Kenosha, WI — We reported two weeks ago when Kyle Rittenhouse’s lawyers released video footage that they claim exonerated the 17-year-old boy and showed he acted in self-defense.
On Tuesday, the Washington Post ran a story about the three violent protestors shot by Kyle Rittenhouse. The story detailed their lives in the hours leading up to the death of Rosenbaum and Huber, as well as the shooting of Grosskreutz.
The Washington Post‘s article was largely sympathetic to the three men that Rittenhouse shot that night. But in their attempt to turn their readers’ sympathies towards the three protestors and away from Rittenhouse, they overplayed their hand and revealed details that will likely help Rittenhouse.
The paper detailed that the late Mr. Rosenbaum had been released from a mental health facility only hours before his attack on Rittenhouse. He had been in the facility for his second suicide attempt.
2020 Had Hit Hard
Aside from his mental health history, Bearing Arms summarizes the Post’s backstory on Rosenbaum, saying:
The Post reports that Rosenbaum had been released from a Milwaukee hospital earlier that day after attempting suicide, and his already troubled life had been spiraling downwards in the months before the rioting in the city broke out after the shooting of Jacob Blake by Kenosha police. Rosenbaum and his fiancee had been homeless for much of the winter and spring before being placed in a motel by social services.
The Post paints a grim picture of Rosenbaum in the weeks preceding the event:
Aside from one supervised visit, he never saw the child for whom he had moved to Kenosha. In June, he attempted suicide by overdosing on pills. A month later, his fiancee confronted him after finding pornography on his phone. Rosenbaum body-slammed her, according to police, who took him to jail and then released him.
One week later, Rosenbaum called a suicide crisis line. Police found him vomiting and having convulsions outside a McDonald’s. He spent a few days in the hospital followed by a few more days in jail for violating the no-contact order with his former girlfriend. Then he was sent for more treatment to the mental hospital in Milwaukee.
Two hours before he was killed, Rosenbaum left his fiancee’s motel room and caught a bus for downtown, where a second night of protests had erupted.
A Man With Nothing To Lose
While Rosenbaum’s girlfriend claim he wasn’t a rioter or protestors, the Post details the aggression that Rosenbaum displayed on the streets of Kenosha — long before Kyle Rittenhouse was involved.
In videos from that night, Rosenbaum often appeared agitated. When a member of the Kenosha Guard, a self-proclaimed militia, pointed his gun at him, Rosenbaum became enraged and dared the man, who was White, to kill him. “Shoot me, n—–!” he shouted. Several protesters rushed to calm Rosenbaum.
“You’re going to get us all shot,” one of them recalled telling him.
At 11:45 p.m., Richie McGinniss, a reporter with the conservative Daily Caller, spotted Rosenbaum, his T-shirt wrapped around his head, chasing Rittenhouse down the street. It’s unclear what provoked the confrontation, though Rittenhouse’s attorneys speculated in a video released last week that Rosenbaum may have mistaken the teenager for a similarly attired member of the Kenosha Guard he confronted earlier at the gas station.
Rosenbaum pursued Rittenhouse down Sheridan Road and into the parking lot of a car dealership that would soon go up in flames. He threw his hospital bag at Rittenhouse, missing him, and charged at the teenager.
Someone nearby fired a shot. “F— you!” someone else screamed. Rosenbaum tried to grab Rittenhouse’s rifle, and the teenager — who was just feet from Rosenbaum — began shooting, striking Rosenbaum in the back and groin. Another bullet grazed Rosenbaum’s head. In the seconds after the gunfire, Rittenhouse is caught on video trying to call a friend for help.
None of this helps advance the case that Joe Biden and others have tried to make — that Kyle Rittenhouse was a white supremacist who had traveled to Kenosha intent on killing protestors with a ‘weapon of war.’
In fact, all it shows us is that Rosenbaum was extremely mentally unstable. Bearing Arms summarized that August night this way:
It sounds like trouble found Rittenhouse in the form of Joseph Rosenbaum; a troubled man with a recent history of violence who was off his medication for bi-polar disorder and was acting aggressively throughout the night of August 25th, even before he began chasing Rittenhouse down a dark street with others joining in the pursuit of the teenager.
If The Justice System Works, He Walks.
This information, coupled with all of the video evidence that has come to light thus far, would indicate that Kyle Rittenhouse will not be found guilty — so long as the justice system doesn’t try to sacrifice him as a peace offering to the mob.
And the violent protests will continue…