On Wednesday, CNN chief legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Toobin, most famous for losing his job at The New Yorker after he was caught masturbating on a Zoom work call, offered his profound opinion on Kyle Rittenhouse, barking on CNN, “What kind of idiot 17-year-old gets a giant gun and goes to a riot? … The good news for Kyle Rittenhouse is that he’s not on trial for being an idiot. He’s on trial for homicide.”
Actor James Woods, who in addition for his fame for his protean talent on screen, has also become a favorite of conservatives for his fearlessness expressing his conservative views in the bastion of leftist Hollywood, fired back on Thursday morning, “Is Toobin just yanking our crank?”
Is Toobin just yanking our crank? https://t.co/atljaVvNvW
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) November 11, 2021
Toobin had stated on CNN:
Two thoughts. Two thoughts. … One, what kind of idiot 17-year-old gets a giant gun and goes to a riot? He has no license. He has no training. He thinks he’s going to scrub graffiti off with his AR-15? I mean, the stupidity of this is like, what could possibly go wrong? Well, a lot went wrong.
The good news for Kyle Rittenhouse is that he’s not on trial for being an idiot. He’s on trial for homicide. And in that respect, I mostly agree with Joey that this is a tough case for the prosecution, because it does seem like it he has a plausible case of self-defense. And if it were illegal to be an idiot, the jails would be even more crowded than they are now. Homicide is a different matter. And he may have a defense here.
CNN's Zoom masturbator, Jefferey Toobin says Kyle Rittenhouse is lucky it isn't "illegal to be an idiot." pic.twitter.com/QPhPNLt1Cx
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) November 10, 2021
In June, CNN welcomed Toobin back; he had been fired from The New Yorker after he was caught masturbating on a Zoom call with his colleagues in October 2020. Toobin took a leave of absence from CNN after the incident, which was first reported by Vice.
CNN’s Alisyn Camerota started by saying, “I feel like we should address what’s happened in the months since we’ve seen you, since some of our viewers may not know what has happened. So I guess I’ll recap: I’ll do the honors.”
“Help yourself,” Toobin offered.
Camerota stated, “Okay. In October, you were on a Zoom call with your colleagues from The New Yorker magazine, everyone took a break for several minutes, during which time you were caught masturbating on camera. You were subsequently fired from that job after 27 years of working there, and you, since then have been on leave from CNN. Do I have all that right?”
“You got it all right, sad to say,” Toobin replied.
“Okay, so let’s start there,” Camerota agreed. “To quote Jay Leno, ‘What the hell were you thinking?’”
Toobin then began by saying his actions were “inexplicable” to him, then admitted he “didn’t think people could see” him: “Well, obviously, I wasn’t thinking very well or very much. And it was something that was inexplicable to me. I think, one point, I wouldn’t exactly say in my defense, because nothing is really in my defense; I didn’t think I was on the call. I didn’t think other people could see me.”