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00:02:59.000The Kyle Rittenhouse interview is here.
00:03:01.000My conversation with him alongside Jack Pesobic and Dave Hancock.
00:03:05.000Thank you again for supporting our show, CharlieKirk.com/slash support.
00:03:10.000It allows us to speak freely and pursue topics the corporate media wants us to ignore, but we choose to go into them.
00:03:38.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:03:45.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:04:02.000First, we have Jack Pisobic, who's going to be co-piloting this, who earned the, I guess you could say, the right, the ability to have this conversation.
00:04:11.000But of course, the main reason we're all here, Kyle Rittenhouse, everybody, is here on the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:04:16.000Also, with Dave Hancock, family spokesperson, and someone who's really been there for Kyle the last year.
00:04:21.000And I look forward to talking about that.
00:04:22.000Kyle, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:04:24.000Thank you so much for having me, Charlie.
00:05:48.000While growing up, my mom was a single mother working as a CNA at a nursing home helping old people and inspired me to start helping people wanting to go to nursing school, becoming a lifeguard, becoming a firefighter EMT cadet and a police explorer.
00:06:09.000Well, I lived in Lakeville for a couple years.
00:06:11.000I actually moved around a lot, but the last place I was living was Antioch, Illinois.
00:06:15.000Growing up, what did you want to be when you got older?
00:06:18.000Growing up, I wanted to be a police officer to be able to help people and help people when they're having bad days because cops see people on their worst days.
00:06:48.000You cross state lines, all this business.
00:06:51.000But it seemed to me when I was hearing you'd speak about it, and then when you took the stand, you talked more about it, that it seemed like Kenosha did mean something to you.
00:07:45.000We wave to people driving down the road.
00:07:47.000Did you ever, I mean, obviously the answer is no, but talk to us what it was like, though, going from the mindset of I want to help people on that night.
00:07:57.000And you've built this great place, this town, this great town.
00:08:00.000And you see the town starting to fall apart.
00:08:02.000And the next thing you know, your entire life gets put in jeopardy because you defend yourself and you have to be called a murderer, a white supremacist, all of this.
00:09:57.000What do you think it is that people get wrong about sort of, there's like there's the image that they try to make of Kyle Rittenhouse, and then there's the real Kyle Rittenhouse.
00:10:08.000Well, what I would say is people want to push their own agendas and they don't want to look at the facts of what happened or they just don't want to get to know me as a person or just as a human.
00:10:19.000And so, but how do you stay magnanimous?
00:10:23.000I mean, you don't seem as if you're bitter.
00:10:29.000Like, I would be pretty upset about that.
00:10:32.000Not to mention having to go in front of the state of Wisconsin and be like, oh, yeah, by the way, if we are able to persuade 12 people, you're going to spend the rest of your life in a prison cell.
00:11:27.000You know, talk about the details and the specifics of you have to go every single day and you're not allowed to say anything until you took the stand, which I want to ask you about.
00:11:36.000How much were you sleeping at those nights?
00:11:41.000In some ways, the process was the punishment.
00:11:43.000Yeah, like we see you on screen, but what's it like behind the scenes or all that?
00:11:49.000Well, how it is behind the scenes, I have my amazing team, Mark, Corey, Natalie, John, LT, Dave, helping me through this and guiding me because believe it or not, I'm freaking out behind the scenes because you don't know what's going to happen.
00:12:04.000So to have them to support me, helping me through this and explaining helped me stay calm.
00:12:11.000And what I'm thinking when I'm just blank face potted plant in court, I'm just saying in my head, is this guy serious?
00:12:22.000Referring to Lunchbox and Binger, also known as Littlefinger.
00:12:26.000And there's one thing that I noticed about him.
00:12:35.000Would explain how you were able to effectively defend yourself under imminent threat of death.
00:12:42.000I mean, it was calm, cool, and collected all the way through.
00:12:44.000So talk, at what point in the trial were you all of a sudden like, okay, this is now going in a good direction, like a direction that is somewhat favorable?
