The Great America Show - December 09, 2023


RITTENHOUSE: “ACQUITTED”—STILL FIGHTING!


Episode Stats


Length

25 minutes

Words per minute

159.9385

Word count

4,127

Sentence count

288

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On this episode of the Great America Show, host Lou Dobbs is joined by Kyle Rittenhouse, a former Marine who served in the Marine Corps and served as a member of the U.S. Special Operations Command. Kyle talks about how he became a hero in the eyes of the American public, and how his life changed forever in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2016.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:01:14.940 Hello, everybody. I'm Lou Dobbs. Welcome to The Great America Show. It is great to have you with
00:01:22.800 us. The Republicans in the House holding on to a majority by a slender thread after a series of
00:01:29.120 events this week. The expulsion of George Santos, the soon-to-be departure of Bill Johnson, who's
00:01:35.560 taking a job as president of Youngstown State University, and now former Speaker Kevin McCarthy
00:01:41.320 announcing he will leave at the end of the year. He never seemed to quite get over getting fired.
00:01:47.720 Congressman Matt Gaetz, who led the efforts to have McCarthy fired, took to his ex account the
00:01:53.740 other day to get one last jab at McCarthy, telling the former Speaker that Nancy Pelosi at least had the
00:01:59.760 guts to serve out her term after losing control of the House. I don't know anyone else who would 0.95
00:02:05.380 just say, well, if I can't run the place, I'm going to leave. Nancy Pelosi, for all her flaws, 1.00
00:02:10.620 and there are many, she at least stuck around. She didn't hurt her team by saying, well, if I can't
00:02:17.240 be the quarterback, I'm just going to take the ball and go home. That seems to be what we're getting
00:02:22.020 from Kevin McCarthy. This is not an act of patriotism or moving on to the next fight. It is an act of abject
00:02:28.740 selfishness, and it is revealing that if Kevin McCarthy can't swing the gavel and be in charge
00:02:35.200 and make the decisions, that he's not willing to be a team player. For all the criticism I've received
00:02:41.000 about not being a team player, I'm here. I'm doing the work. I'm taking votes. And the Republican
00:02:46.520 establishment might not like how I vote all the time, but I'm not facilitating a path to hand power
00:02:53.760 to the Democrats. That would be more in line with what we see from the former speaker who is on his
00:02:59.900 way out the door. Well, we often talk about the Republican Party and its many fractures.
00:03:05.180 It seems the talk never ends, whether about the weak-kneed rhinos who oppose a Biden impeachment
00:03:11.560 or most recently expelling Congressman George Santos without due process. It is simply an expression
00:03:19.040 of a huge problem within the Republican conference. The Marxist Dems Supreme, that is President Joe 0.69
00:03:26.220 Biden, his approval rating has hit a brand new low. How much lower can it go, really? According to a new
00:03:33.280 CNN poll, Biden's approval rating in November was 37 percent, down two points since October, the lowest
00:03:40.280 since he assumed office in 2021. And his polling on voters' top issue, that is the economy, not much
00:03:47.740 better. Coming in at 33 percent, the man is absolutely struggling, cognitively, physically,
00:03:53.660 and in the polls. Well, our guest today is Kyle Rittenhouse. In August of 2020, when Kyle was 17
00:04:02.060 years old, his life changed forever. Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioting in the summer of love all 0.99
00:04:09.580 across the country, costing America hundreds of millions of dollars as they burned down buildings,
00:04:15.140 destroyed cities all over the death of George Floyd. On August 25th of that summer, in the midst of
00:04:22.280 protests and riots that got out of hand, Kyle had to defend himself. He shot three men, killing two of
00:04:28.960 them, as he was on an armed citizen's peacekeeping watch in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He was acquitted,
00:04:36.020 but his life, he says, will never be the same. And Kyle is with us here today. Kyle, I have to say it's
00:04:42.100 great to have you with us here, young man, and to have you on the show and to talk about your life
00:04:48.080 since, well, 2020, and frankly, the country's life as well. I'm thrilled you've come out with a new
00:04:55.020 book. It's called Acquitted, folks. It's available for pre-order at writtenhousebook.com. I want to get
00:05:01.880 that out there right away, writtenhousebook.com. And I think people are going to really support your
00:05:09.100 book. I think learn a lot from it. We recommend it to you highly, folks. Let's turn to, right now,
00:05:15.380 what is probably on the minds of most of our audience. Just what is a 20-year-old Kyle
00:05:21.040 Rittenhouse doing after the past three years right now?
