Joy Behar Panics: Rittenhouse Verdict Means 'Any Nutcase Can Come and Shoot Me at a Protest!'

November 22nd, 2021 3:15 PM

The bitter hosts of The View continued their vile character assassination of recently acquitted Illinois teen Kyle Rittenhouse, Monday. ABC co-host Joy Behar doubled down on her outright lie that Rittenhouse “came to initiate violence” while pal Sunny Hostin suggested the white teen was a racist who valued property more than human life.

Since it was the first show after Friday’s verdict, Joy Behar ranted that because the court ruled in “Rottenhouse’s” favor, it “opened the Pandora’s Box for all the crazies out there.” 

She perpetuated the left’s fear mongering that armed teenagers were going to be targeting innocent liberal protesters:

“I can't go and protest without worrying that some nutcase is going to have a gun, cross the state line and come and shoot me. That's the problem. That's what I have to worry about!” she ranted to audience applause. 

Hostin feared the same: “I think people now will think that someone can legally come to a protest and under the cover of law kill me!”

 

 

After co-host Sara Haines pushed back a little, saying that according to Wisconsin law, Rittenhouse had a clear-cut case of self-defense, Behar chimed in with a lie: “Except he came there to initiate violence!

Like many media outlets did on Friday, the hosts then tried to make this case about racism. Sunny Hostin consistently boils everything down to race so it’s no surprise she did the same here.

Behar even helpfully set her up, asking, “Sunny, if he were black would he be free now?”

“No. He wouldn't be alive now,” Hostin said smugly as the audience weirdly cheered for that divisive statement.

She also smeared Rittenhouse as a racist who cared less about people than he did property.

“There's another notion this isn't about race. Not about race, we still do have to remember that he responded to a protest about racial injustice so that's a part of this and instead of you know, protesting he was there to protect property as property is more important than life,” she decried, as the audience agreed.

But as NewsBusters’ deputy managing editor Nick Fondacaro noted on Sunday, the media are ignoring a ruling in Florida that flies in the face of this notion:

[O]n the same day Rittenhouse was found not guilty so did Andrew Coffee IV, a black man in Florida. In this case, Coffee shot at Sheriff’s deputies during a SWAT raid on his home where he was asleep when the deputies announced themselves and arrested his father. When they broke through his bedroom window, Coffee started firing to defend himself and his girlfriend was killed by deputies in the crossfire. He pleaded self-defense and the jury found him not guilty.

While assassinating Rittenhouse’s character, the hosts tried to clean up the reputations of the two men he killed: Joseph Rosenbaum, the convicted child molester who chased and threatened Rittenhouse while shouting racial epithets, and Anthony Huber, who hit him with a skateboard, grabbed Rittenhouse's gun and also had a violent past (click "expand"):

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Let me show you what got me, the thing that no one was really talking about, the father of Anthony Huber one of the young man shot and killed by Kyle Rittenhouse, puts things in perspective for me and on CNN. 

[plays CNN clip of Huber's father]

GOLDBERG: And now he -- he wasn't doing anything. He was trying -- he saw an active shooter. He saw someone get shot, he thought he was doing the right thing. 

HOSTIN: That’s right.

GOLDBERG: And so, even -- even all the excuses in the world does not change the fact that three people got shot. Two people were murdered. To me it's murdered. I'm sorry. I will never forget that man -- 

HOSTIN: He lost his son. Another family lost their son. What we're also seeing in this case is a lot of the victim character assassination that we do often see in the black community and I was surprised at that, because Rittenhouse didn't know the backgrounds of those guys, he didn't know one may have molested a child or another one had mental issues, he knew none of that, all he knew that someone was on the other side of the AR-15 and we need to keep that in mind.

BEHAR: Clarify who molested the child 

HOSTIN: Rosenbaum.

BEHAR: That was not a guy who was there protesting for Black Lives Matter.

HOSTIN: We do not believe that’s the case.