00:12:54.000Was there a turning point in the midst of the trial?
00:12:57.000There's two, actually, for what I knew, the state didn't have a case is when they had their opening statements and when they put Dominic Black on the stand, which really helped me.
00:13:07.000That's when I knew that they didn't have a case.
00:13:10.000So the opening statements, you already knew.
00:13:12.000Yeah, because he said, I chased down Mr. Rosenbaum, which is not true.
00:13:41.000And so what I couldn't, and I'm still to this point trying to figure out what exactly was their strategy for putting Dominic on the stand because his story completely lined up with your story.
00:13:56.000This is just speculation, but I think they called Dominic the stand, hoping that he would lie, but Dominic was under oath and he told the truth.
00:14:05.000Yeah, I didn't, I'm watching it and I'm trying to be, you know, look, you know, I remember watching it that night and I remember seeing, and like, I didn't know the name of Kyle Rittenhouse or Gage or Rosenbauer, any, any, I had no idea who any of you were, but I just knew that, you know, the guys that I would work with, like Richie McGinnis and Elijah Schaefer, Drew Hernandez, Julio Roshas, they were all there and then BG on the scene as well.
00:14:35.000And I'm watching these videos come out and I'm looking at this situation going, hey, wait a minute, they're chasing this guy, but the media is saying it the other way.
00:14:45.000And I can see these videos and you guys are lying about this.
00:14:49.000And then so you would have to think that, okay, if I'm an adversarial prosecutor, I'm going to put, I'm going to bring witnesses forward that are going to, you know, help my theory of the case.
00:15:01.000And to your point, in his opening statement, that's what he says.
00:15:05.000He says they were chasing you, or excuse me, that you were chasing them.
00:15:08.000But then the very next thing he does is bring on a witness that supports your side of the case.
00:15:15.000Well, yes, actually, and that turned out to be a trend that we saw throughout the rest of the trial.
00:15:19.000Every single one of the, they brought, they were the ones who called Richie.
00:15:22.000You guys didn't even have to call Richie.
00:15:25.000During his opening, when he said that, I was one of the things I was thinking, I was like, geez, I didn't know that he watched the videos backwards.
00:15:35.000There was a meme of that where it was Binger, and he goes, well, all you have to do is play the video in reverse.
00:15:43.000And you can clearly see Kyle chasing them.
00:15:47.000Which is basically, I mean, for the amount of hocus pocus, right, that they did the focus, focus, out of focus that they did on these videos, it almost got to the point where they had to play the videos backwards because you couldn't find anything else on these things.
00:16:02.000But, you know, one thing with that, with these videos and just, you know, being able to support FreeCai USA and all the other stuff, did you have a sense, you know, both during the trial and beforehand that, yes, obviously there was an entire mainstream media and political really establishment that was hell-bent on making you the scapegoat for everything that happened in Kenosha and really a lot of 2020.
00:16:24.000But did you also realize that there were millions of people that had your back, that were supporting you, going through these videos, donating?
00:16:34.000And thank you so much to the people who do support me and have donated.
00:16:38.000It means a lot to me and my family helping us pay for these legal bills.
00:16:51.000And with the whole people who didn't support me, I didn't know.
00:16:54.000I actually didn't know how much support I really had until I got bailed out.
00:17:01.000I didn't know how much of the world supported the right to self-defense.
00:17:06.000So you wake up, and maybe the day before or the day, you know, day before that, your defense counsel says, Kyle, you're going to take the stand.
00:17:15.000Talk about what went into that because that's a big deal, Kyle.
00:17:20.000You waived your Fifth Amendment rights.
00:20:00.000No, I mean, really, that there's so much, like, I was at, you know, Guantanamo Bay for a year.
00:20:05.000You know, there's way more that he could have done that, you know, he didn't even try to because he's talking about video games and doesn't even know the basics of ammunition.
00:20:14.000But, you know, what did you think, yeah, just sort of even in your mind, right?
00:20:19.000Because as you get up there, Judge Schrader is saying, hey, you still have, it is still your decision, right?
