With a hand from Trump, the right makes Rittenhouse a cause célèbre

KENOSHA, Wis. — Kyle Rittenhouse was charged with homicide after shooting three protesters last week, two of them fatally.

But on Tuesday, Trump supporters had their own way to describe the 17-year-old from Illinois.

They called him a patriot. They called him a hero. They thanked him for defending the city.

Alan Endries was among them. When asked what spurred him to make the 40-mile drive from Milwaukee for President Donald Trump’s visit to Kenosha on Tuesday, he said he felt empathy for Rittenhouse. “I just feel bad for that 17-year-old.”

“He’s a hero. He stuck up for the population, for property owners,” Endries said. “He didn’t come up here just to shoot people. He came up here to defend himself.”

The defense of Rittenhouse by Trump backers reflects the chasm that’s opened across the nation in the wake of deadly violence in Kenosha and Portland. Activists on the left rushed to defend Jacob Blake, a Black man shot seven times in the back by a white police officer, launching a series of demonstrations protesting what they call systemic racism by police.

But many people on the right see a different dominant narrative from Kenosha: A teen who was wrongly charged with homicide and should be lionized. Online crowdfunding petitions have sprouted, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of Rittenhouse. And he's gotten a hand from the president himself, who refused this week to denounce the teen’s actions.

The divisions were on full display Tuesday in Wisconsin, one of the most pivotal swing states in the country. During Trump’s visit, his supporters and Black Lives Matter activists clashed in the street along the main government complex near downtown, trading chants of “All Lives Matter” and “Black Lives Matter.”

BLM activists held signs and voiced support for Blake, whose shooting prompted both peaceful protests and destructive riots. Meantime, more than a dozen Trump supporters interviewed Tuesday questioned the case against Rittenhouse, accusing the media of clouding the facts in the case.

Rittenhouse, wielding a military-style weapon that he could not legally carry at his age, shot three protesters, killing two of them. His attorney has said Rittenhouse acted in self-defense.

“You shouldn’t put a gun in a child’s hand,” Shawn Lyons, a Trump supporter from nearby Burlington, said. “But it was self-defense, definitely. I think we could have avoided the whole thing if we had the National Guard protecting Kenosha at the time instead of children wondering how their family’s business is going to do it with all the mobs.”

“Free him. Free Kyle,” said another man who said he was a Kenosha resident but declined to provide his full name. “He was here to protect us.”

His friend agreed. “He’s a patriot, he was protecting people," said the man, who also declined to give his name. "The people out there are trying to make him look bad. He shot some people — that’s bad. He killed two people, that’s bad, I understand that. But that’s our right as American people, to protect ourselves, right?”

Rittenhouse’s interactions with police have drawn scrutiny, particularly when compared with the swift reactions of officers to Black suspects.

J.A. Moore, a Biden supporter and South Carolina lawmaker whose sister was one of nine Black congregants killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in 2015, recalled how officers brought fast food to the shooter, Dylann Roof. Moore and others compared that to Kenosha police providing water to Rittenhouse and thanking his armed group just before the shooting last week.

“If he was Black, he would be a ‘thug.’ But because he’s white, he’s a ‘young man,'” Moore said of how Rittenhouse has been portrayed. “He’s not a young man. He’s a murderer.”

Rittenhouse has become a cause célèbre on the right. Shortly after the shootings, someone tweeted they wanted Rittenhouse to be their bodyguard. Ann Coulter tweeted back that she wanted the teen to be “my president.” Aubrey Huff, a former baseball player for the San Francisco Giants, hailed him as a “national treasure.”

And Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, quickly dedicated time on his program to the Rittenhouse story. Carlson drew fierce backlash when he seemed to justify the shootings by questioning why anybody would be surprised that “17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”

Carlson was slammed by Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter died in the Parkland, Fla. school shooting in 2018, while others urged his Fox News advertisers to boycott the show.

The rush to defend Rittenhouse prompted a Chicago Sun-Times columnist to ask, "How does a teenage vigilante get to be the hero?"

But right-wing activists and Trump supporters began seizing on new information, including a detailed sequence of the period leading up to the shootings published by The New York Times, to argue that Rittenhouse had no choice but to defend himself. In his first remarks about Rittenhouse, Trump on Monday refused to condemn the shootings and seemed to indicate that they may have been warranted. He also "liked" a tweet offering support for Rittenhouse.

