Both sides have rested in the case against Kyle Rittenhouse. Today, the judge was doing all the grunt work of what can and cannot be used in the closing arguments. The jury will get to hear closing arguments on Monday. The Kenosha law enforcement is preparing for the worst if the case doesn’t go they way some wish. And, the haters are stirring the pot and praying for violence.

I cleared my schedule this week to clean out the garage. That poor garage remains in its sorry state. The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin was like watching a whole fleet of Hindenburgs burning and crashing all at once. The principal players were straight out of central casting. The folksy judge with his “Proud to be an American” ringtone telling the Prosecutor “Don’t get brazen with me”. That prosecutor, the unfortunately named Thomas Binger, acting so incompetently and running roughshod over the Constitution, that some were speculating that he was actively seeking a mistrial. Rittenhouse himself was a recasting of Nicolas Sandman of the Covington Boys fame.

The climax of the trial came when Kyle Rittenhouse took the stand to make his self-defense case. Nina did a great wrap up of that day and you can read it here. The blue check Twitterzens were calling out Rittenhouse’s “crocodile tears”. I didn’t see a crying teen. I saw a young man having a full-body, emotional breakdown. I don’t know how his mother didn’t jump up and grab her baby.

Wendy Rittenhouse appeared on Sean Hannity last night and discussed that moment:

“I just broke down with Kyle crying like that,” she said. “It made me feel heartbroken, sad. And I wanted to just go up there and hug him and tell him it would be OK.”

It might be OK. Someday. Even if Kyle Rittenhouse is acquitted, it’s going to take a lot of time and therapy. And, that costs money. We’ll come back to that.

I am not going to cast aspersions on Wendy Rittenhouse or her ex-husband for what happened to Kyle. I have raised a teenage boy. There are probably many things he did that I do not and will never know. I feel for the whole family.

Some people were born without an empathy response. One of those is Tony Norman, a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He wrote a column, “White tears over Kenosha “Kyle Rittenhouse’s masterclass in victimology deserves an Emmy, but not exoneration.” Mr. Norman initially felt that Kyle would get some jail time, because he is White and so are the people he shot, but then came the testimony from the teen:

That was before Wednesday, when Kyle Rittenhouse put on a masterclass of performative white innocence. The show featured tears, soulful hyperventilating and strategic scrunchy faces to endear himself to a judge and jury desperate to pinch his cheeks and reassure him that everything will be all right.

This left me no choice but to amend my original answer to my friend: “Yesterday’s courtroom shenanigans dashed any hope of a conviction. When the judge screams at the prosecutor twice and his ringtone playing [Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless the USA’] goes off when the defense is asking for a mistrial, the fix is in! Rittenhouse is going to walk.”

And:

This is how it is in America. There’s no consistent standard for justice. If Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager that Twitter has taken to branding “Baby Kavanaugh,” wasn’t a good actor, his exoneration wouldn’t feel like such a foregone conclusion. This kid is walking, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise. If I’m wrong, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

The words to Judge Bruce Schroeder’s ringtone should leave no doubt where he and most of America are coming from these days: “And I’m proud to be an American / where at least I know I’m free / And I won’t forget the men who died / who gave that right to me.”

The irony of those lyrics will not be lost on the loved ones of the men who died at Kyle Rittenhouse’s hands last summer. It is their blood that helped make him the poster child of Second Amendment irresponsibility and vigilante justice. It’s their blood that will free him.

Whoa there, pardner. The two men who died in Kenosha were a child molester released from a mental hospital the day of the riots and a man accused of strangulation and domestic abuse, who shouldn’t have been out rioting. Gaige Grosskreutz, the paramedic and armed social activist, was volunteering for Black Lives Matter medical needs. He shouldn’t have pointed a gun at the teen.

Joseph Rosenbaum not only threatened to kill Rittenhouse, but earlier used the “N” word and begged people to shoot him:

Joseph Rosenbaum saying the n word pic.twitter.com/74gdoJqDil

— Andre Elson (@AndreElson5) November 11, 2021

The same people who are responsible for deaths, injuries and millions of dollars in property damage in major cities across the country are the same people who are responsible for Kenosha. The people who called off the police. The people who called the riots mostly peaceful.

Wendy Rittenhouse needs to be a vicious viper for her son and it sounds like she might be getting there. Last night on Hannity:

Yup, Joe Biden. From the New York Post:

The mother of Kyle Rittenhouse claimed President Biden “defamed” her son when he tweeted a video suggesting the Illinois teen is a white supremacist.

“When I saw that, I was shocked, I was angry,” Wendy Rittenhouse told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday night.

“President Biden don’t know my son whatsoever, and he’s not a white supremacist. He’s not a racist. And [Biden] did that for the votes,” the mother fumed.

“And I was so angry for a while at him and what he did to my son, he defamed him,” she added.

Biden, a presidential candidate in September 2020, had tweeted that “there’s no other way to put it: the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night,” referring to President Donald Trump.

But wait there is more. Joe Biden also claimed that Rittenhouse is a member of an Illinois militia:

Last year, Biden went on CNN and alleged Kyle Rittenhouse was a member of an Illinois white supremacist militia pic.twitter.com/47UnoV9VHL

— Jewish Deplorable (@TrumpJew2) November 12, 2021

Joe doesn’t know what the kid did but he is a white supremacist and member of an Illinois militia? The only bulging veins I have seen in the last ten months are Bidens.

So let’s tie this one into a nice bow. Just like Nick Sandman sued and won against the media outlets who defamed him, Kyle Rittenhouse’s mother should advise her son to sue all of them and Creepy Joe Biden. Joe Biden called Rittenhouse a white supremacist and militia member. He knows nothing about the kid. Nothing. All of the media outlets should have learned their lessons after Nick Sandman and the Covington Boys. Don’t defame people and spread lies. They didn’t learn and they should pay. Kyle is going to need a lot of therapy.

Featured Image: DonkeyHotey/Flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)