00:20:24.000Do you, you know, it seemed like he gave you all the space that you needed to be able to say, look, right up until this moment, it's my choice that I do this.
00:20:35.000My reasoning behind taking the stand is I wanted the world to know who the real Kyle Riddenhouse was.
00:20:42.000And obviously, you know, it was compelling to millions and millions of people because the more you talked, the more people are like, this is a normal kid who, you know, got caught into something that you didn't even want to get caught into and obviously defended yourself.
00:20:58.000And so you get up there and then, you know, Binger starts to then go after your Fifth Amendment rights.
00:22:10.000Definitely not Binger's side because Binger is a crazy person.
00:22:12.000Because by the way, this judge is known for if you, you know, if the jury comes back with a verdict of guilty, he's known for being a harsh by the book sentencer.
00:22:37.000I wanted to break out in laughter because I was like, shouldn't have gone there.
00:22:44.000Do you think, though, Kyle, that the prosecution was trying to throw the trial or the case?
00:22:49.000It's my belief, and I'm probably right now because we did win the case, that he knew it wasn't going so good for them, so he wanted a mistrial.
00:22:59.000That's why we filed a motion for a mistrial with prejudice.
00:23:56.000I had the same read on him that he really, you know, maybe he would have if he had to, but unless it really crossed the line, he wanted this to be a jury decision.
00:24:07.000And, you know, obviously, thank God it turned out. to be the right way.
00:25:14.000So there's this video that the FBI had in their archives, 14 months.
00:25:20.000It clearly shows you being chased down by this deranged individual, corners you, all of it, HD.
00:25:28.000You know, this isn't, you know, behind the cars because, and this was always key that, you know, people who are looking at this never got, is that all the camera footage from that night was surface level, right?
00:27:15.000So my take on this is most likely the reason that they didn't want this getting out is they probably had these types of surveillance flights going on over all the riots of 2020.
00:27:27.000And they probably had an optics package and a signals package on there where they were able to track all the cell phones of everyone in that.
00:27:36.000So it's not necessarily that they were like looking at you, but they were probably tracking every single thing that we went on.
00:27:43.000The FBI had potentially exculpatory information that was given to the prosecution, and that footage has been deleted or missing.
00:27:50.000I'm not quite understanding that whole part of it.
00:27:53.000So they had the standard definition, which gets fed to the ground, and then they had the high definition, which gets taken on the aircraft itself.
00:28:01.000They admitted on the stand that the standard definition that went to the ground, that's what was turned over to the prosecution long after the incident itself.
00:28:13.000The high definition version on the aircraft itself, they claimed, was destroyed.
00:28:19.000And that is the one that you can zoom into and you can see every single thing that happened on the ground.
00:28:26.000And we have been unable to receive that or get that from the FBI since.
00:28:31.000Because the other thing is, you know, and I think it's kind of obvious.
00:28:35.000The only thing that was released was, what, one minute, 39 seconds of the encounter.
00:28:41.000And so I'm sure this whole canard about you raising your rifle as opposed to raising your shoulder and somehow you can magically switch arms.
00:28:51.000Yeah, with the one point, apparently I'm left-handed, of course.
00:28:56.000But so this whole canard about that, which they hung the entire closing argument on, which by the way wasn't mentioned, of course, in the opening, all of that most likely was captured on this footage and certainly you would have been able to see that in very clear.
00:29:14.000You wouldn't, like, you know, this whole joke about, oh, we fortified, enhanced the image for 20 hours.
00:29:18.000So you wouldn't need to if you had the HD.
00:30:22.000You lose the right to self-defense when you're the one who brought the gun, when you're the one creating the danger, when you're the one provoking other people.
00:30:34.000And I'm no lawyer and I'm just like a normal 17, 18 year old kid.
00:30:39.000Look, how I look at it, what he's saying, no one has a right to defend theirself in the world in the United States if they're the one that brings the gun.
00:30:50.000So that means what he's saying is nobody's allowed to carry a gun, essentially.
