Tag: kyle rittenhouse
Kyle Rittenhouse

White Nationalists And Conspiracy Kooks Behind Kyle Rittenhouse Foundation

A new foundation for Kyle Rittenhouse — who killed two people during an anti-racist protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020 — is run by a far-right gun extremist who once appeared on a white nationalist program, as well as a Christian nationalist who defended the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

According to the Texas Tribune, the Rittenhouse Foundation lists two directors in addition to Rittenhouse himself — Texas Gun Rights President Chris McNutt and Defend Texas Liberty PAC treasurer Shelby Griesinger.

The foundation’s registered agent is the law firm of Tony McDonald. McDonald’s firm has also represented the conservative organization Empower Texans which — along with Defend Texas Liberty PAC — has received millions of dollars from fossil fuel billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks, who were early funders for conservative media outlets PragerU and The Daily Wire.

Rittenhouse became a celebrity in right-wing media after shooting three people at a Black Lives Matter rally in August 2020, and moved to Texas last year following his acquittal. He has since become increasingly active in state politics, including appearing at a rally with Daniel Miller, who advocates for Texas’ secession from the United States. Rittenhouse’s new foundation appears to be part of an effort to expand his footprint on the right, in which he has surrounded himself with predictably extreme figures.

On May 13, 2021, McNutt appeared on The Stew Peters Show, whose eponymous host had by that time already pushed election denial and Covid-19 conspiracy theories, and called for increased police militancy following the killing of Daunte Wright, a Black man, by Minnesota cop Kimberly Potter, who is white. Just days before McNutt’s appearance, Peters said a guest of his “rightly compared this jab to the Holocaust.” Peters has fully adopted white nationalist, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.

Most of McNutt’s social media presence is dedicated to celebrating reactionary gun culture, but he also veers into other right-wing topics. Like many conservatives, he opposes the Covid-19 vaccine, and once claimed that Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, “is responsible for more deaths than Adolf Hitler.”

McNutt frequently posts anti-trans, anti-drag, and anti-gay comments, and has advanced a conspiracy theory that Planned Parenthood “targeted … black babies” with the aim of subjugating African American communities.

Griesinger, McNutt’s fellow director, is a young but prominent activist in Texas’ far-right scene. She was profiled as one of the state’s “Under 30 in Politics” by Current Revolt, a media organization the Texas Tribune identifies as “associated with the far right in Texas politics.” In that interview, Griesinger said she “100%” supported then-gubernatorial candidate Don Huffines, who had months earlier referred to migrants crossing the border as an “invasion” and called a state-sponsored resource page for LGBTQ people “offensive.” Just weeks after Griesinger’s Q&A was published, Huffines declined to fire a staffer with deep ties to white nationalists.

Like McNutt, Griesinger frequently espouses far-right views on Twitter, now known as X. In April, she pushed a conspiracy theory that the CIA was behind the vigilante shooting at Comet Ping Pong, specifically that the agency was attempting to “destroy” a “computer server” at the restaurant. This baseless accusation is an extension of the broader Pizzagate conspiracy theory, a precursor to QAnon. In August, she tweeted a full embrace of Christian nationalism.

Also in August, Griesinger retweeted a racist post from James Kirpatrick, the pseudonym of white nationalist writer Kevin DeAnna, a writer at the virulently anti-immigrant website VDare. One month earlier, she’d retweeted a post — quoting tweeting another racist post — that celebrated the deaths of asylum seekers in the Mediterranean Sea (the original post was later deleted by the author and the account was suspended).

Griesinger engages in bigoted rhetoric under her own name as well. She tweeted that “Jews & Muslims worship a false god,” and encouraged her followers to be “okay with saying ‘I have a problem with my child’s teacher being gay.’” She argued in favor of laws to restrict abortion rights despite their unpopularity, analogizing anti-abortion activists with the abolitionist movement. “Ending slavery wasn’t a winning issue,” Griesinger tweeted. “Most of Germany supported Hitler.”