“He needs to be in jail,” said Jayden Brown, a Kenosha resident who is Black.

Bryan Lanza, who worked on the 2016 campaign and remains close to the White House, lauded Trump’s trip to Kenosha and said the celebration of Rittenhouse helps drive a narrative around the president that’s helpful to energizing supporters.

“The facts will play out,” Lanza said. “What plays in the ‘burbs is that you have the right to defend yourself and there’s no district attorney or attorney general that can take that away from you. If the facts bear out that he had a gun for safety reasons and used it to defend himself because he was attacked, that’s a pretty strong case to make.”

But other Republicans think Trump’s refusal to denounce Rittenhouse — including by liking a tweet that said, “Kyle Rittenhouse is a good example of why I decided to vote for Trump” — could backfire. GOP strategist Rob Stutzman said he thinks the rush to support Rittenhouse will repel key segments of voters that the president needs.

“The image of a dopey delusional kid with an AR-15 isn’t comforting to the ‘burbs,” Stutzman said. “The type of weapon he had I think influences those perceptions.”

Rittenhouse’s attorneys have portrayed him as a “good kid” who works as a lifeguard, saw that Kenosha was burning, and spoke with a Kenosha business owner before traveling there to help stand guard.

The lawyers did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment. But in previous statements and cable interviews, they said Rittenhouse’s gun never crossed state lines and was legal in Wisconsin, an open-carry state.

Joe Biden has not spoken in-depth about Rittenhouse, though he said last week he was concerned about armed militias. In a statement Monday after Trump’s news conference, Biden criticized the president for refusing to repudiate the Kenosha shootings.

“He is too weak, too scared of the hatred he has stirred to put an end to it,” Biden said. He urged Trump to join him in saying “violence is wrong, period. No matter who does it, no matter what political affiliation they have. Period.”

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Polls close in Markey-Kennedy primary clash in Massachusetts

BOSTON — Sen. Ed Markey's 44-year congressional career, the Kennedy family legacy and yet another House Democratic committee chairman's gavel were all at stake in Tuesday's Democratic primaries in Massachusetts.

Voters went to the polls to decide whether to renominate Markey, who has held a seat in Congress since the mid-1970s — or replace him with Rep. Joe Kennedy, the 39-year-old grandson of Robert F. Kennedy who chose to take on a sitting senator rather than wait for a spot in the Democratic hierarchy to open up.

Kennedy, the scion of the state's best-known political family, was favored to win when he entered the race a year ago, and many suspected Markey might retire to avoid an embarrassing loss. But Kennedy became the underdog in the final weeks of the campaign. And unlike other primary battles, it’s been Markey, the 74-year-old incumbent, who morphed into the favorite candidate of young liberals taking on the party establishment.

A more typical dynamic was at play in a House district in Western Massachusetts, where House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richie Neal faces a young, progressive opponent, Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse.

Because of their late spot on the primary calendar, Tuesday’s Massachusetts races likely represented some of the final skirmishes between the establishment center-left and insurgent liberal wings of the Democratic Party. The primary electorate was been difficult to gauge — the state rolled out a coronavirus-inspired vote-by-mail program for the first time this year, which may have resulted in record turnout. Around 800,000 voters had already cast ballots ahead of Tuesday, and state officials expected a substantial number of in-person voters to turn out.

Once in the shadow of his better-known colleagues, Markey used his work on the “Green New Deal” and an endorsement from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to develop a national profile over the past year and amass a powerful small-dollar fundraising operation. Markey's strength lay with young progressives and well-educated, suburban voters, many of whom voted by mail. Kennedy was banking on support from voters of color in cities including Worcester, Springfield, Lowell and Boston.

A series of polls released last week showed Kennedy trailing Markey by a significant margin, and the Newton Democrat scrambled to turn things around. Kennedy campaigned for 27 straight hours last week, announced a last-minute endorsement from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and sent members of his famous family onto the campaign trail.

No Kennedy has ever lost an election in Massachusetts, but the four-term congressman entered the primary significantly behind in the polls.

