Donald Trump Jr. Just “Boys Will Be Boys’d” Kyle Rittenhouse, the Teen Accused of Murdering Two Protesters

Donald Trump Jr. just joined the list of conservative voices jumping to defend Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenage Trump supporter charged with murdering two anti-racism protesters and injuring another. Don Jr’s basic defense boils down to a casual boys will be boys.

During an interview on Extra, when asked why his daddy hasn’t condemned Rittenhouse’s actions, Trump Jr said, “We’re waiting for due process. We’re not jumping to a conclusion.”

“If I put myself in Kyle Rittenhouse[‘s shoes], maybe I shouldn’t have been there,” he continued. “He’s a young kid. I don’t want young kids running around the streets with AR-15s. … Maybe I wouldn’t have put myself in that situation—who knows? We all do stupid things at 17.”

“It’s a little beyond stupid,” host Rachel Lindsay suggested.

“Really stupid—fine,” Trump replied, refusing to take the lifeline handed to him. “But we all have to let due process play out and let due process take its course.”

Of course, Trump, like his father, has had no interest in “due process” when condemning Black Lives Matter protesters. He has repeatedly decried all protesters as being “antifa” and he skipped the whole due process thing in decrying the shooting at the pro-Trump counterprotest in Portland, where, as he tweeted, “an innocent Trump supporter [was] killed by a leftwing anarchist.”

As for dismissing multiple murders as the kind of “stupid thing” all teenagers do, I don’t know who would think, let alone say that kind of thing unless they themselves spent their teenage years doing some murders. Not that I’m saying Don Jr. did that–I would never say such a thing without first letting “due process play out,” obviously. It’s just curious.

Trump was on Extra to promote his new book, which has the absolutely incredible title, Liberal Privilege: Joe Biden and the Democrats Defense of the Indefensible. I haven’t read the book so I don’t know what he considers to be “liberal privilege” but it appears that conservative privilege is getting the president’s son to defend you on television after you cross state lines to murder people.

But maybe Don Jr. is contractually obligated to defend the indefensible during his book tour, who knows?

(via The Hill, image: OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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