Pics Emerge of Meeting Between Trump, Rittenhouse

Former president says he met with recently acquitted teen at Mar-a-Lago
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 24, 2021 7:31 AM CST
Trump: I Met With 'Nice Young Man' Rittenhouse at Mar-a-Lago
In this Dec. 31, 2020, file photo, then-President Donald Trump arrives on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington.   (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Kyle Rittenhouse may be on the outs with the current president, but he's apparently getting on well with the former one. In an interview that aired Tuesday evening on Sean Hannity's Fox News program, former President Trump announced he'd recently met at Mar-a-Lago with the 18-year-old Wisconsin man, who was acquitted last week of fatally shooting two people and injuring a third during Kenosha protests in August 2020. "He called," Trump told Hannity, noting that Rittenhouse's mother accompanied the teen to Trump's estate in Palm Beach, Fla., per CNN. "He wanted to know if he could come over, say hello, because he was a fan."

During the program, Hannity displayed a photo of the meeting between the two, which also showed Rittenhouse's mother. A closer picture of just Trump and Rittenhouse, both grinning in front of a photo showing Trump meeting North Korea's Kim Jong Un, was also posted online. "That was prosecutorial misconduct," Trump claimed to Hannity of Rittenhouse's trial. "He should have not have had to suffer through a trial for that. He was going to be dead." Trump also called the teen "really a nice young man."

It's not clear exactly when the Trump-Rittenhouse meeting took place, though Hannity said his interview with Trump happened Monday, and in that interview, Trump said Rittenhouse had departed Mar-a-Lago "a little while ago." The Washington Post notes that after Rittenhouse was made a free man on Friday, Trump offered congratulations to him in a statement, noting, "It's called being found not guilty—and by the way, if that's not self-defense, nothing is!" President Biden, meanwhile, had a contrasting view, acknowledging that the jury's word was final but conceding that many Americans, including himself, would be left feeling "angry and concerned" at the decision. (More Kyle Rittenhouse stories.)

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