Like McNutt, Griesinger advanced the conspiracy theory that the goal of abortion providers is “exterminating the black race.” She denied that structural racism plays a role in community violence, arguing instead that “black people are disproportionately shooting each other” absent any other political context.

The Rittenhouse Foundation “ensures the Second Amendment is preserved through education and legal assistance,” according to the Texas Tribune. The specifics of what that looks like remains to be seen, but the foundation may not be especially transparent. Several hours after theTexas Tribune report, Griesinger temporarily locked her Twitter account.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Careless Adults Take Note: 'Children Will Listen, Children Will See'

Careless Adults Take Note: 'Children Will Listen, Children Will See'

Careful the things you say

Children will listen

Careful the things you do

Children will see

And learn.”

At his death late last month at the age of 91, composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim was praised for writing for character rather than the hit parade. Playwright Arthur Laurents, who worked with him on several productions, once said that Sondheim “writes a lyric that could only be sung by the character for which it was designed.”

However, the audience for his work is everyone.

At this moment, the words of “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods sadly resonate in a country where children are learning the wrong lessons from adults who should know better.

In Michigan, family, friends and classmates are mourning Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre, Hana St. Juliana and Justin Shilling, killed in an attack in a place that should be safe — high school. A 15-year-old was charged in the murders at Oxford High School, and in a rarity, his parents were charged with involuntary manslaughter for what prosecutors said was behavior that made them complicit.

Guide them along the way

Children will glisten

Children will look to you

For which way to turn.”

According to Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald and authorities, the parents bought a gun that their son called “my new beauty.” Mom spent time testing it out with him and texted him, “LOL I’m not mad at you … you have to learn not to get caught,” when teachers found him searching online for ammunition. Perhaps realizing too late the seriousness of the tragedy her son is charged with unleashing, she allegedly texted him, “Don’t do it.”

When the shooting started, Dad called authorities to tell them it could be his missing gun — and his son.

Both parents met with school officials the morning of the shooting and were advised that his behavior warranted counseling within 48 hours. But they apparently resisted taking him home or getting him the “help” the accused asked for in a disturbing note.

The teenage Kyle Rittenhouse was judged not guilty in Wisconsin and walked free after killing two men and seriously wounding a third. His mother, Wendy, was never charged and has said she didn’t really know what he was doing the night he traveled to Kenosha to patrol the streets holding a weapon. But where was the judgment of a parent who, according to prosecutors, accompanied her teen son to a bar where he and Proud Boys drank and celebrated? Come to think of it, where were the voices chanting “What about the culture?” and “Where is the father?” — questions always posed when a youth of color does far less than shoot and kill two people?

New Normal

For years, because of pressure from the NRA, gun rights groups and lawmakers, federal money for gun research at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to “advocate or promote gun control” pretty much dried up. Now, some research funding has been reinstated, just when studies are showing that the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the impact of the U.S. gun violence crisis.

Very few Americans are denying anyone’s right to own a gun — for protection, for hunting, for target practice. But is common sense too much to expect?

Where indeed was the sense or the empathy when, just days after the Oxford High shooting, Rep. Thomas Massie posted a holiday photo on Twitter, with family members of all ages smiling while displaying guns. The caption: “Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo.”

The Kentucky Republican’s tweet got some support but also criticism, including from Fred Guttenberg, a gun control activist whose 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was killed in the 2018 Parkland high school shooting in Florida. In response to Massie’s message, Guttenberg tweeted a photo he took of his smiling child and another image of her gravesite.

Bad Choices

One lawmaker moved to outrage by the Michigan school shooting was Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, whose speech just after he learned the news was certainly informed by his passion for stricter gun control laws and the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in his own state that killed 26 people, including 20 little children. “It happens here, in America,” he said, “because we choose to let it happen.”

Will more parents and lawmakers be as outraged over school shootings that are becoming shockingly routine as they seem to be about teaching children anything about America’s sometimes violent history and teaching Americans to do and be better?

Acknowledging facts, it is charged, could ruin a child’s innocence.

These are children for whom active shooter drills have become as much a part of the curriculum as English, math and chemistry.

