As we pointed out yesterday, alleged President Joe Biden was among the worst offenders in the year-long campaign to railroad Kyle Rittenhouse into prison for defending himself
against three rioters during the August 2020 burning of Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Rittenhouse is a “white supremacist,” as then-candidate Joe Biden labeled him in a tweet showing the teenager’s photograph. When White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked to explain why recently, she slyly slimed Rittenhouse again, without naming him, as a “vigilante.”
Candidate Joe Biden showed himself to be a vile political opportunist during the 2020 campaign, but President Joe Biden was little better when he issued the following statement from the White House:
While the verdict in Kenosha will leave many Americans feeling angry and concerned, myself included, we must acknowledge that the jury has spoken. I ran on a promise to bring Americans together, because I believe that what unites us is far greater than what divides us. I know that we’re not going to heal our country’s wounds overnight, but I remain steadfast in my commitment to do everything in my power to ensure that every American is treated equally, with fairness and dignity, under the law.
I urge everyone to express their views peacefully, consistent with the rule of law. Violence and destruction of property have no place in our democracy. The White House and Federal authorities have been in contact with Governor Evers’s office to prepare for any outcome in this case, and I have spoken with the Governor this afternoon and offered support and any assistance needed to ensure public safety.
Putting oneself on the side of those inclined to riot and burn down buildings because they are “angry and concerned” is a great way to “bring Americans together,” but we would have been deluding ourselves to expect anything better from Joe Biden.
Most Republicans were predictably silent on the Rittenhouse not guilty verdict, but Florida’s principled limited government constitutional conservative Governor Ron DeSantis issued a statement that was worth sharing for its striking contrast to Biden’s identification with the “woke” mob trying to railroad Kyle Rittenhouse.
In an email to supporters Governor DeSantis said:
The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse should not have come as a surprise to anyone following the facts rather than corporate media narratives.
The verdict vindicates the right of self-defense and demonstrates that an American jury is capable of separating lies propagated by the media from the facts of the case and the applicable legal principles.
In this respect, the blizzard of lies propagated by corporate media outlets and Big Tech companies was no match for the American constitutional system.
Yet, the whole ordeal came at a great cost. The fact is that persistent, reckless corporate media lies — about Jacob Blake’s felonious conduct, about Blake being “unarmed,” and about the response of the police officer — fueled a dangerous mob that laid waste to Kenosha and landed Kyle Rittenhouse in the crosshairs of that mob.
Accountability is needed.
First, Kyle Rittenhouse needs to sue every corporate media outlet and every moronic commentator who smeared him into oblivion.
Second, states need to make sure that those falsely smeared by corporate media have adequate recourse under state law to bring defamation actions.
Third, entities who advertise on corporate media outlets that routinely lie and defame innocent people should be held accountable for facilitating defamatory material and false narratives.
Those in corporate media who peddle lies and partisan narratives are among the least reputable members of society and they shouldn’t be able to divide our communities and smear people with impunity.
Yes, the jury system worked. But the fact that it got to this point illustrates that we have a lot of work to do.
I’ll be doing my part and I hope you will too.
Governor DeSantis already did his part in pressing the Florida Legislature to pass a new anti-riot law, which makes a scenario like last summer’s disastrous abdication of law enforcement responsibility in Wisconsin much less likely to happen in Florida.
And we like where Governor DeSantis is going in his advice to Kyle Rittenhouse to sue those who defamed him as a “white supremacist” and with other lies intended to taint the jury pool.
But the larger context of Governor DeSantis’s statement also gives us hope that at least one Republican is prepared to take on Big Tech.
It should not be forgotten that DeSantis pushed for the Florida Legislature to enact a law to rein-in Big Tech censorship and, along with Attorney General Ashley Moody, has aggressively defended the law:
“They get immunity because they say they’re an open forum, and so if somebody says something about you that libels you, you can’t sue Facebook, you can’t sue Twitter, you can’t sue these companies because they’re just forums,” he said. “Yet, they’ll take that immunity and then on the back end, they’ll go ahead and they’ll take people off that they disagree with, or they’ll censor people that are [advocating] ideas that they don’t like.”
We hope the clear contrast between Joe Biden’s vile attempt to slime Kyle Rittenhouse as a “white supremacist” and Governor Ron DeSantis’s defense of the little guy versus Big Media and Big Tech and the right of self-defense versus the “woke” mob of arsonists and looters prompts other Republicans to get in the fight.
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