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Oops: Looks Like Most Americans Don’t Buy the Left’s Rittenhouse Narrative

Mark Hertzberg/Pool Photo via AP

It appears the activist media’s attempt to portray Kyle Rittenhouse as a rabid white supremacist who showed up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to randomly shoot protesters fighting for black lives hasn’t been quite as successful as they would have liked. Recent polling suggests that most Americans believe the “not guilty” verdict in Rittenhouse’s trial was apt and that the media’s coverage of the matter was unfair.

Rasmussen Reports and Human Events conducted a survey analyzing people’s attitudes toward the outcome of the trial. The report noted:

A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports and Human Events finds that 47% of Likely U.S. voters believe media coverage of the Rittenhouse trial was unfair, including 28% who say the coverage was Not At All Fair. Thirty-six percent (36%) think coverage of the Kenosha trial was fair, including 14% who say it was Very Fair. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The study also found that 47 percent of respondents felt the media coverage was “prejudiced against Rittenhouse,” and 15 percent believed the coverage was “prejudiced in Rittenhouse’s favor.”

Only 23 percent believed the media’s reportage on the Rittenhouse trial was “neutral toward Rittenhouse.”

As you can imagine, opinions of the matter fall along party lines.

From Rasmussen:

Politics clearly influences opinions about the fairness of media coverage. A majority (54%) of Democrats believe media coverage of the Rittenhouse trial was fair, but that belief is shared by only 27% of Republicans and 25% of voters not affiliated with either major party. Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Republicans and 54% of unaffiliated voters think media coverage of the case was unfair, as do 27% of Democrats.

Most respondents indicated that they paid close attention to news reports about the proceedings in Kenosha. Rasmussen noted:

Seventy-six percent (76%) of voters say they closely followed news reports about the trial in Kenosha, including 36% who followed the news Very Closely. Twenty-three percent (23%) didn’t closely follow news of the Rittenhouse trial. Republicans (41%) were more likely than Democrats (36%) or unaffiliated voters (39%) to say they followed news of the trial Very Closely.

Interestingly enough, among those who followed the trial “Very Closely,” 56 percent believed the media’s reporting was biased against Rittenhouse.

Another interesting factor in this equation is that 33 percent of black voters and 50 percent of other minorities agreed that the media was biased against Rittenhouse. Given that the other results fell along party lines, one would expect a lower percentage of black and brown people to agree that the media was biased against the defendant.

But it gets even worse for the left.

A recently-released Morning Consult poll revealed that a majority of Americans agreed with the “not guilty” verdict. The survey showed that “43% of Americans approve of the Wisconsin jury’s not guilty verdict, while 39% disapprove.”

Morning Consult also noted that “[t]he public is far more divided over the Rittenhouse verdict” than it was over Derek Chauvin, the officer who murdered George Floyd. “In April, 77 percent of Americans backed the jury’s decision to convict Chauvin.”

While most of America agrees with the “not guilty” verdict and saw through the media’s biased reporting, it is worth noting that a significant number still bought what the left was selling even though the lies the media told were blatant and easily debunked. But the fact that those who paid closer attention to the trial and the reporting surrounding it were more likely to see the media’s skewed coverage for what it was: Propaganda designed to promote an agenda.

Perhaps this is a lesson for the rest of the country as these issues continue to permeate national conversations. The more people actually pay attention to what the activist media is doing, the less they will trust them.

It seems folks are easier for the activist media to fool when they are paying little attention to the issues of the day and the likes of CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and other activist media outlets. As odd as it sounds, it might be better for Americans to pay more attention to news coverage – that way, they can see what our Fourth Estate is really up to.

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