“The View” host Sunny Hostin claimed Monday that Kyle Rittenhouse would have been killed on the scene if he had been black and had been present for the unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, while open-carrying an AR-15.
When co-host Sara Haines pointed to Wisconsin laws regarding self-defense and the fact that multiple people on the scene had either threatened or physically attacked Rittenhouse, Hostin, a former federal prosecutor, pushed back. She claimed that because Rittenhouse had brought the gun to the scene it was reasonable for others to chase him or attempt to disarm him under the assumption that he was an “active shooter.”
Whoopi Goldberg began the show with a clip from Rittenhouse’s interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, during which Rittenhouse claimed that the case had never been about race.
“This case has nothing to do with race, it never had anything to do with race, it had to do with the right to self-defense,” Rittenhouse said as Carlson nodded along. “I’m not a racist person. I supported the BLM movement.”
“Then why did he go there with a gun?” co-host Joy Behar interrupted, and Goldberg agreed.
“Definitely a story that’s going to be very divisive,” guest host Kristen Soltis Anderson added, noting that even as Americans were drawing hard lines and taking sides, many had not necessarily seen all of the facts before doing so.
“There are many Americans who have been probably watching bits and pieces on the news,” she said, adding, “The only people who got all the facts, in this case, were the jury and they didn’t come to a rushed decision. They spent days deliberating on this.”
“There are a thousand reasons why Kyle Rittenhouse shouldn’t have been where he was,” Haines said, but then she went on to note that once he was there, video and witness testimony showed that he had been surrounded by people who did not appear to have peaceful protest as their goal.
“This was where there were parts of rioting and bad-faith actors like Rosenbaum who I’m not saying deserves to be dead. But I’m a little shocked how everyone jumped to a certain story when you read into it there were different facts … this was a pretty cut and dry case of self-defense in Wisconsin. The video shows him running each time and turning around which they say legally speaking,” Haines continued.
Haines added that she was not an advocate for open carry and that even though she did not believe Rittenhouse should have been there or been armed, she could see how the jury had reached a decision to acquit.
Goldberg abruptly changed direction, asking, “Sunny, if he were black would he be free now?”
“No. He wouldn’t be alive now,” she said, appearing to suggest that he would have been killed where he stood if he were black. “Look, I don’t — I don’t — I disagree it was a cut and dried case of self-defense, I think that when you certainly go to a place with an AR-15-style weapon that and you shoot someone and you’re running away from that shooting and people are running after you because they think you’re an active shooter, I don’t know that’s a cut and dry self-defense case as to the second person and the third person.”
Hostin then argued that her concern was that because of Rittenhouse’s acquittal, people might be afraid to attend protests in the future.
“So many people are very supportive of this young man, Kyle Rittenhouse as this hero of the Second Amendment, this hero of self-defense, and I think people now will think that someone can legally come to a protest and under the cover of law kill me,” she said.