![Former Daily Caller video director Richie McGinniss responds to Kyle Rittenhouse [Screenshot Youtube The Megyn Kelly Show]](https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screen-Shot-2022-09-01-at-8.39.38-AM-e1662036224889.png "Former Daily Caller video director Richie McGinniss responds to Kyle Rittenhouse [Screenshot Youtube The Megyn Kelly Show]")
Former Daily Caller video director Richie McGinniss responded to Kyle Rittenhouse’s attack on The Megyn Kelly Show after McGinniss wrote a Newsweek op-ed saying Rittenhouse was “not a hero” and recounting his experience at the Kenosha riot in 2020.
McGinniss wrote the op-ed on the two-year anniversary of the deadly Kenosha riots, which he was covering for the Daily Caller. McGinniss, who provided key witness testimony throughout the Rittenhouse trial and who carried Joseph Rosenbaum to the hospital after he was fatally shot, wrote that Rittenhouse, as well as Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz, were all turned into “caricatures of the people they really were” in the wake of the shooting.
McGinniss said Rittenhouse was portrayed as a “white-supremacist vigilante” to some, while to others he was a “hero standing up for law and order.” (RELATED: ‘He Said F**k You’: Rittenhouse Testimony Gets Heated Around One Particular Detail)
“The left ignored the fact that Rittenhouse had come out that day to clean graffiti. Conservatives, champions of family values, didn’t bother to ask why Rittenhouse’s family had allowed him to venture out onto the streets of Kenosha, in the middle of violent demonstrations, in the first place,” McGinniss wrote in the op-ed.
McGinniss also questioned Rittenhouse’s role as a self-described “medic.” McGinniss then recounted how the media portrayed the story.
Rittenhouse’s spokesperson, David Hancock, first responded to the op-ed saying Rittenhouse “wishes Richie the best as he tries to reinvent himself and will always be thankful that Richie was honest and sincere when it mattered the most, not just for Kyle but for America.”
Hancock later updated his letter to say Rittenhouse believed McGinniss “waiting until the two-year anniversary of Kenosha to pander to the left with selective storytelling was painfully transparent but pretending the thugs who attacked him were not victims was hypocritical and unprincipled.”
Rittenhouse then put out his own statement arguing McGinniss’ op-ed left out details “including my intention to help others” or that Rittenhouse was “chased down and assaulted by an armed mob.”
“I am grateful he told the truth when it mattered. His new story doesn’t change the facts of that day,” Rittenhouse’s letter continued.
McGinniss said Rittenhouse’s response is exactly what he was referring to in his op-ed.
“If you step outside of that trench then you’re going to basically be cast into the other one. And so, when I was, during the trial, people were calling me a right-wing conservative, and now people are saying that I’m pandering to the left,” McGinniss said.
McGinniss then took aim at Rittenhouse’s claim he was there as a medic.
“He wasn’t an actual medic, though, so he was there to help people who were injured but he wasn’t an actual trained medic. He had lifeguard certification, so I’m just as much a medic as he is having been a surf instructor.”
McGinniss said Rittenhouse was playing the roles of “cop” and “medic,” but he appeared lost.
“My piece, the intention is to show my personal perspective, and going from witness to human being. And so, you know, I didn’t intend this as a hit piece to Kyle in any way shape or form. And in fact, it’s, I believe, more excoriating of the media than anybody else. But that’s what everybody focused on, and I wish the best for Kyle. I know that he suffered a lot of trauma as a result of what happened, and I didn’t mean to add on to that.”