JULIAN ZELIZER:
Hey, welcome back, everyone. I’m Julian Zelizer of The Long View.
JONATHAN ALTER:
And I’m Jonathan Alter, an overdressed Jonathan Alter from Old Goats.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
You know, in this really difficult few weeks, given everything that’s happened in Minneapolis, especially after the killing of Alex Pretti, I’ve been thinking, and many people have, about another incident back in August of 2020. When a 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse at the time drove to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where there were protests taking place.
This was in the aftermath of George Floyd. There were protests there about another shooting, of Jacob Blake. He brought with him a gun and he went with a group of people saying they wanted to protect the businesses and the community. He shot an AR-15 style rifle, killing two people and injuring another.
He was acquitted in November of 2021 after going on trial. Then he became a bit of a celebrity for conservatives. He appeared at Turning Point USA, he appeared on podcasts, President Trump met with him and took a photograph with him and had nice things to say, and I think he now has a YouTube channel. I was thinking about how that episode, what you think about that relative to what’s happened after Friday, after Freddie getting killed.
JONATHAN ALTER:
Well, there’s a huge double standard, obviously. This kid was so celebrated. They had him give a speech at the Republican convention, and it became kind of the mascot for the Proud Boys. But when Alex Pretti brings a gun, carries a gun legally, the president and his lackeys have a problem with that, and they label him a domestic terrorist.
Remember, it’s not just what Kyle Rittenhouse has done. After the Pulse nightclub shooting, Trump said, well, if people had been armed, maybe this wouldn’t have happened, which was not likely to be the case. Trump is in a little bit of a difficult position with his hardcore Second Amendment base, or the part of his base that’s hardcore Second Amendment, because they’re critical of the government now saying that Freddie shouldn’t have brought a gun.
But if the right wing is in a tight spot on this, so are certain liberals, who all of a sudden are talking about Second Amendment rights. In the past, they’ve said, and I’ve been among them, no, the Second Amendment was about militias. It wasn’t about just being able to carry a gun wherever you wanted, concealed. I think one of the many effects of this, and the biggest effect obviously will be on the way ICE operates moving forward, and that’s being discussed in Washington right now.
Another big effect is it does put gun control lower on the list of things that can be addressed, because liberals are rightly defending Alex Pretti and saying he was murdered in cold blood, which he was. Just to reiterate, Rittenhouse used his gun, where from what we can see on the video, Freddie had it on him. They definitely don’t match up in terms of either the character of the person or the use of the weapon. But when these sorts of things get thrust into the public, they give both sides another series of arguing.
