The Daily - The Trial of Kyle Rittenhouse

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

This episode contains strong language and scenes of violence.Last summer, as the country reeled from the murder of George Floyd, another Black man, Jacob Blake, was shot by police in Kenosha, Wis. People took to the streets in Kenosha in protest and were soon met by civilians in militia gear — a confrontation that turned violent.On the third night of protests, a white teenager shot and killed two people, and maimed a third. The gunman, Kyle Rittenhouse, became a symbol of the moment, called a terrorist by the left and a patriot by the right. Now, he’s on trial for those shootings.Guest: Julie Bosman, the Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times.Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Here are some of the takeaways from the trial so far.These are the events that led to Mr. Rittenhouse, now 18, standing trial in the fatal shootings of two men and the wounding of another in Kenosha, Wis.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Last summer, as the country reeled from the murder of George Floyd, another Black man, Jacob Blake, was shot by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, prompting protesters to take to the streets. Jacob Blake was shot by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, prompting protesters to take to the streets. Jacob Blake! Jacob Blake! My colleague, Julie Bosma, was covering those protests. There were these groups of white men in militia gear.

And describing them on the daily. They were confronting the people in the crowd. As they turned violent. It felt like the situation was a little out of control. So I decided to get in my car and leave. Moments after Julie left the scene, a young white man would shoot and kill two people and maim a third. You see the man running down the street. This is after he allegedly shot someone in the stomach at a gas station.

Immediately, that shooter, Kyle Rittenhouse, became a symbol of the moment, called a terrorist by the left and a patriot by the right. Now, he's on trial for those shootings, and Julie is back in Kenosha to tell the story of who Rittenhouse really is, and what his trial will ultimately be about. It's Friday, November 5th. So, Julie, we spoke to you last summer, hours after the shooting happened in your hometown of Kenosha. And now, a year later, you're back there covering the trial of the alleged shooter.

So, tell us about where things stand. So this is the week that the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse is underway in Kenosha. Kyle Rittenhouse is now 18 years old. He was 17 at the time of the shootings. He stands trial for six criminal counts, including first degree intentional homicide, which is the most serious murder charge in Wisconsin. And his trial is taking place at the courthouse in downtown Kenosha, which was the scene of so many protests in August 2020. And we are just several blocks away from the place where these shootings took place on the night of August 25th, 2020. And that next day after the shooting, when we first talked to you, you had told us that law enforcement didn't yet know much about this teenage shooter. So what have we learned

about him since then? Who exactly is Kyle Rittenhouse? have we learned about him since then? Who exactly is Kyle Rittenhouse? So we know that Kyle Rittenhouse grew up in Antioch, Illinois, which is a small town in a rural community about a half hour drive from Kenosha, just over the state line. He lived with his mother, Wendy, in an apartment. His parents were divorced. At some point, he stopped attending his high school and apparently began working to finish his high school diploma online. But from a young age, he had developed a real interest in law enforcement and policing. He seemed to idolize police officers. He enrolled in a cadet program for at-risk youth when he was in ninth grade. He enrolled in a similar program at the fire department in his town.

And he had developed an interest in politics when, I think in January 2020, he posted a video of himself on TikTok at a Trump rally in the front row. But he was trying to finish his high school diploma, working on this part-time job as a lifeguard, and just seemed a little bit adrift. And what do we know about what brought him to Kenosha? So we know that Kyle Rittenhouse had several ties to Kenosha. His father lived here, and so did a person named Dominic Black, who had become an increasingly important figure in Kyle Rittenhouse's life. Dominic Black had dated Mackenzie, Rittenhouse's sister, and Kyle and Dominic were only two years apart. And they became such close friends that Dominic Black has said that they

thought of each other as brothers. And Kyle Rittenhouse was here in Kenosha spending the night at Dominic Black's house when protests and riots had broken out in Kenosha over the shooting of Jacob Blake. And what does Kyle Rittenhouse do? So from what we know, according to what Dominic Black has said to detectives and has said in court, Kyle and Dominic spent a lot of time watching what had happened in Kenosha. A Fox News alert. Chaos erupting in Kenosha, Wisconsin as rioters set buildings and And they were very upset about all of the buildings that were damaged. You can see so many cars destroyed. I can't even count this car lot. I don't mean to be facetious about this. Should we just now all take our eraser to our Wisconsin maps and erase Kenosha? The protests and the destruction were all over the local and the national news.

