When teenage vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted in 2021 on all charges after shooting three people and killing two of them at a police-brutality protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin—with an AR-15 the prosecution argued he wasn’t legally allowed to possess—the far right lionized him as a hero who had taken the law into his own hands to protect and defend innocent Kenoshans from marauding rioters. At least four Republican lawmakers said they’d like to give him an internship.31 Tucker Carlson wondered on air why people were surprised that “seventeen-year-olds with rifles decided they had to
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