Trump refuses to criticize armed supporters, including Rittenhouse
President Trump on Monday refused to criticize his armed supporters, including Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, who is accused of a shooting incident in Kenosha, Wis., that left two people dead.
Video Transcript
- --was saying, are you going to condemn the actions of vigilantes like Kyle Rittenhouse?
DONALD TRUMP: We're looking at all of it. That was an interesting situation. You saw the same tape as I saw. And he was trying to get away from them, I guess, it looks like. And he fell, and then they very violently attacked him. And it was something that we're looking at right now and it's under investigation.
But I guess he was in very big trouble. He would have been-- I-- he probably would have been killed.
- But do you think--
DONALD TRUMP: It's under-- it's under investigation.
- Do you think private citizens should be takin guns [INAUDIBLE]?
DONALD TRUMP: I'd like to see law enforcement take care of everything. I think everything should be taken care of-- law enforcement.
But again, we have to give our cops back, our police back, their dignity, their respect. They're very talented people. They're strong. They're tough. They can do the job, but we've taken it away. We don't want to have-- when somebody makes a mistake, he chokes, or-- in some cases you bad cops, and we have to take care of that.
In other cases, they choke. They're under-- they have a quarter of a second-- a quarter of a second to make a decision, and sometimes they make the wrong decision. If they make the wrong decision-- you know, if they make the wrong decision in the other direction, they're probably dead. So they choke sometimes, and that goes on the evening news for weeks.
And the thousands and tens of thousands of great things they do, nobody covers that. Nobody writes about that. But if they make a mistake--
And again, the bad cops-- everybody agrees they have to be very tough on bad cops. But sometimes you have a cop or a police person who is a good-- a good police person, right? Good. But they choke. You know, the timing-- and they go through this, and they study this, and they work on it all the time. They literally have a quarter of a second to make some of these decisions. And they make a wrong decision, and it is very devastating.
But I will say this. I honor law enforcement. We wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for law enforcement. We have to stop this horrible, left-wing ideology that seems to be permeating our country.