"Anything can happen, but the polling tells us Markey is about to make history," Suffolk University pollster David Paleologos said before the polls closed. "For all of the poll haters — and there are many — this is your opportunity to gloat if we're all wrong, and if Kennedy wins."

Meanwhile, at the House level, national progressive groups including Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement eyed Neal as the next powerful Democrat to knock out of office.

That energy intensified after what Morse decried as an organized smear campaign against him: Groups of College Democrats accused Morse, who is also an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts, of behaving inappropriately toward students. Morse apologized for his conduct; further reporting suggested that the revelations were engineered to benefit Neal's reelection prospects.

If Neal loses, he will be the second incumbent Democrat to go down in as many cycles after now-Rep. Ayanna Pressley ousted Mike Capuano in 2018. Political watchers in the state cautioned that Neal's district is older, less diverse and more rural than Pressley's Boston-based district, an added challenge for Morse.

Already, one House committee chair, Eliot Engel of Foreign Affairs, was felled in a primary, and Oversight and Reform Chair Carolyn Maloney, like Engel a New Yorker, narrowly survived her own primary challenge.

A Morse upset would also usher in generational change — Neal was sworn into Congress in 1989, the same year Morse was born.

But if Neal and Markey are able to hold onto their seats, the races will illustrate the power of incumbency in Massachusetts politics.

"It's very hard to defeat an incumbent. We spend a lot of time on those moments when incumbents have been defeated, but even when there's a Seth Moulton or an Ayanna Presley demonstrating how you can do it, the reality is, it's a very difficult undertaking," said Peter Ubertaccio, a political scientist and dean at Stonehill College.

Kennedy gave up his House seat to run against Markey, and the rare opening drew nearly a dozen Democrats to a crowded primary race to replace him. Seven candidates competed in the expensive race — Jake Auchincloss, Jesse Mermell, Becky Grossman, Ihssane Leckey, Ben Sigel, Alan Khazei and Natalia Linos. Candidates and outside groups spent a collective $4.4 million on television advertising.

Rep. Stephen Lynch, a moderate from South Boston, faced a primary challenge from his left from physician Robbie Goldstein, an infectious disease specialist who staffed a Covid-19 intensive care unit at the height of the outbreak in Massachusetts. Goldstein emphasized how he differs from Lynch on health care issues, including abortion and “Medicare for All.”

One of the sleepier primaries this cycle was in Rep. Seth Moulton's district, where the congressman — who won his seat by defeating an incumbent, John Tierney — faced Democrats Jamie Belsito and Angus McQuilken. The challengers pointed to Moulton's attempt to oust Pelosi from leadership and his brief presidential run as reasons to replace him in the House.

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DHS, FBI rebut reports about hacked voter data on Russian forum

The Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity arm and the FBI said on Tuesday they've seen no cyberattacks on voter registration databases this year, following news reports about Michigan voter data appearing on a Russian hacking forum.

The agencies also said they'd not seen attacks "on any systems involving voting," according to the statement. "Information on U.S. elections is going to grab headlines, particularly if it as cast as foreign interference. Early, unverified claims should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism."

The source of the confusion: Journalist Julia Ioffe tweeted that Russian news media had discovered the data about 7.6 million Michigan voters on the hacker platform, along with voter information from swing states like Florida and North Carolina. The tweet generated 11,000 retweets and 11,000 likes as of Tuesday afternoon.

The Michigan Department of State tweeted a response before DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI did. "Public voter information in Michigan and elsewhere is available to anyone through a FOIA request," the response says. "Our system has not been hacked."

Ioffe subsequently acknowledged the Michigan response, but by then the original tweet had spread widely. "A lot of it has been floating around for a while," she wrote, referring to the voter data, adding that "it’s just unclear what these hackers are using it for."

Multiple news outlets also wrote about the Russian journalists' discoveries, albeit before Ioffe tweeted about it.

Context: The CISA and FBI statement is consistent with what they have said this election season.

It also aligns with the remarks of secretaries of state last week, with Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams telling the House Homeland Security Committee that hackers were "rattling our doorknobs" but there haven't been any breaches.

What's next: "My main takeaway: it’s going to be critical over the next few months to maintain our cool and not spin up over every claim," tweeted CISA Director Chris Krebs. "The last measure of resilience is the American Voter."

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