Fox News correspondent Gillian Turner is urging the conservative network’s viewers not to interpret Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal as a cause for celebration.
In Monday’s installment of “Outnumbered,” which touched on President Joe Biden’s varied responses to the verdict, Turner noted that it was “particularly hard for facts to break through all the emotion” in the media’s coverage of the trial.
“This case is particularly tragic because Kyle may have been acquitted, but he’s not a hero here,” she said. “There are no heroes, there are no winners. There is no victory lap for Kyle or anybody else to take.”
Turner then went on to suggest that the “threat of more protests, more riots” could increase in the wake of the verdict.
“It seems like, yet again, America is kind of on this razor-thin knife’s edge,” she said, “and everything is flammable and could go pear-shaped in an instant.”
Rittenhouse, 18, was acquitted of all charges last week in the 2020 shooting deaths of two unarmed men and the wounding of another. The shootings, which Rittenhouse said were acts of self-defense, took place amid protests that erupted in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last summer following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man.
Rittenhouse’s acquittal immediately drew praise in right-wing media circles and other groups that champion gun rights. At least three Republican lawmakers have offered the teen congressional internship positions.
An interview with Rittenhouse is scheduled to air Monday on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Carlson, a staunch defender of Rittenhouse, also revealed last week that his team had been working with the Illinois teen on a forthcoming documentary.