I appeared this morning on Chicago’s Morning Answer radio show with Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson (no relation). I have been on the show many times before, and it’s always a pointed and interesting conversation.
The topic was the Rittenhouse case primarily. At the time, I thought we would have a verdict today, but we don’t. Towards the end there was some discussion of Merrick Garland’s War On Parents towards. You can listen below, I join the conversation at the 1:30 mark. (If video does not load, you can Listen Here.)
Dan Proft (01:17):The claim being made by the media leftists is that if Rittenhouse is acquitted it’s because the judge was in the tank for the defense. That’s the sum total of it for more on this, we’re pleased to be joined again by William Jacobson. He’s a clinical professor of law and director of the securities law clinic at Cornell law school. He’s also the founder of the excellent blog, legalinsurrection.com and he’s president of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, Professor Jacobson. Thanks for joining us again.William Jacobson (01:47):Thanks for having meDan Proft (01:48):What about what Judge Schroeder had to say about, he was sort of, he didn’t get into too much detail. You have the media’s role in how the public understands this trial.William Jacobson (02:03):Well, it’s similar to so many other cases. The media immediately sets a narrative, a narrative which is hostile to the defendant in a highly politicized case. It happened in the George Zimmerman case, and has happened in multiple cases and you can’t get rid of that narrative.So the narrative is Kyle Rittenhouse is a militia member who crossed state lines with a weapon to shoot peaceful protest is protestors. None of those things are true, other than he did cross the state line. Like that’s some big deal nowadays, but he wasn’t carrying a weapon. The weapon was already in Wisconsin. He was lawfully able to possess it in Wisconsin. That’s why the judge threw out the charge of being a minor in possession. He wasn’t in an militia. Remember there’s certainly no evidence introduced to that. And he didn’t shoot peaceful protestors. He shoot shot three extremely violent people who tried to kill him.So that media narrative is out there. It will never go away. And that has framed the case for political purposes, that this is white supremacy on trial here. So you have Black Lives Matter protesters out there claiming racism for a white kid who shot three white people. This has nothing to do with race yet. That’s what it’s turned into. And, and because of that, this had become a cause celebre for the left that this kid needs to be convicted. The facts though, show that it was clearly self-defense, I don’t know what’s taking the jury so long. Hopefully it’s not a sign that they’ve, you know, they’re going to convict them because the evidence is just absolutely overwhelming that this was self-defense,Amy Jacobson (03:44):But the jurors live in the community obviously. And do you think that they’re afraid of what’s going to happen? You know, what happened the last time with their town burning down and that would cloud their judgment?William Jacobson (03:56):Well, they might deny it, but I think it’s hanging over, it’s hanging over just like it was in the prosecution of Derek Chauvin where there were armed troops surrounding the courthouse. How can that not influence a juror where there was, in the George Floyd case, a Congresswoman calling for riots and protests if there’s a not guilty verdict. The same thing is happening here, at least I don’t believe any congressmen have made that claim, but you know, he’s been called a white supremacist by the now-president of the United States. So this has to be hanging on the jurors that they know if there is a not guilty. They come to court, they probably see the protesters outside. They are not sequestered, [there are] protestors outside the courtroom, the courthouse, with bullhorns, they’ve got to hear this, they’ve got to know what’s going to happen. They might say, it’s not going to impact them. But the mere fact that they’d be thinking about it has to have an effective,Dan Proft (04:55):… it seems to me that if Rittenhouse were convicted based on the arguments, as muddled as they were, offered by the prosecution, that would be a serious precedent in diminishing of people’s understanding of self-defense and their likelihood to defend themselves.William Jacobson (06:04):I think it’s absolutely true. If you can’t defend yourself when someone’s beating you in the head with the skateboard, if you can’t defend yourself when they’re running at you while you’re on the ground and they lower their Glock pistol towards your head from three feet away, if you can’t defend yourself when someone who’s already that night threatened to kill you, if he caught you alone, and is now reaching for your gun, if you can’t defend yourself in those circumstances and the full weight of the state and the full weight of the media is going to come down on you, then we are in a really bad place.And I think that’s why the left and the media, which are one in the same, has focused so heavily on this. They do not want people to be able to defend themselves. They want to defund the police. They want to let mobs run the streets and they don’t want citizens to be able to defend themselves. That’s what this case has become.Dan Proft (07:03):Lest we forget, you know, former Supreme court justice, John Paul Stevens. It was just a couple of years ago. He wrote an op-ed in New York times calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment. And of course, that’s the operative position of the entire collection on the left.William Jacobson (07:18):That’s what this is all about. And that’s why they’re so heavily focused on it. You don’t see this sort of media attention for other cases that don’t involve self-defense, don’t involve what they perceive to be a racial element. Even though there is none here that’s what this is all about.This is about citizens not being able to defend themselves because the police are nowhere to be found. They were nowhere to be found during the rioting in Kenosha. They were on the edges. Everybody was left for themselves, and there were violent, violent people like this multiple child rapist Joseph Rosenbaum who got shot when he tried to grab Kyle Rittenhouse’s gun, this violent, violent person who has a long criminal history and was out looking to beat people that night. So those people are allowed to run the street and those people won’t be arrested. But somebody who defends themselves against those criminals is going to get arrested.And that’s the way the left wants it. They want people intimidated. They want them cowed with fear. They want them to be able to be manipulated. And that’s why this case has become so important.Amy Jacobson (08:29):And have you noticed that Rosenbaum’s family and Huebner’s family, they’re not in the courtroom? They’re not talking to reporters say no Rittenhouse killed my child or killed my son or killed my brother. That they’ve remained pretty much silent during this whole process.William Jacobson (08:44):Well, you know, everybody’s entitled to the protection of the criminal laws, even a criminal like Rosenbaum, but the world is a better place that, that child rapist, violent person is not in it. And he was killed lawfully. He doesn’t deserve to be killed unlawfully, but he was killed while trying to kill somebody else.Dan Proft (09:06):And the other argument that’s been made by op-ed writers of the left, you know, Rittenhouse, he shouldn’t have been there. He had no business being there. Well, uh, first of all, whether he should or shouldn’t have been there is immaterial to whether or not he defended himself under the law, but secondly, so he is not allowed to go to Kenosha and protect private property, but those that descended on Kenosha from all over the country, they’re perfectly within their rights to do so.William Jacobson (09:37):That’s where we are in society right now, that looters are more protected than the people who protect property and protect themselves.Amy Jacobson (09:47):And I’m so sick of the whole thing, you know, he crossed state lines too. He worked in Kenosha, well, Mount Pleasant at the rec center there as a lifeguard, it’s in his dad lived there. So I, you know, people in New York, don’t, you go to New Jersey a lot, you know, it’s not like it’s a big deal to go 10 minutes away.William Jacobson (10:04):No, I live in Rhode Island. I can’t throw a stone without crossing a state line because we’re so small. It’s notion, how hysterical is it that the people who want open borders on the Mexican border, all of the sudden, you know, the sanctity of the border between Illinois and Wisconsin, how ridiculous is this….
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