Wisconsin authorities arrested a 17-year-old white boy named Kyle Rittenhouse for premeditated murder Wednesday. The Illinois resident had attended a protest in Kenosha Tuesday night, where there has been serious unrest for days following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, who was shot in the back seven times in front of his children.
A very disturbing video of part of the events (as well as an account from a Washington Post reporter) shows Rittenhouse running along a street in Kenosha along with a handful of protesters. He trips, rolls into a sitting position, fires once, gets into a scuffle with someone carrying a skateboard, and fires again. Seconds later, sitting back up and with people standing several feet away, he appears to take deliberate aim and fires a third time. Two of the protesters are dead and another was seriously wounded.
Fox News' Tucker Carlson defended Rittenhouse on his show Wednesday evening. He argued that armed vigilante terrorism is simply to be expected when there are protests or riots:
It doesn't bode well that the most popular cable news host in American history is making excuses for accused vigilante murderers. That, apparently, is what conservatives like Carlson mean by "law and order."