00:31:19.000You were lawfully open carrying the same way that anyone who's legally able to can do so in Wisconsin, can do so in Arizona, so many states.
00:31:29.000That is not the legal standard of the United States, obviously.
00:31:33.000Our legal standard is the Second Amendment.
00:32:06.000Well, when I first realized it was probably in December of 2020 when I realized, okay, this is getting pretty big.
00:32:13.000All these media personalities are talking about it and all the people who don't agree with me or agree with the right to self-defense are making up these things such as Anna Kasparian and the Young Turks who's making it.
00:33:13.000So look, these details matter because if you're going to make an argument that you acted in self-defense, there needs to be some proof that there was an imminent threat.
00:33:24.000Now, what really mattered to me was how all of this unfolded.
00:33:31.000And initially, I was under the assumption that Rittenhouse was the person who was chasing after Joseph Rosenbaum, that that's how it started.
00:34:17.000I may have been one of the loudest voices or louder voices out there, but there were so many people.
00:34:24.000And I, I mean, I wish maybe, you know, someday if I get a chance, you know, I could show you so many people are emailing me and messaging me.
00:34:37.000And like all these different stories and just complete outpouring of support because I think a lot of people looked at it as a situation of, and you know, I said this too: they, you know, people were saying, oh, should he shouldn't have been there, right?
00:34:52.000But the actual answer is that none of them should have been there.
00:34:56.000None of the rioters should have been there.
00:34:57.000The mob shouldn't have been there, right?
00:34:59.000We should have safety in our communities.
00:35:02.000This great little town of Kenosha that it was so nice to be able to go visit should never have to experience that and nobody should because our government should be the one that's actually protecting people.
00:35:16.000And so you had these two courts and obviously you were most focused about, I don't know, like I'll win the court of public opinion later.
00:36:15.000We got Cut 29 queued up of the judge announcing that MSNBC is banned from the courtroom.
00:36:22.000Now, for following jurors, and that's where Jack and I were interfacing, like, wait a second, this is now heading into really dangerous territory that a young man's life might be put in jeopardy if one of these juries feels even slightly intimidated.
00:36:39.000A person who identified himself as James J. Morrison and who claimed that he was a producer with NBC News.
00:36:49.000The police, when they stopped him, because he was following at a distance of about a black and went through a red light, pulled him over and inquired of him what was going on.
00:37:00.000And he gave that information and stated that he had been instructed by Ms. Byan in New York to follow the jury bus.
00:37:13.000He's not here today, from what I'm told.
00:37:16.000And I have instructed that no one from MSNBC News will be permitted in this building for the duration of this trial.
00:37:27.000And so there was this fear that is the jury going to be intimidated?
00:37:32.000When I heard about that, I was like, I like put my head down.
00:39:05.000And that's one of the problems with the media was that they just perpetuated this absolutely completely false narrative and they kept it going.
00:39:16.000Even after trial, when all the truth came out, they still kept it going.
00:39:20.000And I think that's probably the worst part about it.
00:39:44.000This goes to show that this is a very important point.
00:39:46.000The northeast bias of the news media, because when you cross from New York to New Jersey, you go through a tunnel or you go through a bridge, go over a bridge, right?
00:39:55.000You really can't go from New York to New Jersey.
00:39:57.000I'm trying to think, at least in Manhattan, yeah, unless going through a tunnel or bridge.
00:40:00.000Like in the Midwest, you have going to Wisconsin.
00:40:03.000You're like, wait, I just crossed state lines?
00:41:12.000And that the fact that it does seem like it's something else to this, to just keep drilling down and changing the narrative.
00:41:19.000I want to pick up on what you're saying there.
00:41:21.000So do you believe that, you know, and there is this narrative that, you know, the, you know, we always hear it, like, good guy with a gun, right?
00:41:31.000Good guy with a gun is able to stop a mass shooter, is able to stop a riot situation, obviously, and is able to defend themselves from the riot, you know, attacking them.
