Do You See the Similarities Between Sandmann and Rittenhouse?

            The arrest and trial of Kyle Rittenhouse shows the media bias toward white people, mainly white men and particularly white men who have the audacity to carry a rifle for protection. The media immediately acted to convince the public that Rittenhouse was a “white supremacist,” and “active shooter,” and a “murderer.” Rittenhouse was none of them. Ben Shapiro described Rittenhouse and his arrest as follows: 

Kyle Rittenhouse was a 17-year-old young man who went to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in order to protect businesses and administer medical aid to those who needed it. He was chased down by Joseph Rosenbaum, a 36-year-old convicted child molester; he shot Rosenbaum when Rosenbaum grabbed or his gun.

He was then chased down by Anthony Huber, 26, a man convicted of two felony counts of strangulation and suffering after pulling a knife on his brother and grandmother and choking his brother; Rittenhouse shot Huber when Huber tried to slam his skateboard into Rittenhouse’s head.

Finally, Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, a member of a radical Antifa offshoot, approached Rittenhouse with a pistol in his hand; Rittenhouse shot him in the biceps.

All of this was on tape. It was verified by witness testimony and physical evidence.

Yet Rittenhouse was brought to trial anyway.

He was brought to trial because his case became the center of a political firestorm. In September 2020, President Joe Biden featured Rittenhouse in an ad decrying then-President Donald Trump’s supposed sympathy for white supremacists. Members of the left declared that Rittenhouse was a stand-in for American racism, despite the fact that all three of the people Rittenhouse shot were white.

Even after the prosecution presented its case – a case so weak that the prosecution’s own witnesses ended up supporting Rittenhouse’s self-defense case – members of the media continued to maintain than exoneration for Rittenhouse would be yet another stain on America’s racial record.

The media tried and convicted Rittenhouse weeks ago, and the legal trial seems to be just a ritual. The media has lied and stretched the truth about Rittenhouse until the judge and the jury are being threatened with death or serious injury if Rittenhouse is not convicted. The Wisconsin National Guard is standing on guard to protect against the expected rioting if Rittenhouse is not convicted. The whole affair sounds similar to the experience of Nickolas Sandmann. 

            You might remember the case of Nick Sandmann. He, too, is a young, white man who was only a teenager when the media defamed him. Sandmann, a “MAGA” hat-wearing student from Covington Catholic School in Kentucky, was in Washington, D.C., to attend a March to Life event. He and his friends were standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial waiting for their bus to go home when they were confronted by Nathan Phillips, who was in town for the Indigenous Peoples March. He approached Sandmann and his peers while beating a drum and chanting and got right in their faces. Sandman just looked at him and tried to stay cool.

            Sandmann and his friends did nothing to provoke Phillips. However, CNN and other mainstream media outlets jumped to a quick conclusion and portrayed the teens as being racially charged. The media outlets acted so quickly that they did not look for the facts. Additional footage showed that a group of Black Hebrew Israelites had provoked the confrontation and had flung racial slurs at the students. Sandmann sued CNN over the botched coverage, and CNN settled a multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit in January 2020. Other lawsuits were filed, but I do not know the results. Sandmann saw the similarities between his case and the situation with Rittenhouse, and he sent a message to him in a column for the Daily Mail.

The parallels between me and Kyle Rittenhouse are impossible not to draw…. The way the media has treated you is terrible, and you don’t have to face it alone.

This is the problem with liberal media outlets in the United States. They want to get the story first, get the most views, make the most money, and advance the agenda from liberal patrons…. These outlets cover themselves when they are wrong with small footnotes at the ends of long articles, clarifying that new information has come out and that they have updated their coverage. News shouldn’t be a scoreboard that constantly changes. News is about coverage that includes a statement of facts that does not need to be corrected. But, the liberal media doesn’t do this. The liberal media rushes to be the first to report.

            Sandmann used his platform to contact Rittenhouse to let him know that he was not alone and to state the obvious: “I am about the only person our age to have an idea of how the media is treating you.” Sandmann suggested that Rittenhouse take the same action that he did and “hold the media accountable.” Sandmann is not the only person saying that Rittenhouse should sue the media. One person even suggested that he sue Joe Biden for calling him a “white supremacist.”

            I hope that the judge and jury stay strong in face of threats of violence to themselves and their families. The evidence shows that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense, and the jury should agree with the evidence. I hope that he sues CNN and other media outlets and takes so much money from them that they will reconsider their tactics.