Just say that it doesn't exist anymore because we're going to sit back and allow it to be literally wiped out? Is that the plan? And Dominic Black lives just a couple of miles from downtown Kenosha. So it was close enough that they could see what was happening. They could see smoke that was rising from buildings that had been burned. So on the morning of August 25th, Dominic and Kyle decided that they were going to go downtown. They came to Ruther High School, which is a high school that stood

just across the park from the courthouse, and it had been graffitied the night before. So Kyle and Dominic decided that they were going to help out and scrub graffiti off of the wall of this school. While they were downtown, they also talked to the owner of CarSource, which is a used car business, which has a few different locations in downtown Kenosha. And according to what Dominic Black has said, the owner of CarSource told them that he was very upset that so many of his cars had been burned overnight,

and that he was afraid that his other properties would also be destroyed. So Dominic Black and Kyle and a few other people agreed that they would keep an eye on his properties that night. Hmm. So this young man who already is very drawn to the concept of police and policing is kind of being deputized. He is. And that day, Kyle Rittenhouse and Dominic Black begin to prepare. At some point, they go back to Dominic's stepfather's house where there are guns. One of those guns, a military-style semi-automatic rifle. to Dominic's stepfather's house where there are guns. One of those guns, a military-style semi-automatic rifle,

belongs to Kyle Rittenhouse. He was too young to buy a gun for himself in the state of Wisconsin because he was not 18, so Dominic Black had bought it for him. And usually those guns are kept locked in a safe in Dominic Black's stepfather's house. But because of the protests and the arson and the looting that had broken out in Kenosha, Dominic Black's stepfather had decided to remove those guns from the safe. And as Dominic and Kyle came back to the house on that Tuesday, Dominic knew that if he didn't hand it over to Kyle, Kyle would be really upset.

Even though Dominic knew that he had technically broken the law in buying that gun for Kyle, but he handed it over to him anyway. So here you have two teenagers, one of them not old enough to possess this rifle, heading downtown on a self-appointed mission to supposedly protect this community. That's right. And to be clear, nobody in any official capacity asked people to come downtown with guns to try to help patrol and assist the police department. The sheriff of Kenosha County, David Beth, had already gotten assistance from the National Guard. There were other local police departments who had come downtown, but there had been a Facebook group called the Kenosha Guard

that sprung up. It was created by a former city council member in Kenosha that called for citizens of Kenosha to take up arms and defend their community. And as Kyle Rittenhouse and Dominic Black went downtown, they were also surrounded by many other people, mostly men, who had taken up weapons, generally AR-15 style rifles, and come downtown, station themselves in front of businesses, station themselves sometimes right within protesters at Civic Center Park, and in subdivisions, you know, gated communities across the city. I remember talking to one man who stood right across from the courthouse. This was the very center of all the demonstrations that were happening that night. And he was dressed in

camouflage. He was armed with a long rifle. He had ammunition. And he said very clearly, look, I'm not here to disagree with the protesters. I'm happy with what they're doing. I just don't want anything to be destroyed. Now, of course, his very presence sent a very different message to demonstrators in the crowd. It sent a message that he found them to be illegitimate, and it was very threatening to a lot of people who were there. be illegitimate, and it was very threatening to a lot of people who were there. So it just created this very unusual and volatile scene where you had thousands of protesters in the city of Kenosha, and among them are heavily armed civilians who in some cases were welcomed by law enforcement.

We saw on videos that were captured later that police officers or National Guardsmen told Kyle Rittenhouse and people he was with that they were glad that he was there. They tossed him bottles of water. There was a certain affinity between law enforcement and these men. And I think that that was really the tone that was set that night and that contributed to so much tension that would develop later on. Well, tell us about what actually happens later on. So Dominic Black takes up a position on top of the roof of one of the car source locations that they have promised to watch out for.

And Kyle Rittenhouse is in the crowds. He's walking up to different clusters of people. He's asking them if they need medical attention. People are getting injured, and our job is to protect this business, and part of my job is to also help people. If there's somebody hurt, I'm running into harm's way.

That's why I have my rifle, because I don't protect myself, obviously. But I still have my med kit. He's stopping to talk to people who are interviewing him or doing live streams. And throughout the evening, he identifies himself as Kyle. He says that he is a medic. He's wearing blue medical gloves. But he's a 17-year-old, and he's not a trained EMT or a paramedic. But he's there with his medical pack.

He's kind of aggressively going up to strangers and asking if they need medical attention. And this is what Kyle Rittenhouse has been doing throughout a lot of the evening. Got it. Okay, so what happens next? So it's getting very late. It's close to midnight. Most of the protesters have gone home. It's just clusters of people standing around. And someone who is live streaming

captures Kyle Rittenhouse being chased down the road into a parking lot. And the person who's following him is a 36-year-old man named Joseph Rosenbaum. Joseph Rosenbaum had a very troubled history. He had a criminal record. He had served time in prison. He had mental health issues and he had just been released from a hospital that very day. And he was carrying a plastic bag that had several items in it that he had taken with him from the hospital that day. So Rosenbaum throws this

plastic bag at Kyle Rittenhouse. And at this point, someone else in the crowd, holding a handgun, shoots one shot into the air. And immediately after that, Kyle Rittenhouse begins firing at Rosenbaum. He shoots four shots. They all hit him. He is bleeding and struggling to breathe. Where? Where's the hole? He's right here in his head! Come on! Put pressure!