00:05:26.100 Well, I work nine to five, wake up in the morning, go to work. Right now, I'm on a little bit of a media
00:05:32.400 tour, helping promote my book. You can get that book at writtenhousebook.com. It's available for
00:05:38.900 Pre-Order Today. That's what I'm doing. I'm just trying to live as normal as a life as possible.
00:05:47.160 And how normal would you say your life is?
00:05:51.020 Not very normal. I would say it's not very normal. It's hard to go out. I get recognized a lot. I get
00:05:59.140 a lot of people that want to take pictures with me. I get a lot of messages on social media, death
00:06:04.260 threats, and a bunch of other type of messages of people saying, hey, we're going to come find you.
00:06:11.040 We know where you're at. Stocker type stuff. That's just some of the stuff I deal with on a
00:06:17.120 daily basis. And I don't think that's a normal thing I deal with. No, it really isn't. It really
00:06:22.300 isn't normal. And I suspect it's about as normal as it's going to be for you
00:06:27.520 through your life. But I think also on the positive side, you're running into a lot of
00:06:34.360 very good people. Patriots, good Americans, working men and women and their families,
00:06:41.360 a community wherever you are that I think will embrace you in most cases. There are exceptions,
00:06:48.020 and usually those are in big cities, as we all know. Have you found that to be your experience?
00:06:54.360 Oh, absolutely. I've found a lot of support and a lot of great patriots I've met. I made a lot of
00:07:01.220 good friends through this whole ordeal. And it's taught me who to really trust and who I can count on
00:07:07.520 when I need to count on somebody. That's one of the toughest lessons for anybody in life to learn,
00:07:13.680 anyone, irrespective of their experiences. Trust is a huge issue in our society right now.
00:07:20.420 It's very difficult for any of us to trust anyone right now. Would you agree with that?
00:07:27.240 A hundred percent. Absolutely. Everybody has an ulterior motive, and you don't know what that
00:07:34.660 motive is. You don't know if they just really genuinely want to support you or if they want
00:07:38.920 to make money off of you or what. Right. And the idea that there is so little trust,
00:07:46.780 it's getting worse year by year. During the pandemic, everyone was more insular. Our kids
00:07:54.200 in schools. I mean, the teacher unions have so much to answer for. The Marxist Dems that run the
00:08:01.940 Democrat Party have so much to answer for, because the impact of that is going to be lasting for these
00:08:08.040 kids who were in school at that point through. It's going to take them a long time to catch up.
00:08:12.360 I'll put it that way. But I think it's also going to take time for American society to catch up with
00:08:17.500 where it was before then as well. We went through in 2020, as you well know, a devastating period in
00:08:26.380 this country's history, and it's ignored. We have election that were called election deniers because
00:08:31.820 the election was rigged. But no one wants to talk about Antifa, BLM, the summer of love, the rioting,
00:08:40.280 the arson, the protests and demonstrations. It's as if that was the strategy by the Marxist Dems for
00:08:48.220 a six, seven-month period. That goes away, and up comes the next level of agitation and
00:08:58.060 provocative conduct on the part of the left, including murders and riots and burning buildings
00:09:06.820 to the ground. Your thoughts about that period and how much of it stays with you?
00:09:14.080 Well, absolutely. 2020 was a very difficult year for all of us. I was forced to defend myself
00:09:23.000 against the rioters, people trying to kill me, people who threatened to kill me. But I also see
00:09:28.060 the effects that it had on our country of what happened in Minnesota, what happened in Wisconsin,
00:09:34.120 Chicago, New York, Washington, of these cities just being torched and burned down. Look at Seattle,
00:09:40.660 Portland, for an example. You can't even go to Portland anymore because they look for an excuse
00:09:46.160 to riot for almost anything. It's just, it's not. I'm sorry, go ahead.
00:09:53.400 It's not the same world that I grew up in. It's not the world to where you could actually walk down
00:09:57.800 the street and not have to worry if a riot's going to kick off.
00:10:01.220 Yeah, it's hard to believe sometimes it's the same country. It's difficult for all of us,
00:10:07.740 in particular folks in my generation, baby boomers who've seen so much over the course of their lives.
00:10:15.180 To see this particular moment is disappointing. It's sickening in point of fact. And to look at
00:10:23.880 the government that is so divided over basic things like the constitution, give us your sense
00:10:31.100 from that night back in August of 2020, what you've learned in just those few years that you've
