Kyle Rittenhouse, the teen who shot dead two men and injured another during anti-racism protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020, has announced the formation of a group to fund lawsuits against reporters – and also Whoopi Goldberg.
In November, after a controversial trial, Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges related to the shootings, which he carried out with an assault rifle while purportedly providing security in the protest-racked city.
He has since emerged as a rightwing celebrity. He spoke to Tucker Carlson on Fox News on Monday night.
“Me and my team have decided to launch the Media Accountability Project,” Rittenhouse said, “as a tool to help fundraise and hold the media accountable for the lies they say and deal with them in court”.
Carlson asked if “like the Covington Catholic kids” – high-schoolers from Kentucky who became embroiled in controversial events on the National Mall in Washington in 2019 – “you will be suing news organisations that maliciously lie about people who are in the news?”
“Yes, sir,” Rittenhouse said. “We’re going to be holding them accountable, Tucker.”
Rittenhouse, 19, repeatedly drank from a water bottle and added: “I don’t want to see anybody else have to deal with what I went through. So I want to hold them accountable for what they did to me, because I don’t want to see anybody have to go through what I went through.”
Carlson asked if Rittenhouse had any particular targets.
“Well,” he said, “right now we’re looking at quite a few politicians, celebrities, athletes. Whoopi Goldberg is on the list. She called me a murderer, after I was acquitted by a jury of my peers.”
Goldberg, a co-host of The View on ABC, said of Rittenhouse: “Even all the excuses in the world does not change the fact that three people got shot. Two people were murdered. To me it’s murder. I’m sorry.”
Rittenhouse said: “Don’t forget about Cenk [Uygur] from the Young Turks, he called me a murderer before I was acquitted and continues to call me a murderer.”
Most observers agree such speech is protected under the first amendment to the US constitution.
David Shuster, a former MSNBC anchor now with Young Turks, tweeted: “The courts have long established that calling somebody a ‘murderer’ is an opinion and a legal right, even after the person is found ‘not guilty’.”
“At that point, one can still call them a murderer, just not a ‘convicted murderer’. Nobody has called Rittenhouse that. He has no case.”
Rittenhouse shot the three men at a protest over the shooting by a white police officer of a Black man, Jacob Blake. The case was racially charged but the men Rittenhouse shot were white. He told Carlson he would also target people who called him a white supremacist.
“We are going to hold everybody who’s lied about me accountable, such as everybody who’s lied, called me a white supremacist. They’re all going to be held accountable, and we’re going to handle them in a courtroom.”
Rittenhouse’s announcement comes amid heightened rightwing rhetoric over perceived mistreatment by the mainstream press. Earlier this month, the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential pick Sarah Palin lost a defamation case against the New York Times, over an op ed about gun violence.
Many on the right think US defamation and libel law should be changed. Some think the supreme court, dominated 6-3 by conservatives, may soon be open to such a shift.
Some on the left have hinted at counter-measures. Last week, both Hillary Clinton and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested that attacks by Fox News anchors might be actionable in court.
On Monday night, Rittenhouse also gave a web address for donations. Carlson promoted his coverage of Rittenhouse on the streaming service Fox Nation.