Several people instantly run over and try to give him first aid. Meanwhile, Rittenhouse pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and calls Dominic Black and says, I just shot somebody. And as he is doing that, there's sheer panic in the crowd as people hear the shots that

have rung out. They see Rittenhouse begin to run. And people start yelling, get him. That's the guy who shot. That's the shooter. So people start to run after him down the road. One person by the name of Anthony Huber takes his skateboard and hits Kyle Rittenhouse

in the head and neck area with it. Rittenhouse responds by shooting one shot at Huber, and it hits him in the chest and kills him. Gage Grosskreutz, another member of the crowd who was also there identified as a medic, starts to pursue Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse points his rifle at Gage Grosskreutz, who then instantly kind of puts his hands up. He is also holding a handgun. And as he takes a step forward, Rittenhouse fires one shot at him, which hits him in the bicep. And he is wounded and starts screaming for help.

So Kyle Rittenhouse has now shot three people. Yes, he's fired his rifle eight times. He has shot three people. Two of them are dead or dying. The third is severely wounded. And meanwhile, Kyle Rittenhouse breaks into a slight jog down the road in the direction of the police. And he has his hands up in the air. His rifle is hanging down over his chest.

And the police who are inside armored vehicles start heading in his direction, in the direction of the people who were shot, and then tell Rittenhouse to move, get out of the road. So that night, Kyle Rittenhouse went back to his home in Antioch, and shortly after that, he and his mother went to the Antioch Police Department, where he turned himself in.

We'll be right back. So Julie, what happens after Kyle Rittenhouse turns himself in? So he's immediately identified on social media. People figure out very quickly what his name is, where he's from. And what happens when he is identified and when the video clips are shown widely is that there becomes this race to define who is Kyle Rittenhouse. And let me tell you something. No one drives into a city with guns because they love someone else's business that much. That's some bullshit.

They do it because they're hoping to shoot someone. On the left, people see him as a 17-year-old who is carrying a gun illegally. He traveled there from out of state to cause problems. Someone who had come into a community not his own, that he had behaved irrationally, violently. Right-wingers are allowed to have weapons. They're allowed to agitate. They're allowed to instigate.

And they're allowed to shoot you and murder you and call it self-defense. Ayanna Pressley, the Democratic congresswoman from Massachusetts, called him a white supremacist domestic terrorist. And on the right, Break out, Kyle! Break out, Kyle! They saw him as This was 100% self-defense.

A symbol of what it means to take up arms and defend yourself. He's helping people who had been injured. He's taking graffiti off walls. He's trying to mitigate the chaos out there. They saw him as part of a response to all of the demonstrations, arson, looting, violence that had been happening in American cities all summer in 2020. They want to make an example of him so that the rest of us don't defend the private property of our neighbors. Ann Coulter tweeted that she wanted him as her president.

How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would? Even President Trump suggested... He was trying to get away from them, I guess it looks like, and he fell. And then they very violently attacked him. That Kyle Rittenhouse's actions were legitimate. I guess he was in very big trouble. He would have been, he probably would have been killed, but it's under, it's under investigation. So the left is claiming that Rittenhouse typifies right-wing vigilantism at its worst and most reckless and deadly.

And the right says no. He represents good Samaritanism. This is somebody standing up for law and order in the face of left-wing chaos. And in their minds, he has every right to take up arms and take to the streets and try to protect his community. And that's what they think he did. That's right. And these descriptions of Kyle Rittenhouse happened overnight. And so I think that brings us to this week and to the trial. And as this trial gets underway, what is it turning out that it's really about? I think we know what the legal focus of the trial is not so far. It's not about why he was in Kenosha or why he decided to come downtown that night or what his political beliefs were up to that point or whether he's a domestic terrorist, as the left says,

or a patriot, as the right says. What it is about is whether or not Kyle Rittenhouse acted reasonably when he shot the three people he did. Because ultimately, this case is about self-defense. And why, Julie, would that be? Why wouldn't it matter why Kyle Rittenhouse was there? What motivated him to be in Kenosha with a gun that night? Well, I think what the judge has made clear is that a lot of what he considers noise surrounding this trial,

a lot of the conversation around politics, around the Second Amendment, that is not at play. Okay. Anybody else? And the last question was, if you've ever formed or expressed any opinion, now have or express any opinion as to the innocence or guilt of the defendant. For example, during jury selection. What's your number, sir? 17. 17, and what's up? My biases go back to 14 months ago. I've been commenting consistently on news feeds and Facebook. It also goes a little further to my belief in the Second Amendment. A juror said that he couldn't possibly be impartial because of his strong beliefs in the Second Amendment.

