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PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor was blasted on social media Tuesday after making a number of false claims regarding the shootings that took place in Kenosha, Wis., last week.
During an interview with MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” hosted by Nicolle Wallace, Alcindor fabricated the conditions surrounding the incidents as she criticized President Donald Trump’s refusal to blankly condemn the teen.
“What you see the president doing is just doubling down and really going to this part of his base — I don’t think all Trump supporters are like this — but going to the part of his base that think that it’s okay for a 17-year-old to shoot people in the street who are unarmed, who are at a protest, who are upset about the way that the federal government is treating African-Americans,” she said.
(Source: MSNBC)
“Never before, I think, in the history of America has a president used the bully pulpit of the White House to defend somebody who is charged with homicide in a way like this,” she then claimed.
Rittenhouse has been charged with murdering Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26. He has also been charged with firing on and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz, 26.
Social media users blasted Alcindor first for claiming that all the victims were unarmed.
Shortly after the shootings, video and images posted online by independent journalist Andy Ngo and others clearly show that Grosskreutz was carrying a handgun.
GRAPHIC: I missed this in the video. The man who had his arm shot ran in with a pistol. He was still holding it for some time after he was hit: pic.twitter.com/dHx37kaDTk
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) August 26, 2020
What’s more, many people who have watched the video clip showing the accused firing on and wounding Grosskreutz have said the case could be made that he was charging at Rittenhouse with the intent of shooting him.
In fact, that argument was bolstered by a Facebook post from a purported friend of Grosskreutz, Jacob Marshall, who claimed that Grosskreutz’s “only regret was not killing the kid and hesitating to pull the gun before emptying the entire mag into him.”
Yet, Rittenhouse is being characterized as a “vigilante.”
There’s more.
Before allegedly wounding Grosskreutz, Rittenhouse was being chased by Rosenbaum, who appeared to throw something a burning object at the teen shortly before Rosenbaum was shot and killed.
A Molotov cocktail appears to have been thrown at the shooter in Kenosha before he fired at the first victim. https://t.co/DPVgjepDsb
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) August 26, 2020
As for Huber, before he was shot and killed, a video clip shows him striking Rittenhouse with a skateboard and attempting to take his rifle — after the teen was punched by someone and kicked by someone else.
Regarding Alcindor’s claim that the three victims were “at a protest,” that hardly seems plausible given that they weren’t protesting or picketing but actively involved in creating violence and mayhem.
In Rosenbaum’s case, for example, he was seen in a separate video clip taunting a group of armed men shortly before he was shot.
In the case of Grosskreutz, he was armed with a handgun, which doesn’t seem necessary to protest or demonstrate.
Alcindor also claimed that President Trump was somehow attempting to play to ‘his base’ by failing to ‘condemn’ Rittenhouse, a statement made without any evidence or substantiation.
Further, the president never ‘defended’ Rittenhouse; he merely refused to roundly condemn him and gave his opinion based on video clips that have been posted online.
“That was an interesting situation. He was trying to get away from them, I guess, it looked like, and he fell, and then they very violently attacked him,” Trump said. “He was in very big trouble. He probably would have been killed.”
Contrast that with former President Barack Obama, who claimed — without evidence and long before the facts of the incident were known — that a veteran Cambridge police officer “acted stupidly” when he briefly arrested Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates, a friend of the president, in 2009 for a possible burglary.
Obama suggested that the officer, who was white, arrested Gates, who is black, over racism.
A number of people on social media blasted Alcindor over her comments.
**Warning: Strong language
The things that PBS people think that conservatives believe! That "it's okay to shoot unarmed protesters in the street," as if they're just standing around with signs…. https://t.co/6IoBM2pDHN
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) September 2, 2020
“What you see the president doing is doubling down and really going to this part of his base… that think that it’s okay for a 17-year-old to shoot people in the street who are unarmed, who are at a protest…” – @Yamiche w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/k3raRKbEnP
— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) September 1, 2020
None of the people Rittenhouse shot were unarmed. And Yamiche is still not a journalist. https://t.co/rYM3ntTdwn
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) September 2, 2020
These are people who call themselves journalists going on national television shows, cashing in book deals and speaking fees who can’t and won’t get basic facts of a case right. It’s malfeasance and it won’t be corrected by any of their colleagues.
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) September 2, 2020
Amy Klobucher went on TV this weekend and said “When George Floyd was shot to death” and she was not corrected. they just went with it.
— Michael Henry (@michaelhenry123) September 2, 2020
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