Left-wing media star Ana Kasparian admitted Sunday she would have reacted similarly to Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, when he defended himself from attackers during a Black Lives Matter riot.
Kasparian appeared on the Sitch & Adam Show, a center-left YouTube channel, to discuss politics and culture, including her recent shifts on issues such as crime and transgenderism that have alienated her from the far left. (RELATED: ‘The Young Turks’ Star Ana Kasparian Appears To Be Fed Up With The Left’s Narratives)
“With the Rittenhouse story, I was going to cover the trial and I just needed to go back and just, like, really really look at all the details and remember all the details so when I do the story I get the facts right. And then as I’m doing that I come across a New York Times video … that showed you in slow motion how everything transpired that night. And once you see it for yourself, its really really difficult to argue that in those moments, he was not acting in self-defense,” Kasparian said nine minutes into the livestream.
“So once I saw all those details, first of all, I had to convey them to my audience and be honest about what the reality was. The other thing was, you know, there was a lot of misreporting about how Rittenhouse was in possession of an illegal weapon and that he crossed state lines with that illegal weapon. So, that was a lie,” she added.
Later in the broadcast, Kasparian addressed her on-air debates with Cenk Uygur, her co-host on the flagship show of The Young Turks, a longtime left-wing YouTube network.
“Cenk is his own man, the best I can do is share my perspective and I just told him, I was like, [Rittenhouse] was acting in self-defense. But look, Cenk just has a different perspective, it is what it is, I’m not here to talk badly about Cenk,” she said 33 minutes into the broadcast.
“But to him, he just couldn’t, he just disagrees about it being self-defense, he thinks like [Rittenhouse] didn’t need to like shoot the gun, he didn’t need to kill people. I hear you, I wish it didn’t end that way, but if I were in his shoes, I would’ve done the same thing.”
In March, Kasparian drew attention when she took issue with the left’s use of “birthing people” to describe women in order to appease activists who support transgender ideology. She doubled down on her position in April after she received criticism from left-wing activists for objecting to the rhetoric they use to describe women. Uygur came to Kasparian’s defense and accused their opponents of being “extremists” who help the right wing.
Kasparian also admitted she was wrong about left-wing conspiracy theorist Rebekah Jones and took aim at green energy initiatives for imposing costs on the middle class. She previously conceded to being wrong about “key details” of the Kyle Rittenhouse incident.
Rittenhouse was acquitted on all charges in November 2021 for shooting three men and killing two of them during an August 2020 Black Lives Matter riot.