Ron DeSantis blames Waukesha parade attack on ‘media lies’ about Kyle Rittenhouse

Image via WKMG.

Gov. Ron DeSantis is again lashing out at the media, this time arguing coverage of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial may have led to violence at a parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

DeSantis was trumpeting a series of pay raises and bonuses for state law enforcement officers when he pivoted to a discussion about the tragic parade ambush in which an SUV plowed past police barricades and into a crowd, killing six. More than 40 other people were injured, authorities said.

“So let’s just be clear. They are not wanting to cover this Wisconsin thing for what it is. They are not wanting the facts to come out the way they are because the facts do not support their narrative. And it’s all about pursuing partisan narratives,” DeSantis said Monday in Orlando.

“One of the things that’s been most frustrating to witness in terms of law enforcement is how anti-law enforcement narratives are consistently spun by these national corporate media outlets,” he continued. “They will swoop into a community, they will create a false narrative, and then they kind of just leave and they never correct the record when what they’re saying is obviously false. And we’re seeing that right now in real-time with Waukesha, Wisconsin.”

DeSantis lifted tropes used by other conservatives on Twitter over the weekend, mocking one headline that blamed the parade violence on an “SUV (that) drove into a parade of Christmas folks.”

“You never actually hear the discussion about who committed this,” DeSantis complained. “What was the motivation? This guy was a career criminal, let out, didn’t really have any bail, basically. Should not have even been on the street. Had clear anti-White animus.”

Coverage of Darrell Brooks, the man accused of driving the SUV, doesn’t seem to have universally shied away from discussing the suspect’s rap sheet.

A CNN report discussed Brooks’ extensive criminal history. However, outlets such as the DeSantis-friendly New York Post were more likely to discuss the suspect’s feelings toward White people.

“For corporate press, they’re more apt to characterize a parent who goes to a school board meeting to protest bad policies as a domestic terrorist than somebody who intentionally rams an SUV into a crowd of innocent people,” DeSantis charged, before going on to speculate the Waukesha attack was driven by bad coverage of the Rittenhouse trial.

“We will see what the actual motivation was. Very well may have been in response to what happened with Kyle Rittenhouse. And you have to wonder if that’s the case, almost assuredly this guy’s view of Rittenhouse was colored by all these media lies,” DeSantis contended.

DeSantis returned to racial talking points, again describing those so-called “lies,” downplaying the shots Rittenhouse fired last year during riots in Kenosha.

“When your self-defense, it doesn’t matter, you know, kind of what race. But they would say that he shot — most people didn’t know he shot three White people … So that’s what the media’s been doing. They tend to point a target on law enforcement’s back, but this is just wrong, and these lies have got to stop,” DeSantis said.

Like many on the right, DeSantis has embraced Rittenhouse as a hero, urging the Kenosha teenager to lawyer up against “defamatory” media.

In an emailed essay from his re-election campaign, the Governor urged Rittenhouse “to sue every corporate media outlet and every moronic commentator who smeared him into oblivion” after the not guilty verdict was official.

“We need to fight back against attacks on law enforcement, against the smearing of innocent people by the media, against the censorship of the truth by Big Tech, and against those who seek to eliminate our right to defend ourselves and our communities,” DeSantis asserted.