EXCLUSIVE: Charlie Kirk and Jack Posobiec talk to Kyle Rittenhouse after exoneration

Kyle Rittenhouse met with Charlie Kirk and Jack Posobiec on The Charlie Kirk Show to talk about his trial, the media response to him, gun rights, self-defense, and how he dealt with the past year as he was awaiting trial.

The interview was casual, with Rittenhouse even bringing his dogs to the set, along with a spokesperson for the family, Dave Hancock, as the men discussed the impact of the trial on Rittenhouse's life, his family, and his future.

Rittenhouse explained that he spent 87 days in jail because of the incompetence of his previous lawyers, John Pierce and Lin Wood:

The trial, and the events leading up to it, have defined the young man's life. It was on the night of August 25, 2020, that Rittenhouse was in Kenosha, Wisc., where riots had been going on for three nights. His stated goal was to help people and to protect businesses. By the end of the night, he had been threatened and attacked, and had shot three men, killing two.

He turned himself in to police, and once he was arrested, he spent 87 days in jail before being able to remit the required $2 million in bail. His attorneys at the time had raised funds for the bail sum, but didn't use it to get Rittenhouse out of jail, he told Kirk, instead spending that money on fighting his extradition to Wisconsin from Illinois—something Rittenhouse was against. In fact, Rittenhouse said, these attorneys, Lin Wood and John Pierce, contributed to the false narrative against him.

A media firestorm was lit just days after the August incident, in which media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, and The New York Times, among so many others, painted Rittenhouse as a white supremacist domestic terrorist militia man vigilante who went out in Kenosha that night with hate in his heart.

"The next thing you know," Kirk said during the interview, "your entire life gets put in jeopardy because you defend yourself, and you have to be called a murderer, a white supremacist, all of this. Talk about how you dealt with it. How you just dealt with this immediate reversal a human being could go through."

"How I dealt with that," Rittenhouse said, "was I would block out social media. I wouldn't go on my phone. I would just not pay attention to any of that and just focus on what's in front of me."

Democrat politicians, including then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, his running mate Kamala Harris, Hollywood celebrities, and leftist pundits spoke against Rittenhouse, making claims that crossed state lines with an AR-15 which he was not legally allowed to have, that he went out to a protest with the intention of hurting people, that was a violent person at a peaceful protest. It turned out, upon trial and the revelation of the facts, from eye witnesses, video footage, and Rittenhouse's own testimony, that none of these things were true.

As the evidence mounted in Rittenhouse's favor, and it became increasingly clear that he had acted in self-defense, regardless of popular pundits and politicians making false claims that he had not and spreading wild lies about him.

Rittenhouse had a lot of support from people in the public, specifically those on the conservative side of the political spectrum. He didn't know right off how much support he had, but it meant a great deal to him and to his family.

"Did you have a sense," Posobiec asked, "both during the trial and beforehand, that yes, obviously there was an entire mainstream media and political, really, establishment that was hell bent on making you the scapegoat for everything that happened in Kenosha, and really a lot of 2020. But did you also realize that there were millions of people that had your back?"

Rittenhouse said that he was grateful for that. "Thank you so much to people who do support me and have donated. It means a lot to me and my family, helping us pay for these legal bills. It just means so much to me, and we couldn't have done it without them. And it's just amazing. And with the whole people who didn't support me, I didn't know, I actually didn't know how much support I really had until I got bailed out. I didn't know how much of the world supported the right to self defense," he said.