Kyle Rittenhouse pulls a Sandmann, will sue the media

While Cockburn was flipping through the channels last night, he came across Tucker Carlson, whom the media decries as a racist, interviewing Kyle Rittenhouse, whom the media decries as a murderer. Rittenhouse’s lawyer had accompanied him to this interview, and the pair announced that they planned to pull a Sandmann. That is, they want to sue the mainstream media over its smearing of Rittenhouse and the suppression of the facts that would have clarified the circumstances surrounding his shooting of three men in downtown Kenosha during a riot.

Other claims have floated that Rittenhouse was a racist. Joe Biden even posted a video implying that Rittenhouse was either a white supremacist or part of a militia group.

Cockburn notes that the mainstream media had no professional restraint when reporting on Kenosha. Now, Rittenhouse wants to make them pay for it, much as Nick Sandmann did when the press frothed over him smirking on the National Mall. Sandmann sued outlets like CNN, NBC, and the Washington Post for millions of dollars, and won an undisclosed amount of money from each.

If there is one person Cockburn can raise a glass to, it’s Kyle Rittenhouse. He got put through the ringer, and the media did nothing but throw tomatoes all the way. And when a court of law finally exonerated him, his critics complained about it and even tried to change the law itself.

The Rittenhouse saga is a lesson to vindictive journalists and haughty news outlets everywhere. It shows the bubble that can form around certain beliefs, and the high-mindedness that can arise with a trial by public opinion. The not-guilty verdict was doubtlessly a gut shot to the many thousands of people who were unequivocally misled into believing that Rittenhouse would be convicted. Cockburn can only hope that when it comes to the media that defamed him, Rittenhouse is able to bite back.