00:41:41.000So do you believe it's a situation where they want only the government to have that kind of monopoly on violence to be able to use guns so that it essentially eviscerates the Second Amendment?
00:41:56.000I think that's getting into the weeds on the issue, besides the fact that I believe from the very start that it has always been about the gun.
00:42:08.000It wasn't about the right of self-defense, which it became about because that's what it was about.
00:44:23.000What they're trying to do is they've set up a situation where they couldn't get you through the legal system.
00:44:31.000So now they're trying to make it so that you're canceled, right?
00:44:35.000So you're going to be canceled from any other pressure point that they can find, whether that be campus or, you know, let's say you start a social media account and, you know, make it go public, or they go and just get a new turnover at Twitter.
00:44:51.000The new CEO is like a pro-censorship guy, right?
00:44:54.000They're going to come out and say everything they can to shut you down and to shut you up because they, to your point, I don't think they want anyone to be able to successfully defend themselves under the Second Amendment, use that in a situation to positively express their, I guess, right to live and also their right to self-defense.
00:45:14.000So any, your existence is a problem for them.
00:45:24.000I agree with everybody's right to demonstrate no matter how silly it is.
00:45:28.000But this is part of that whole media thing, right?
00:45:31.000From the very beginning, there's just so many people who are so completely misinformed.
00:45:37.000And as they get informed on just the basics, I think people start to recognize that this was purely self-defense and politics is just, it's just not involved in this case at all, period.
00:45:51.000But I mean, to your point, there are people who want to use this one way or the other.
00:48:24.000But I want you to walk through all this because you're a young boy, literally a boy by the law in jail, and your lawyers don't even know what state you're in.
00:48:34.000So I'm in Wisconsin, and I have to stay there an extra 20 days because Lynn Wood and John Pierce have to scramble to raise money.
00:48:44.000When they had it, they could have raised, they had enough prior, but they wasted it on extradition instead of looking out for my best interest.
00:48:53.000And then November 20th, I finally get bailed out.
00:48:56.000And Lynn Wood and John Pierce like to think they're the heroes in this case.
00:52:54.000And so then they had to re-raise the money while you're suffering in jail.
00:52:58.000And what's enough, just to jump ahead, what's really disturbing is that this idiot cannot provide an accounting when me or my mom asks for him.
00:53:07.000And when he does, it's on like a Google spreadsheet.
00:53:10.000He denied for over a year to have an independent third-party audit conducted of Fight Back Foundation, which was requested by Wendy on multiple occasions.
00:53:24.000He didn't even provide an accounting, like what was brought in and what was spent until last month, and it's completely inaccurate.
00:53:34.000So he absolutely, and he would not link to freecowusa.org, which is Wendy's fundraiser to raise money for him.
00:53:44.000Now, you got to remember, Wendy started that fundraiser, she had zero dollars.
00:54:01.000I was working at the YMCA RecPLEX and I was doing some landscaping gigs off the side.
00:54:06.000So that's the net worth of the Rittenhouse family.
00:54:11.000And then, and I'm not saying that diminishingly, I'm just offering context that then the only opportunity you had to get out of jail and get counsel was external support.
00:54:23.000And no one really knew where the money went.
00:54:26.000Oh, it went to John Pierce and to Lynn's ego for a while.
00:54:32.000But Kyle, I'm just sensing this, and you could correct me if I'm wrong.
00:54:35.000You're calm, cool, and collected until this topic.
00:54:38.000It just two things in this world piss me off the most.
00:54:42.000When Lunchbox says I'm not a student at ASU, and when Linwood likes to go off and say that I'm being handled, it just, it's disturbing.
00:54:51.000Do you know what those two things have in common, though?
00:55:33.000But I just want to say, so thank you to everybody who donated, to any medium who donated to Fightback, who donated to freecalusa.org, who donated to GiveSendGo.
00:55:48.000I'm not kidding, the millions of Americans, people throughout the world that wanted to support him.
00:55:54.000I mean, letters and prayers and the financial assistance was critical.
