Kyle Rittenhouse abruptly departed the stage during an appearance at the University of Memphis on Wednesday, after he was confronted about comments made by Turning Point USA founder and president Charlie Kirk.
Rittenhouse was invited by the college’s Turning Point USA chapter to speak at the campus. However, the event was met with backlash from a number of students who objected to Rittenhouse’s presence.
The 21-year-old gained notoriety in August 2020 when, at the age of 17, he shot and killed two men—Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, as well as injuring 26-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz—at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
He said the three shootings, carried out with a semi-automatic AR-15-style firearm, were in self-defense. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest where the shootings took place was held after Jacob Blake, a Black man, was left paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot by a white police officer.
Yeah so I don’t think he went and killed some folks to get famous, I think he happened to kill some folks and got famous. And he’s malaligned, certainly a dumb kid like most of us were.
My criticism of Kyle is more around conservative folks who want to lean into that dumb kid fuck up like it’s something aspirational.
I think absolutely if you want to hold it up as a triumph of the justice system I’m with you. But as an example of a good human not so much.