Richie McGinnis, who was a witness in the trial during which Rittenhouse claimed he was acting in self-defense, slammed the media for crafting "caricatures" of Rittenhouse in a lengthy op-ed for Newsweek for the anniversary of that fateful night. McGinnis also threw shade at the media for stoking violence.
"It's also easy to forget that the violence was part of a national tsunami that was encouraged, if not outright stoked, by media chieftains in Washington and New York. Kyle Rittenhouse was broadly presented as either a force for good or evil. In my view, he was neither," McGinnis wrote.
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The op-ed was called, "I Was in Kenosha Two Years Ago, Kyle Rittenhouse Is Not a Hero."
McGinnis was sent to Kenosha in August 2020 on task for the Daily Caller following mayhem in the city that was caused by a police shooting of Jacob Blake. The protests and riots that consumed Kenosha came amid a national wave of unrest over the death of George Floyd weeks earlier.
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Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, came in Kenosha armed with a semi-automatic rifle asserting that he was keen on safeguarding local businesses in the area. McGinnis remembered crossing paths with Rittenhouse that night and questioned him briefly. About 13 minutes later, he saw Rittenhouse open gunfire on three individuals in what Rittenhouse argued was self-defense.
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One of the men had chased down Rittenhouse and grabbed his gun, and another had smacked him with his skateboard, Rittenhouse claimed. He was acquitted by a Wisconsin jury last November of all charges stemming from his actions that night, including intentional homicide.
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"To his detractors, Rittenhouse was a white-supremacist vigilante, and, to his lionizers, a hero standing up for law and order. The left ignored the fact that Rittenhouse had come out that day to clean graffiti," McGinnis wrote.
"Conservatives, champions of family values, didn't bother to ask why Rittenhouse's family had allowed him to venture out onto the streets of Kenosha, in the middle of violent demonstrations, in the first place," he continued. "Nor did they seem to mind that their hero, instead of calling 911, as I'd asked him to do after he shot [the first victim], had fled on foot."
McGinnis traveled back to Kenosha earlier this summer to shoot a documentary about that tragic night.
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