At Oxford High in Michigan, as a classroom of terrified students hid, there was a knock on the door, and from the other side came a voice indicating that he was a friend, not a foe. The suspicious students did not believe him and decided to take their chances by escaping out of a window instead.

It turns out it really was law enforcement knocking. But who could blame the high schoolers for their lack of trust in people who are supposed to know best, who have promised and failed to protect them?

These children — and to me they are children — lost their innocence a long time ago, if they ever had it.

“Careful the spell you cast

Not just on children

Sometimes the spell may last

Past what you can see

And turn against you.”

Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun and The Charlotte Observer, and as national correspondent for Politics Daily. She is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project and host of the Equal Time podcast. Follow her on Twitter @mcurtisnc3.

'The Gold Medal Winner': A One-Act Play

'The Gold Medal Winner': A One-Act Play


Donald Trump is in his study at Mar-a-Lago on the telephone.

TRUMP: Marjorie?

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: Mr. President!

TRUMP: Could you speak a little louder?

GREENE: Mr. President!

TRUMP: I called to hear your voice.

GREENE: Kevin McCarthy has me still stripped of my committee assignments.

TRUMP: Terrible, just terrible, but love when you say that. So, remember the last call, when I told you to demand that Kevin strip those nasty Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill of their assignments?

GREENE: Strip them RINOs!

TRUMP: Can’t wait for that cartoon. Loved you in Gosar’s cartoon carrying the big sword.

GREENE: Me and Lauren Boebert, right alongside Paul Gosar. Off with their heads!

TRUMP: You’re my super-heroes.

GREENE: They censured Gosar—stripped him of his committee assignments.

TRUMP: Now he’s almost up there with you. But see how Kevin had to crawl. He promised you and Gosar would get your assignments back if he’s Speaker. He didn’t start out there when he took yours away. He’s moving. Just not on two feet. Crawling.

GREENE: But he made Lauren apologize for that joke about that towelhead Omar being a terrorist with a backpack.

TRUMP: She hit it out of the park.

GREENE: McCarthy made her apologize about Islamophobia.

TRUMP: If you can’t have that phobia, what phobia can you have?

GREENE: Vaccine Nazis! Mask mandates! You know, we can look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about. This woman is mentally ill.

TRUMP: When I ripped off my mask on the Truman Balcony after returning to the White House after having Covid it was a Clark Kent into Superman moment.

GREENE: Super-hero, Mr. President!

TRUMP: And they jumped all over you about the gold star.

GREENE: The same ones who voted for the infrastructure bill.

TRUMP: First they came for you, then they voted for the infrastructure bill.

GREENE: They made me apologize—and they made me go to the Holocaust Museum. OK, there’s no comparison to the Holocaust. I believe that forced mask and forced vaccines or vaccine passports are a type of discrimination, and I'm very much against that type of discrimination. It’s more like Jim Crow than the Holocaust.

TRUMP: Speaking of Black Lives Matter, that was genius of you and Matt Gaetz to compete about which one of you would hire Kyle Rittenhouse as an intern. Genius.

GREENE: Matt started it.

TRUMP: Kyle, I got to know him a little bit. Really a nice young man. He wanted to know if he could come over and say hello because he was a fan.

GREENE: I went Matt one better. I nominated Rittenhouse for the Congressional Gold Medal.

TRUMP: If that’s not self-defense, nothing is! How can that not be a Gold Medal?

GREENE: I looked it up. George Washington, Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, Jackie Robinson. And--can you believe it--the Capitol Police who supposedly “protected” the Capitol on January 6. So, yeah, Kyle Rittenhouse. Gold Medal, not gold star, Gold Medal.

TRUMP: Think about adding Ashli Babbitt for a Congressional Gold Medal. Truly incredible person. I did a video for her birthday. She just wanted Make Pence to do the right thing. If this happened to the ‘other side,’ there would be riots all over America.

GREENE: Matt wouldn’t get on board with the Gold Medal. He put out a statement: “We are concerned that awarding Kyle with a Congressional Gold Medal will give him a big head during the internship with our office.” Yeah, he’s going to be in my office. We’re going to have to flip a coin.

