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Trump declines to condemn supporter accused of murder in Kenosha: "He was trying to get away"

31 August 2020
Dan Ackermann

President Trump declined at a press conference Monday to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old supporter of his charged with murder for the shooting deaths of two people during protests in Kenosha last week.

What he's saying: "That was an interesting situation. You saw the same tape that I saw it. He was trying to get away from them, it looks like it. He fell and then they very violently attacked him. It was something that we're looking at right now and it's under investigation. But I guess he was in very big trouble, he probably would have been killed."

The backdrop: Rittenhouse is accused of traveling to Kenosha from his home in Antioch, Illinois, to protect local businesses from violent protests that erupted in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

  • Video footage from the night shows Rittenhouse, armed with semi-automatic rifle, turning and firing on two separate occasions at groups of people who were chasing him.
  • Rittenhouse has been charged on six counts, including first degree reckless homicide and first degree intentional homicide.
  • Asked whether he thinks armed private citizens should be responding to protests, Trump said he thinks "everything should be taken care of by law enforcement." He then pivoted to defending police and attacking "this horrible left-wing ideology that is permeating our country."

The big picture: Trump spent much of the press briefing attacking Joe Biden for his response to violent protests. Biden has issued several statements condemning the violence and spoke out against it in a major speech in Pittsburgh on Monday, but Trump demanded that his opponent specifically call out "left-wing violence" like antifa.

  • Asked whether he would condemn his own supporters who were filmed firing paintballs at protesters in Portland this weekend, Trump defended them as "peaceful" and claimed that the paintballs were a "defensive mechanism."
  • He then pointed out that one of the men who had traveled to Portland for a pro-Trump rally had been shot and killed, calling it "disgraceful" and falsely claiming to a CNN reporter that it was "your supporters" who shot him. The investigation in that case is ongoing.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.