Kyle Rittenhouse tells Tucker Carlson he’s launched ‘Media Accountability Project’
Teenager Kyle Rittenhouse went on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program to announce that he’s launching a “Media Accountability Project” to make sure no one experiences the grief he endured after shooting three people at a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020.
The 18-year-old from Antioch, Ill., said Monday that “me and my team have decided to launch The Media Accountability Project as a tool to help fund-raise and hold the media accountable for the lies they said and deal with them in court.”
Tucker Carlson books Kyle Rittenhouse immediately after teen gunman’s acquittal
“The media” Rittenhouse targeted on his Fox News appearance includes “The View” host Whoopi Goldberg, who Rittenhouse said called him a murderer even after a Kenosha, Wisc., jury acquitted him in the killing of two unarmed people and the shooting of a third man, who had a gun. He said he also had his sights set on politicians and athletes who are on “the list” of people he may sue.
“I want to hold them accountable for what they did to me, because I don’t want to see anybody have to go through what I went through,” he told Carlson.
The Fox News primetime star was the first TV host to interview Rittenhouse following the teen’s trial in November. He also produced a documentary that was sympathetic to Rittenhouse’s perspective.
Among Rittenhouse’s grievances is the fact he was labelled by some as a white supremacist after a photo emerged of him posing for photos in a Wisconsin bar making a hand-sign associated with the White Power movement. He blamed that incident on a former lawyer who he said “set up” that photo op, which he claimed is not representative of his character. Carlson has been repeatedly accused of harboring such politics.
Rittenhouse’s defense attorney successfully argued his client acted in self-defense in the three shootings he committed using an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle that is expected to be destroyed in April following a January court ruling.
During his homicide trial, Rittenhouse said he was a student at Arizona State, where he was studying nursing. The school later clarified he had signed up for non-degree online courses, but was not a student on campus.
Rittenhouse, who become a right-wing media darling after the shootings, said on a conservative podcast in December that he planned to attend Arizona State University in the spring. According to Forbes, he had not yet applied to the school.
The announcement of Rittenhouse’s new initiative comes a day after former president Donald Trump launched the “Truth Social” media platform, which is being promoted an alternative to conventional social media networks like Twitter and Facebook. Those outlets — where Trump was repeatedly flagged for disseminating misinformation — banned the former president following the violence of Jan. 6. Trump said he met with Rittenhouse after the teen’s acquittal and found him to be a “really nice young man.”