00:10:42.880 traveled, because it's been a remarkable journey that you've been on.
00:10:46.880 Oh, absolutely. I'm still, I'm still growing up. I'm still learning. I'm only 20 years old.
00:10:53.820 Some of the lessons I have learned is one, don't trust, don't trust anybody you just met that comes
00:10:59.440 out and promises you the world because most likely they aren't going to give you the world if they
00:11:04.120 promise it. A lot of politicians, they're only telling you what you want to hear, but then you
00:11:12.560 look at their voting records, you look at their voting history of what they voted on and the bills
00:11:16.740 they supported and they suck. A lot of people enjoy being told like, I'm going to do this,
00:11:25.480 that, and that for, to help you. And then you look and you see they voted. Oh, well, if you read this
00:11:31.120 bill, it really supported banning that. And it does this and it takes away that right. Not a lot of
00:11:37.700 people want to look into that or do the hard research. Yeah, it's true. And covering, by the way,
00:11:44.200 those folks you're talking about for a good long while now, as a journalist of one sort or the
00:11:50.560 other, I can tell you, it's not getting any better. It didn't start. We didn't start in very good shape,
00:11:57.860 but it actually did get worse. We're talking with Kyle Rittenhouse and he's got a brand new book.
00:12:03.740 It's acquitted. We recommend it to you highly. We're going to take a quick commercial break
00:12:07.940 and we'll talk about the lasting impressions of 2020 with Kyle Rittenhouse, the impact on his life.
00:12:14.540 We'll be right back. Stay with us.
00:12:21.680 We're back now talking with Kyle Rittenhouse and he has a new book, Acquitted. We recommend it,
00:12:27.300 as I said, highly to you. And Kyle, the book, you're 20 years old. You've seen a lot and you've
00:12:35.160 experienced a lot and you've been beat up pretty good at various points, put in situations that no
00:12:43.160 one would envy, including having to defend yourself in the midst of a riot or in court, for that matter.
00:12:51.880 Give us your sense in the book, the reason for writing it and the point that you want to make with
00:12:59.500 it. Well, Lou, there was just so many stories about me that weren't true. There was media stories
00:13:05.040 that people were believing in and just people were saying things that were just false. And I just
00:13:11.720 wanted to come out there and set the record straight. A lot of people say that I grew up
00:13:16.200 privileged and I had everything handed to me, which is just not true. I grew up in government
00:13:21.480 subsidized housing and homeless with a mom working 80 hours a week to put food on the table and having
00:13:26.960 a drug addict dad. It wasn't easy to grow up. Well, that's, you know, I think that right now
00:13:34.060 there are people saying, my gosh, I had no idea because they assumed a middle class life for you
00:13:41.320 out in the Midwest. And I would guess, and I'll speak only for myself, I would never have guessed
00:13:49.740 that was your background. But I know it's often hard to guess backgrounds, but even harder when
00:13:57.300 the national left wing media goes after a narrative and wants to identify you for that
00:14:03.980 narrative. And certainly that was, you know, if that had come out largely and brightly in the moment
00:14:10.540 in 2020, I think history would have been a little different for Kyle Rittenhouse. I think you wouldn't
00:14:17.060 have had quite the same treatment. Do you? I don't know. I don't know how it would have treated.
00:14:28.000 The treatment would have been, I know the government, the prosecuting agency knew that I wasn't rich and
00:14:32.860 that I grew up on government subsidized housing. They knew my entire background. The media could
00:14:37.620 have figured it out. It's not that hard to figure out that my dad was a drug addict if you just do a
00:14:42.120 simple background check. Right. Well, when I said it would have been different, I'm talking about if
00:14:49.440 people had known that. We now know what the government chooses to let the American people
00:14:55.400 know is very seldom the truth and very seldom even remotely motivated by the public interest.
00:15:05.060 Your thoughts about, do you get into this in the book, your view about what the role of government
00:15:10.140 and the way government has treated you and those you care about?
00:15:14.440 I don't get too much into it. I talk a little bit about political persecution and how, like,
00:15:20.260 I spent 87 days in jail for defending myself and how I was put on trial for also defending myself.
00:15:28.760 And I talk a little bit about that and how it was a scary, dark time in my life.
00:15:33.320 Are you over it? Does the pain still stay with you?
00:15:41.300 Absolutely. I have nightmares almost every night about it. And there's nights where I'll be a good
00:15:46.740 night. There's nights where I'll be a bad night. But the fight still isn't over. I'm facing three