00:55:58.000But the reality is his former attorneys have some explaining to do, period.
00:56:06.000Before we go off the topic, let's make sure we state clearly, because I know people listening might have heard a lot of different names, what is the current official fundraiser for Kyle right now?
00:56:22.000So if you go to freecalusa.org, that's going to be constantly changing with updates about what's happening with him, what's going sort of on with the family, things of that nature.
00:56:38.000Now with Lynn Wood trying to claw back money raised for him, I mean, there are security costs that go into his everyday life and his family's everyday life.
00:56:48.000Sort of moving forward, there's a lot of costs as it relates to potential future legal actions against some people who might have said some things.
00:57:00.000But there's also costs associated with just holding accountable both Lynn Wood and John Pierce, which are costs that need to be put up to defend him.
00:57:21.000So on the day I'm standing in front of a jury to learn my fate, to learn my fate, this guy has the audacity to submit a motion in the court saying, this is our $2 million and we want it now.
00:57:47.000And as soon as they said the verdict is in, these guys filed a motion to allocate that bond to them.
00:57:55.000And let me just, just real quick, he has admitted he's been spending all the donations to pay for his personal legal bills and his security and stuff.
00:58:07.000So this is a man that hasn't provided any transparency to Wendy, to him, to their lawyers, except for a lot of years.
00:58:20.000For a year, except for a spreadsheet that he posts online and says, I'm the hero.
00:58:26.000So yes, that $2 million will be dealt with through the courts.
00:58:31.000It's not going to be dealt with on Telegram.
00:58:38.000And, you know, real quick, just to throw out for the audience, this actually is the bail reform kind of issue that people always talk about, not necessarily for you because you didn't get thrown $1,000 like this guy in Waukesha.
00:58:51.000So the whole idea behind the bail system is that you're putting up the money as collateral for you to be able to be released because you then showing up in court and participating in your trial, that becomes your incentive, your financial incentive for participating in the trials that you get your money back.
00:59:37.000So paying the legal bills from December, the company created to be the financial entity to help Wendy because she had to raise her own money was always in the red.
00:59:53.000I mean, his lawyers carried some significant costs because it started at zero and there was really no news going on about this whole thing, which was intentional, but still, so started in the red.
01:00:08.000And because of all the Americans and everybody who watches you guys and who supports him and the right of self-defense, we've been able to catch up significantly.
01:00:19.000We should probably also mention Facebook was banning anyone who posted positively.
01:00:26.000If you boasted, say, you know, I think Kyle Rittenhouse didn't do anything wrong, and here's a link to if you want to support him, banned.
01:00:58.000Yet, in the same breath, they still call him a mass shooter, right?
01:01:03.000It's shameful, shameful what Facebook did.
01:01:08.000And thank you to the millions of people around the country, not just the U.S., who have donated and supported us throughout this entire battle.
01:01:17.000It truly means a lot to me and my family.
01:02:02.000I believe he's helped guide me in the right direction.
01:02:05.000He's helped bring people into my world, such as Dave, LT, Mark, Corey, Joellen, John's husband, who's just helped me throughout this.
01:02:15.000And he hasn't gave me the answers, but he's helped point me in the right direction.
01:02:22.000Well, there'll be more details that come out eventually, but you were very close to some such bad intervention from forces that it would have been tough to recover from, just with the kind of group of people you were kind of chatting about.
01:02:39.000And I think we have to just put this out.
01:02:40.000Look, he's not sponsored by Under Armor.
01:03:48.000A lot of people in that situation and they might not have made it out of there without that kind of support.
01:03:54.000And so whether, you know, you're out there and you're someone who believes in something as literal as a guardian angel or just having that intervention come in, whatever the mechanism is, that's the one thing I always see when I watch those videos.
01:04:08.000And then when I saw what happened in that court.
01:04:10.000So not only was he there in the street, he was there in that courthouse and he was there in that jury room.
01:04:16.000Someone was definitely watching over me that night.
01:04:20.000Thank you guys so much for having me on.