALCH: Correct.

BINGER: Did he say that to the defendant as well? 

BALCH: Well the defendant was there – so yes.

I'm going to kill you, says child molester. It went on like this on and on and on. At one point, another prosecution witness testified that Anthony Huber, who was, you won't be surprised to learn at this point, a convicted domestic abuser was bashing Kyle Rittenhouse in the head with a skateboard when he was shot. 

So once again, we have the textbook definition of self-defense. Not much of a prosecution. In fact, at no point did the prosecution make its own case. They make Kyle Rittenhouse's case. Open and shut. But you never know any of this from watching the coverage of the trial. 

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NBC News, for example, just ran this thoroughly dishonest headline: Shooting victim at Rittenhouse trial said he thought he was going to die. What the article didn't mention, seems kind of relevant, the shooting victim was pointing a loaded gun at the boy who shot him. 

So they're liars, you knew that. In this case, they have to lie, if they didn't, they'd be forced to admit that they were wrong from the very beginning. In case you've forgotten, this is what they were telling you all last year about Kyle Rittenhouse. 

JASON JOHNSON, MSNBC: Rittenhouse is basically what you would have had in a school shooter. He's a 17-year-old kid. He shouldn't have had a gun. He crossed state lines to supposedly protect property. No, he was going out to shoot people. 

STEVE SCHMIDT, MSNBC: You see, the 17-year-old, who was radicalized by Trumpism, took his AR-15 to Kenosha and became a killer. 

JOE SCARBOROUGH: The 17-year-old kid from out of state, a boy from out of state, drives up to the state with an AR-15 around his neck and then shoots and kills a couple of people shooting wildly, running around acting like rent a cop.

JON HEILEMAN: And it's not good that a 17-year-old vigilante, arguably a domestic terrorist, picked up a rifle, drove to a different state to shoot people. 

Yeah, he drove to a different state to shoot people. That's what happened, really. Open up your brain. Let's pour some more lies into it. Actually, in point of fact, Kyle Rittenhouse went to Kenosha to clean up the filth left by the rioting Biden voters the child molester included. 

Kyle Rittenhouse looks back before his trial starts at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Monday, Nov. 8, 2021. (Sean Krajacic/The Kenosha News via AP, Pool) (Sean Krajacic/The Kenosha News via AP, Pool)

Turns out, the morning of the shooting Kyle Rittenhouse was videotaped cleaning anarchist graffiti off the walls of a local high school. That seems like good citizenship, actually. Naturally, elected Democrats denounced him as a racist. Ayanna Pressley described Rittenhouse as a "White supremacist domestic terrorist," echoing the MSNBC Morning Show. Ilhan Omar did the same. 

Joe Biden, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, called the 17-year-old "A White supremacist." Now, for the record, the men Rittenhouse shot were all White, kind of a funny kind of White supremacy there. 

It turns out that, like so much of the hyperventilating moral outrage we suffer through every single day, the tale of Kyle Rittenhouse is a myth. It was concocted by the industrial media machine purely for political effect. Having heard the evidence here, it is not even a close call. Kyle Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. So if you wanted a guilty verdict in this trial, you would probably have to threaten the jury. And as it turns out, some people are planning to do just that. 

CORTEZ RICE, FRIEND OF GEORGE FLOYD: I ain't even going to name the people that I know that’s up in the Kenosha trial. There is cameras in there. There is definitely cameras up in there. There is definitely people taking pictures of the jury and everything. We know what’s going on. So we need the same results man. We need the same results. Justice for Daunte Wright. 

So apparently that guy is a friend of George Floyd's. What are the odds of that? So videotape the jurors. If they're afraid, they'll do exactly what we want. That's what he's saying. There's not a small thing. Jury intimidation is a serious felony in this country. But as far as we know, the Department of Justice isn't doing anything to stop it in this case. They're all busy looking for Ashley Biden's diary. They've got priorities. 

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So it looks like it's continuing today. At the Rittenhouse trial, a judge told jurors that some were taking their pictures at a bus stop outside the courthouse. That, of course, is a threat. We'll see if it works. 

This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the November 9, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."