Did the Media Succeed or Fail on Rittenhouse?

CLAY: We have to begin the show by commending the interview with Kyle Rittenhouse that Tucker Carlson did last night. If you have not watched the entire interview, I would encourage you to go do so. You can watch it on YouTube. They have posted it all.

This is, I believe, a signature moment in narrative lies overtaking true facts, and the world that we have created being so divergent where people on the left-wing believe that Kyle Rittenhouse may have killed minorities, had no justification, crossed state lines with a rifle, and got away with murder. And for the most part they believe that because they haven’t paid any attention to the actual evidence in this case at all. But hearing Kyle Rittenhouse speak, both on the witness stand in his trial, and also with Tucker Carlson walking through all of the decisions that he has made.

It is difficult not only to recognize that Kyle Rittenhouse is not guilty of any crime, but also I think it’s difficult to argue that this is not a teenager that you should hold in some measure of esteem. That is, you should be happy to employ him, based on what I have seen. You should be happy to be his teacher, if you were in school. You should be happy that he has gone on to education at Arizona State right now, presuming they don’t kick him out. Although, I’d be afraid that that might happen. And I hope that there are other universities out there that would extend a hand to him in the event that that occurs at Arizona State.

Buck, I would even go so far as to say, of people who could take your daughter to prom, Kyle Rittenhouse is not in an awful category there. I know there are a lot of dads out there that get really nervous about who might take their daughter to prom. Based on the interviews that I’ve seen with this kid, there are a lot worse prom dates out there than Kyle Rittenhouse.

He is 100 percent innocent. And what the media has done to him, Buck, is one of, I would put it in context with Richard Jewell on some level. I would put it in context with Duke lacrosse. It is one of the great failures of American media that this kid was ever charged with a crime and that anyone is going to say he belongs in jail. And anyone who is arguing this is arguing it not based on the facts but based entirely on the narrative that they want to believe.

Did you have the same takeaways having watched this interview and also the trial? It’s not just the interview.

BUCK: Yes, absolutely. And the more that you learn about you learn about Kyle Rittenhouse, the more you start to see he’s a heroic kid. Self-defense, you might not say necessarily is an issue of heroism; it’s a issue of necessity. And he defended himself against the mob. But his act — remember, what they tried to say for a while was that his very presence — now that I know more about this, now that we all know more about it, my concern about Rittenhouse going there had always just been — you and I discussed it with everyone on the air —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — trying to be honest with the audience and say, would I advise my own blood, would I advise my own dear friend, family member, whatever may be go into that maelstrom and deal with these lunatic forces that have been unleashed in the city of Kenosha. And out of maybe prudence, risk aversion, I would say, I’m not sure he should do that, but that’s a different thing than saying his motives for being there weren’t beneficial, weren’t heroic even.

And I think the more we’ve seen of Kyle Rittenhouse, heard in his own words, why he was there, what he was doing there, what his purpose was, how he conducted himself, even in the midst of all of that just utter madness, malevolence. There was evil in that city that night. And Kyle Rittenhouse showed up anyway.

And look. I know a lot of people that have been on the front lines of combat situations. I deployed as a CIA analyst to some of the war zones and saw all the real gore kickers and the people who were outside the wire, wearing a uniform, and what they were doing day in and day out. And for me, I might tell my own son, I don’t know if I would want you to deploy — but it’s still heroic when they make that choice to fight against those who would do us harm and would tear down our society.

So I think Kyle Rittenhouse has had, in some ways, one of the biggest — for anyone who is open to facts, for anyone who is open to what really happened, the narrative transformation here — and I always thought it was self-defense. I always thought he was being railroaded and all that. But the more you learn about this kid, the more likable, decent, honorable and brave, it’s obvious he was.

That’s why I think the Tucker interview was so powerful. Because we hadn’t heard from him, right, except on the stand when he’s on trial for his life. I think, Clay, when you said the media failed, this is the part of it that we have to come to grips with. The media didn’t fail. The left-wing media didn’t fail. This is their purpose. Their purpose was to malign this kid and try to get him sent to prison forever. They are an organ of left-wing propaganda. They are with the mob. They are the PR team for Antifa. This is who they are.

I know you’re saying they failed because they pretend that they’re there to give the truth. But you and I and everyone else listening knows that’s not really their purpose. Their purpose is to achieve political ends. And they failed to get Kyle Rittenhouse sent to prison forever. But they convinced half the country that he murdered unarmed Black protesters for a year. So they got pretty darned close to their goal of ruining his life.