TRUMP: Keep it all up. It’s working.

GREENE: The apologies? Or the Gold Medal?

TRUMP: Every time Kevin makes you apologize, or Boebert apologizes, or Gosar is censured, he loses. You gain, he loses. It’s all working. The Gold Medal works. Everything you do works. They’re making you the martyr. Everyone’s a martyr. That dead Ashli, that nice Kyle, Gosar with his cartoon, Boebert with her phobia, and you with your Holocaust. And that just means you’re like me because nobody is a bigger martyr. Watch closely. You know why Kevin said he’d get you and Gosar your assignments back? Flop sweat. Fear. Panic. Angst.

GREENE: What’s angst?

TRUMP: It’s your perfume. I can smell it a thousand miles away. Maybe getting Covid even helped my sense of smell.

GREENE: Yeah, own the libs.

TRUMP: It’s really about owning the Republicans. When they crucify you, you’re Jesus. When you’re the martyr, they follow you.

GREENE: Only you’re not Jesus.

TRUMP: The meek do not inherit the earth. Nice guys finish last. Suckers get what they deserve.

GREENE: You have a way with words.

TRUMP: Take Kevin—the more he’s frightened, the more he’s our slave. He knows you’re me. If he makes you a martyr, he gives you power over him. Just because I’m there. You’re my little terrorist. That’s how we are going to keep him as “My Kevin.”

GREENE: But what about Mark Meadows saying you should be Speaker?

TRUMP: Marjorie, sweetheart, that was Mark having a little fun with Kevin. Dance, Kevin, dance. I don’t need to be Speaker to be Speaker. Not when I have you. You win the medal. You’re the Speaker.

GREENE: Mr. President!

Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln:A Self-Made Man,Wrestling With His Angel ,andAll the Powers of Earth. His play This Town, about a scandalous White House dog, was produced in 1995 by LA TheatreWorks. This is the eleventh in his "Trump Cycle" series of one-act plays published in The National Memo, including The Pardon, Epstein's Ghost, Ivanka's Choice, Sunset Boulevard, The Exclusive, The Role Model, A Modest Proposal, The Exit Interview, The Hitler Gospel, and Father Knows Best.

Why The QAnon Cult Is Going Sour On Kyle Rittenhouse

Why The QAnon Cult Is Going Sour On Kyle Rittenhouse

Reprinted with permission from DailyKos

I have to confess, I can’t figure Kyle Rittenhouse out. One minute, his lawyers are repeatedly throwing out a Tucker Carlson film crew. The next minute, Rittenhouse is sitting down for an interview with Carlson, and is traveling to Mar-a-Lago to meet Trump.

Whatever the case, it looks like one element of the deplorable world is turning hard on one of its latest heroes. Apparently the QAnon world is not pleased that Rittenhouse dared speak ill of one of its top luminaries—his former lawyer, Lin Wood. It turns out that Rittenhouse and Wood are currently in a legal battle over the money raised to get Rittenhouse out on bail last year.

According to HuffPost, the feud between Rittenhouse and those who are still “trusting the plan” dates to Rittenhouse’s interview last Tuesday night with Ashleigh Banfield on NewsNation. (Watch a clip below.)


If you’re a QNut and you’ve lost Greene, that says something.

I have to confess, I’m taking Rittenhouse’s desire to stay out of politics with a grain of salt given his trip to Mar-a-Lago. But it seems Rittenhouse is telling the truth about Wood trying to screw him. After all, he told Carlson the same thing on the deplorables’ favorite network. Moreover, his portrayal of Wood hews closely to what his former law partners are saying about him in a suit they filed against him in August 2020. They claim that they severed ties with Wood in response to a long pattern of bizarre behavior, including rambling and incoherent communications and claims that God himself was directing Wood.

It says a lot about QAnon that it’s siding with a guy who not only sat on money intended to get Rittenhouse out of jail, but is now trying to claw it back.


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