Hostin also excused Kenosha rioters as “the voice of the unheard”:

On Monday, there were protests. And there were a very small group, they say it was about one percent of the crowd started burning some buildings, yes, no question about it and started ransacking some buildings. Martin Luther King said a riot is the voice of the unheard, and that’s what we saw…

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Read a partial transcript below:

ABC's The View
11/22/21
11:03 a.m. Eastern

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: I'm not a racist person. I supported the BLM movement. I support peacefully protesting.

JOY BEHAR: Then why did he go there with a gun? [applause] [scoffs] Sorry. 

BEHAR: I mean, it's the question. If you support it why did you go there with a gun? [ Applause ] That's scary the whole thing is scary. 

I'm going to read a quote from Cornell William Brooks, a former president CEO of NAACP. He said what the case says legally may be good for Rittenhouse, he called him Rottenhouse, I almost read Rottenhouse, [laughter] what it says culturally is dangerous with radicalized violence. “ This is going to have serious repercussions in my opinion. We can talk the legality of it and everything else, for me I can't go and protest without worrying that some nutcase is going to have a gun, cross the state line and come and shoot me. That's the problem. That's what I have to worry about. [ Applause ] I come from the generation we protested the Vietnam War and 

all of that, I believe in protests. I really believe in it. You need to be there and you need to speak your mind because people in government don't always listen to you. And so that's my fear now, that he's opened Pandora's box for some crazies out there. 

(....)

11:07 a.m. Eastern

SARA HAINES: All those things can be true at the same time. He should haven't been there, not arm yourself. 

JOY BEHAR: Sunny, if he were black would he be free now? 

SUNNY HOSTIN: No. He wouldn't be alive now. [audience CHEERS]

Look, I don't -- I don't -- I disagree it was a cut and dry case of self-defense, I think that when you certainly go to a place with an AR-15-style weapon that and you shoot someone and you're running away from that shooting and people are running after you because they think you're an active shooter, I don't know that's a cut and dry self-defense case as to the second person and the third person.[applause] But all that being said, something that I said during the show last week was that this is I think indicative of where we are as a country right?. It's sort of a bellwether where we are as a country. You have people who will now be afraid to exercise their constitutional right to protest. So many people are very supportive of this young man, Kyle Rittenhouse as this hero of the Second Amendment, as this hero of self-defense, and I think people now will think that someone can legally come to a protest and under the cover of law kill me.

(....)

11:09 a.m. Eastern

SUNNY HOSTIN: On Monday, there were protests. And there were a very small group, they say it was about one percent of the crowd started burning some buildings, yes, no question about it and started ransacking some buildings. Martin Luther King said a riot is the voice of the unheard, and that’s what we saw. Tuesday, when this happened, just two days after the shooting, the protesters were corralled by the police and they were shot and tear gassed with pellets and also of course, tear gas.

HAINES: Was Kyle Rittenhouse apart of that?

(....)

11:16 a.m. Eastern

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Let me show you what got me, the thing that no one was really talking about, the father of Anthony Huber one of the young man shot and killed by Kyle Rittenhouse, puts things in perspective for me and on CNN. 

[plays CNN clip]

GOLDBERG: And now he -- he wasn't doing anything. He was trying -- he saw an active shooter. He saw someone get shot, he thought he was doing the right thing. 

HOSTIN: That’s right.

GOLDBERG: And so, even -- even all the excuses in the world does not change the fact that three people got shot. Two people were murdered. To me it's murdered. I'm sorry. I will never forget that man -- 

HOSTIN: He lost his son. Another family lost their son. What we're also seeing in this case is a lot of the victim character assassination that we do often see in the black community and I was surprised at that, because Rittenhouse didn't know the backgrounds of those guys, he didn't know one may have molested a child or another one had mental issues, he knew none of that, all he knew that someone was on the other side of the AR-15 and we need to keep that in mind.

BEHAR: Clarify who molested the child 

HOSTIN: Rosenbaum.

BEHAR: That was not a guy who was there protesting for Black Lives Matter.

HOSTIN: We do not believe that’s the case.

HOSTIN: There's another notion this isn't about race. Not about race, we still do have to remember that he responded to a protest about racial injustice so that's a part of this and instead of you know, [applause] protesting he was there to protect property as property is more important than life.