CLAY: Yeah, it’s a good point. And when I say “failed,” this may be, again, me coming from the perspective of I want to believe that there is a great number of persuadable people out there. And increasingly I think that’s true.

When I say “failed,” I’m really just genuinely disappointed at the laziness, Buck, because I do agree there are certain people who were actually intelligent. And to use your word, have a malevolent idea, they’re malevolent. They’re trying to destroy what is built up.

I think the true number of evil doers that are smart enough to do that in the media is actually pretty small, right? Because as you know most media are sheep. They follow wherever the herd goes. They don’t do their own research. They don’t actually look at the data or the facts. And what I see consistently is so many falsehoods being spread about this kid, and I think it’s laziness.

BUCK: Really?

CLAY: More than it’s evil. The evil intent…

BUCK: I think they’re the propagandists of the left seeking to undermine core tenets of our civilization, our rule of law. Clay, I think they’re true believers. I think most journalists — when I say most journalists — there are journalists who are covering finance in Orlando. I’m not talking about them.

CLAY: I think most journalists are dumb and they’re sheep as opposed to evil.

BUCK: Yeah, there’s a lot of dumb journalists. But the voices, the very loud, prominent national voices who are trying to destroy Kyle Rittenhouse — here’s how we can test my theory about their malevolence. Of course, there’s a lot of lazy, stupid journalists; there’s a lot of lazy, stupid a lot of things. I think journalists in general are more delusional and less useful than most other professions.

CLAY: I would agree to a large extent with that.

BUCK: There’s no question.

CLAY: Here’s an easy test, Buck. If you knocked out half of mechanics or plumbers in this country there would be a massive issue.

BUCK: We’d have problems.

CLAY: Yes, if you knocked out half of journalists I don’t think there would be much of an issue.

BUCK: Also, if a plumber or truck driver or a mechanic or a doctor, you know, a surgeon messes up big time, there are consequences. People are upset. With journalists — that actually draws me to my next point: Remember what Kyle Rittenhouse said in the Tucker interview. He said Joe Biden running as a candidate.

CLAY: We should play that audio.

BUCK: We should grab that — defamed his character in a way that was malevolent, in a way that was malevolent, in a way that would rise to the standard — we talked about this. And Kyle sued.

That’s going to be very interesting. I hope Kyle sues the you-know-what out of all these people. But how many journalists — I use that term loosely — really media people. How many have come up forward and said, you know what, I rushed to judgment on this one, I said things about Kyle Rittenhouse that were not true, I spread facts about…”? Zero.

CLAY: Zero.

BUCK: So if it were about laziness and if it was about just we made mistakes in our profession, we want to make this right, wouldn’t they come forward? I mean, you look at somebody, you look at that absolute imbecile, Joe Scarborough, on the mornings over at MSNBC, just going on TV — untrue, untrue, untrue, over and over about Rittenhouse. He’s not embarrassed.

Like I said, like that guy who wrote the New York Times op-ed — what do we do the next day. Our team said, Buck, you got the guy’s name wrong. Got it corrected right away.

I’m not going to say I lost sleep over it. I was he annoyed I was hitting the heavy bag a little harder. Point being we at least operate in the fact of reason and some accountability. Think about the brand value here, if you were a true journalist, to come forward say I got Rittenhouse wrong, guys, I’m embarrassed and I will do better. Not one person, I’ve seen.

CLAY: It’s a great point. By the way, let’s play cut to this, is Rittenhouse last night. And this is legally I think an utterly fascinating question, if he brings lawsuits against all these people, including President of the United States Joe Biden who at the time was running for political office.

Listen to Rittenhouse last night on Tucker addressing Joe Biden.

RITTENHOUSE: Mr. President, if I could say one thing to you, I would urge you to go back watch the trial and understand the facts before you make a statement. It’s actual malice, defaming my character for him to say something like that.

CARLSON: It’s not simply Biden who said that. It’s a lot of people on television have said that a lot. Dozens of people have said that. I’m sorry to tell you, in case you haven’t seen it.

RITTENHOUSE: It’s actually quite hysterical how nobody can go back and look at the facts of the case. He crossed state lines: False. He’s a white supremacist: False. None of that is true. And the lies that they can just get away with spreading, it’s just sickening and it’s a disgrace to this country.

BUCK: If Joe Biden had any honor, Clay, if he was the good guy, Joe from Scranton with rolled-up sleeves, one of the folks, I’m one of the folks at the dinner table with you, the whole thing that he does, he would apologize, apologize, like a real man for what he said about Kyle Rittenhouse.

You and I both know what are the chances of that happening.

CLAY: Zero percent, zero percent.