Here is what I thought was true about Kyle Rittenhouse in the last days of August 2020: The 17-year-old was a racist vigilante. I thought he drove across state lines, to Kenosha, Wisc., with an illegally acquired semi-automatic rifle to a town to which he had no connection. I thought he went there because he knew there were Black Lives Matter protests and he wanted to start a fight. And I thought that by the end of the evening of August 25, 2020 he had done just that: killing two peaceful protestors and injuring a third.
It turns out, I was mostly wrong. And if you relied on the mainstream media when it came to Kyle Rittenhouse, you would have been too. Today, a conversation with Jesse Singal, one of the independent journalists who got this story right, and about why so many got it so wrong.
Follow Jesse’s work at jessesingal.substack.com
