White House’s Answer on Why Joe Biden Called Kyle Rittenhouse a ‘White Supremacist’ Is Unacceptable

Last week we reported on how Kyle Rittenhouse’s mother Wendy went on Fox News, where she rightly proceeded to rip President Biden over what she called his “defamation” of her son during the 2020 presidential election campaign.

Specifically, Biden tweeted out a video roughly a month before Election Day that included a montage of clips including scenes from the violent BLM/Antifa-led Kenosha riots from August 2020 and the racist Charlottesville “tiki torch” event from August 2017 – effectively conflating the two, the latter of which took place the night before the infamous “Unite the Right” rally that left counter-protester Heather Heyer dead after James Alex Fields Jr drove a car into counter-protesters.

In the tweet, Biden falsely proclaimed Trump “refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night.” The video included an image of Rittenhouse, who in August of 2020 during a Kenosha riot killed two white protesters and injured one in what his defense attorneys argue were classic cases of self-defense:

There’s no other way to put it: the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night. pic.twitter.com/Q3VZTW1vUV

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 30, 2020

One of the prosecution’s own star witnesses as much as confirmed the self-defense argument a week ago today in what some have argued was the definitive moment the prosecution may have lost their case.

But despite the facts being on the defense’s side in this case, there’s little doubt that public stances made by Biden and others on the left about Rittenhouse were inappropriate and unprofessional and could have led to an improperly influenced jury as the case was being built against Rittenhouse.

That was a point Rittenhouse’s mom made in her comments to Fox News. In turn, the network’s White House reporter Peter Doocy asked Biden press secretary Jen Psaki today about Biden calling Rittenhouse a “white supremacist.” Her first answer was to default to the “I’m not going to comment on an ongoing trial” before she launched into an attack on “vigilantes” though she didn’t specifically refer to Rittenhouse as one (but the insinuation was clear):

Doocy: "Why did President Biden suggest that Kyle Rittenhouse, on trial in Kenosha, is a white supremacist?"Psaki claims she's "not going to speak to…an ongoing trial," but then attacks Rittenhouse as an example of "vigilantes patrolling our communities with assault rifles" pic.twitter.com/NlctK7Azu8

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) November 15, 2021

When Doocy pressed her on the matter, she went back to the “no comment on an ongoing trial” statement and moved on to another reporter:

Doocy: "But the President has spoken to it already and his mom now…came out saying that [he] defamed her son and that claims — she claims that when the President suggested her son is a white supremacist, he was doing that to win votes. Is that what happened?"

(5/5) pic.twitter.com/0Cq584wCaw

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) November 15, 2021

I’m sorry, but Psaki’s dodging on this question is not acceptable. The White House had a chance here to backtrack on the tweet from Biden from September 2020 and opted not to, doing what Biden should have done in 2020 on the case but didn’t. But because he did, a retraction was in order, and they should have stated something along the lines of “Biden mistakenly made those comments as a presidential candidate but as president understands it bad form to comment on an ongoing investigation/case/trial.”

They could have walked it back, even could have maybe tried to spin Biden’s tweet as not about Rittenhouse per se (which still would have been a lie), but instead, they give the “no comment on an ongoing trial” default answer and then turned around and attacked him as a vigilante anyway, further defaming him considering the fact that the media frowns on “vigilante justice” almost as much as they do the police simply doing their jobs on a day to day basis in Democrat-run cities across this country.

It’s just really bad for Biden when not even his own handlers can clean up his messes, in the process further muddying the waters with their own bad answers. When this trial is over, and assuming Rittenhouse is found not guilty, the smart thing for him to do would be to go Nick Sandmann on the media, and in Rittenhouse’s case the government, too, for what they’ve done to him.

This should not ever happen to an American citizen, all of who deserve the presumption of innocence until proven guilty and whose trials should not be unduly influenced by prejudiced elected officials and wannabe “leaders” seeking to win “woke” voters regardless of what the facts actually are.