Rittenhouse, 18, talked to Tucker Carlson on Monday night in his first post-acquittal interview, where he admitted he'd been forced to hire bodyguards after his acquittal on Friday due to various death threats.
He places some of the responsibility for the level of abuse on Joe Biden, who he accused of "defamation" and "malice" after the President called him a white supremacist last year. The teen also verified he was pondering legal action against him.
But most of all, he wished for a "quiet stress-free life."
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"And (to) be free of any intimidation or harassment and just go on with my life as a normal 18-year-old kid attending college," said Rittenhouse, who is currently studying nursing at Arizona State and hoping to be able to attend in-person classes in school.
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The events of the last 15 months have also made him consider a career in law.
But, he said, he was terrified of being alone in public.
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"I'm at a place now where I have to have people with me, because people want to kill me just because I defended myself, and they are too ignorant to look at the facts of what happened," he said.
"I see some of the threats. Some of the things people say are absolutely sickening."
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Rittenhouse sat down with Carlson days after being cleared of homicide, attempted homicide, and reckless endangerment in the shooting deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz, 27.
Biden was already facing dropping poll numbers with an electorate worn down by the coronavirus pandemic and increasing inflation. Now, the President finds himself trapped between outraged Democrats — some of whom were already fuming over Biden's incapacity to land police reform and voting rights legislation — and Republicans looking to use the Rittenhouse case to exploit the national divide over matters of grievance and race.
"This is one of the last things Biden wants to be engaging in at this moment as he tries to finish up the big Build Back Better bill and get that across the finish line through the Senate," said Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. "Race and Kyle Rittenhouse is not the space where he wants or needs to be going deep right now."
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