00:15:52.840 civil lawsuits in the Eastern District of Wisconsin. So I'm still being sued for defending myself.
00:15:58.820 That's really the way to say it, too, isn't it? You're being sued for defending yourself.
00:16:04.660 Can you tell us a little bit about the plaintiffs in those suits? Who are these people
00:16:08.820 who want to take another pound of flesh from Kyle Rittenhouse?
00:16:16.700 Well, I'm being sued by the state of Anthony Huber, by his father, John Huber. And they're suing me for
00:16:23.980 a list of things. Half the charges that they put on the complaint don't even make sense.
00:16:31.800 They're suing me for I don't know why they're suing me, but it's on video that I was attacked
00:16:38.260 by Anthony. He hit me in the head with a skateboard twice. Being sued by Gage Grosskreutz in the Eastern
00:16:44.300 District of Wisconsin as well for a bunch of other charges that don't make sense. And he's the one who
00:16:51.460 pointed a gun in my face. In his complaint, it's kind of funny because in his civil lawsuit complaint,
00:16:56.520 he doesn't mention the fact that he had a gun at all. There's not one mention of it.
00:17:00.260 They just magically left that part out. And I think that's a pretty important part.
00:17:05.920 I'm also being sued by Joseph Rosenbaum. I can't talk too much about that case at the moment, though.
00:17:12.500 You're being sued by whom?
00:17:14.280 Joseph Rosenbaum, the first guy who attacked me.
00:17:16.540 Right. I can't talk too much about that because we're doing some investigation into that lawsuit to
00:17:21.420 work on getting it dismissed.
00:17:23.200 Well, that's understood. And your legal team, how do you feel about them? How good are they? And
00:17:30.100 how good do you feel about your chances of prevailing?
00:17:34.600 Well, Mark got me acquitted in the criminal trial. He's representing me in the civil. So I feel pretty
00:17:39.400 good about it. Truth always comes to light. And no matter what happens, I know God will always be
00:17:44.560 with me. And it's God's plan no matter what.
00:17:47.300 You know, you just said two important words, truth and God, and they go together. And they're
00:17:55.380 an unbeatable combination. Kyle, we're going to come right back with you, folks. We're going to
00:17:59.720 take a quick break. We'll be right back after these few quick words. Stay with us.
00:18:04.340 We're back. We're talking with Kyle Rittenhouse. And Kyle, I want to just remind everybody in the
00:18:16.080 audience, or perhaps for the first time they may know this, you were acquitted in November of 2021,
00:18:24.080 almost a year and a half after the incident. President Biden issued a statement saying he was
00:18:32.120 angry about that innocent verdict. You were what? Were you 18 at that point?
00:18:38.080 Yes, sir. I was 18. And I saw that statement. Joe Biden issued two statements. He, his first
00:18:44.500 statement, I think he was clueless as normal. And then his press people yelled at him. His first
00:18:49.660 statement was, we must stand with the jury's decision and the verdict. And that was the correct 0.89
00:18:54.340 statement that should have been stayed. And then he came out with the second statement saying he was
00:18:59.520 angry and disappointed. That sort of went in the wrong order. But as you suggest,
00:19:06.580 perhaps a predictable order for President Biden. With all of this going on, the media after you in
00:19:14.160 every way, what is your sense of where the country is headed? Our media is failing us. The government is
00:19:21.380 failing us. We are watching the Marxist take over. Well, the Marxist Dems and the Democratic Party and
00:19:26.860 deep state are in control of the federal government from, I mean, across the board. What are the odds,
00:19:33.900 one, that we can get President Trump back in the White House to clean up this vast, deep mess in the
00:19:41.480 swamp? You know, honestly speaking, Lou, I don't know if Trump is going to get back in the White House.
00:19:48.520 I think that our political system is so rigged. And there's just so many things that you see what
00:19:56.220 they're doing to him right now. They're putting him on trial right now. And I know God's going to
00:19:59.680 stand with him. But I think a jury is going to be so scared to acquit him. I think the judges are going
00:20:05.440 to drown him in legal, legal bills. And I think they're going to try to throw him in prison. I don't
00:20:12.880 know how that will work with a former president being put in prison. But I just don't see. I try
00:20:19.500 to find a little bit of hope. But sometimes it's very difficult where you see the political
00:20:24.640 atmosphere we're in. I don't think it's going to be easy for President Trump or any conservative to
00:20:30.380 win this election. Well, I have to say I agree with you about my concerns that he can be elected
00:20:36.560 in a country that permits a president to be politically persecuted for eight years with