I'm going to stop you. I'm going to stop you. And the judge shut that down quickly. As I said before, if I didn't say it, I'll say it again. This is not a political trial. To say, look, this is not about your views of the Second Amendment. This is not about politics. The Second Amendment, like all the constitutional provisions, have a role in this case, but they are not the focus of this case, okay?

And it is true that the Second Amendment is not on trial here. It is settled law. What is also settled law in Wisconsin is the right to open carry. Now, there's a charge here that Kyle Rittenhouse is facing about whether he possessed a gun illegally. But ultimately, when it comes to the most serious charges in this trial, the important thing, the critical thing is whether Rittenhouse's life was in danger, whether he believed his life was in danger, and whether he was reasonable when he fired his gun and

killed two people and wounded another. So despite everything that this case has come to represent, it's really going to boil down to whether Kyle Rittenhouse felt he was in danger, despite the fact that, as we know from what happened, he

presented a very meaningful threat to others. I think that's right, especially on the most serious counts of murder. I think that viewed one way, the jury is being asked to look at what happened that night from the perspective of Kyle Rittenhouse. They are being asked to look at that video when Joseph Rosenbaum was pursuing Kyle Rittenhouse into the parking lot. They have seen video of a person in the crowd shooting a warning shot into the air. They are seeing Joseph Rosenbaum throw a plastic bag at Kyle Rittenhouse and chase him further. They are going to hear testimony that Joseph Rosenbaum throw a plastic bag at Kyle Rittenhouse and chase him further, they are going to hear testimony that Joseph Rosenbaum lunged toward Kyle Rittenhouse and tried to reach for the barrel of the gun. And they are being asked to think about whether

Kyle Rittenhouse was reasonable when he responded the way that he did. But of course, because of how politicized this case has become, and because of what Kyle Rittenhouse now symbolizes about guns, about vigilantism, about people being willing to take up arms and take to the streets armed when they think something is wrong, it feels like the verdict will inevitably

still seem like a referendum on all of those things, no matter what the judge's focus is. I mean, I think the outcome of this trial, whenever that will be, will probably result in whether people are on the left or the right seeing what they want to see from the verdict. I think on the left, if there is a guilty verdict on the most serious charges of murder, it will be seen as an affirmation that what he was doing was terribly wrong, that he had no right to be there with his

gun acting as a vigilante. And if there is a not guilty verdict, it will be seen as just the opposite. You'll probably see people on the right decide that that is an affirmation that Kyle Rittenhouse had every right to be on the streets of downtown Kenosha that night, that he had every right to carry his gun and to shoot and kill and wound the people that he did. And in fact, during jury selection earlier this week, one of the potential jurors, a woman, said that she was worried about serving on the jury and that she thought that no matter what happened, no matter what the verdict would be, half of the country was going to be upset.

And I think she may end up being correct. Well, Julie, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thanks, Michael. The jury in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse is expected to begin deliberations by the end of next week. We'll be right back. Thank you. with a federal vaccine mandate, which requires that all their workers be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing. But resistance to the mandate remains.

Republican governors have vowed to block it. And on Thursday, the nation's largest retail trade group said the requirement could lead to retail workers leaving their jobs and disrupt the holiday shopping season, the busiest of the year. And in South Africa, the African National Congress, once synonymous with the country's liberation from apartheid,

has suffered the worst election results in its history. Results released on Thursday showed that for the first time, the ANC failed to capture 50% of the vote, as South Africans vented their anger over high unemployment, corruption, and inadequate government services. Today's episode was produced by Rachel Quester, Chelsea Daniel, and Luke Vanderplug, with help from Eric Krupke. It was edited by Michael Benoit and Lisa Tobin, engineered by Chris Wood, and contains original music from Dan Powell and Marion Lozano. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. The Daily is made by Chris Wood, Jessica Chung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Lee Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Mark George,

Luke Vanderplug, MJ Davis-Lynn, Austin Mitchell, Nina Potok, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sidney Harper, Daniel Guimet, Robert Jimison, Michael Benoit, Liz O'Balin, Asla Chaturvedi, Caitlin Roberts, Special thanks to Sam Dolman, Paula Schumann, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sophia Milan, Des Ibequa, Erica Futterman, Wendy Doerr, Elizabeth Davis-Moore, Jeffrey Miranda, and Maddie Maciello. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.