00:20:43.120 not one finding of wrongdoing against him at any one point, and all of it motivated by
00:20:48.720 that president's political enemies and opposition, the Democrat Party, the deep state. And to imagine
00:21:00.460 that the Marxist Dems won't try to rig this election in every way possible, I just can't
00:21:07.520 get there. I think for them, it's a 24-7 enterprise to protect Joe Biden so that they can protect
00:21:14.240 their power that they hold over the federal government, our Congress, our Senate. One way or
00:21:22.600 another, the Dems are winning out, don't you think?
00:21:25.420 Oh, absolutely. And this is an unpopular belief, but I think the Democrats, specifically Joe Biden,
00:21:32.560 is trying to drive us into a state of war. We already see that with Israel and Ukraine. 0.98
00:21:37.920 I think they're trying to drive us into a state of war with someone just so they can be like,
00:21:43.960 oh, we can't have a presidential election. It's not safe to go outside. President Biden,
00:21:48.020 President, four more years.
00:21:49.060 One of the things that people were talking about is sort of sardonically, sarcastically,
00:21:57.160 but Biden was very upset with the Israel war because that was taking attention away from his
00:22:04.060 preferred war, which was Ukraine. I have to say, to listen to people like Lloyd Austin, the Secretary
00:22:13.220 of Defense, admonishing Israel for the way it's fighting a war to save that nation after being
00:22:21.320 attacked brutally by Hamas on October 7th. And this idiot that we have as Secretary of Defense
00:22:30.700 is telling them that they're making strategic mistakes and doing so in public. I haven't heard
00:22:36.480 him say anything to the Ukrainians, have you? Don't you find it interesting the way things mix and match for 0.98
00:22:42.820 this Biden regime? It's outrageous. Absolutely. I see a lot of things with the Israel-Palestinian 1.00
00:22:51.180 war against the Hamas. And I just can't see how anybody can come to the defense of these terrorists
00:22:59.100 who are killing innocent Israelis. On October 7th, they came over and they killed a bunch of
00:23:05.460 innocent people. They stormed their houses. They killed their children. And Israel took a stand back
00:23:10.420 and they're defending their country and their nation. If Palestine just called a ceasefire,
00:23:15.860 this war would be over and Israel would stop defending itself. 0.63
00:23:20.620 It is truly amazing to watch. And without comment from the national media,
00:23:27.260 no comment from scholars in the so-called academia, the indoctrination centers that are actually
00:23:33.620 that we call often colleges and universities. It's a shame that what has happened there as well.
00:23:38.820 We wish you all the very best, Kyle. I hope you'll come back. We wish you the best and talk further.
00:23:46.000 And I think it's probably hard for some of the folks and maybe just a little bit me to think I'm
00:23:52.560 talking to a man who's 20 years old and who's gone through all that you have and have carried
00:23:58.260 yourself proudly in the way anyone would want a young man like you to carry himself and to conduct
00:24:06.680 himself. You represent, in my judgment, the best of youth in this country. Give me, if you will,
00:24:17.020 here, we always give our guests the last words, but I'd like to ask you to give us your sense
00:24:21.420 of the young people, your generation right now, young Americans, and your thought about the future.
00:24:29.420 Well, we can only pray for the future and we can only pray for our youth today, including my peer
00:24:35.040 group. I feel like my peer group is absolutely corrupted into the false politics and believing
00:24:41.760 things that they are told and voting for politicians they shouldn't be voting for that are just going to
00:24:48.560 damage our Constitution and our future. Our founding fathers were very intentional when they wrote the
00:24:53.120 Constitution. It's our duties as voters to go out there and vote for politicians who are going to
00:24:58.900 protect our constitutional rights and what our founding fathers put out for our great country.
00:25:04.540 Kyle Rittenhouse, his book is Acquitted, and we recommend it to you highly.
00:25:11.440 RittenhouseBooks.com, and God bless you. Thanks for being with us here today, Kyle.
00:25:17.320 Thank you, Lou.
00:25:18.420 Thanks, everybody, for being with us here today. Kyle Rittenhouse, quite a young man.
00:25:22.540 We urge you to buy his book, Acquitted, RittenhouseBook.com.
00:25:28.900 Our guest here tomorrow on The Great America Show will be Trump attorney, Alina Habba,
00:25:33.940 will be taking up, of course, the political persecution of President Trump now in its eighth
00:25:39.080 year, and it doesn't show any signs of letting up, folks. Please join us for that. Thanks,
00:25:44.880 everybody. God bless you, and may God bless America.