Mike Huckabee ripped the prosecutor in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial for pointing a gun at the jury on the Todd Starnes Radio Show Tuesday.
Host Todd Starnes said it looked like Kenosha County attorney Thomas Binger went to the Alec Baldwin School of Gun Training.
“The prosecutor is either a moron or else he was sending a not-so-subtle threat to the jury,” Starnes said.
“It was one of the most bizarre things I’ve seen,” the former Arkansas governor said, “and I’m surprised that the judge didn’t stop him and say, ‘Sir, what you’re doing is really a very reckless use of a firearm.'”
Binger put his hand to the trigger and pointed the gun at the jury during his closing arguments in the Rittenhouse trial as the jury has yet to reach a verdict.
“It was a stupid thing to do,” Huckabee added. “First of all, all of us boys in the South know you consider every gun to be loaded, even if you know it isn’t. You never point a gun at anything you don’t plan to shoot. You don’t shoot unless you plan to kill, and you don’t kill unless you plan to eat it. Now, unless he was planning on eating the jury, there was no reason for him to point that gun at them, and you never, ever put your finger on the trigger unless you’re ready to squeeze it and fire a round. I mean, the whole thing was just absurd.”
The TBN host also took Binger to task for claiming Rittenhouse didn’t have a right to self-defense.
“I also thought that his closing arguments were really revolting for him to say that this kid had no right to defend himself against the guy who was holding a gun to his head or swinging a skateboard at his head or chasing him down the street so he could beat the daylights out of him,” Huckabee said.
‘I Am Here for You’: Nicholas Sandmann Defends Kyle Rittenhouse
LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW ON THE TODDCAST PODCAST BELOW:
Below is a rushed transcript from Gov. Mike Huckabee’s interview on the Todd Starnes Radio Show:
Starnes: [00:41:15] Let’s go to the Patriot Mobile newsmaker line in the Liberty University Studios. Good friend of this program, the the great host of Huckabee on TBN Governor Mike Huckabee. Gov. Good to have you back with us, Todd. [00:41:26][11.4]
Huckabee: [00:41:26] It’s always a pleasure. Thank you for letting me back on. [00:41:29][3.1]
Starnes: [00:41:32] You are. You have a standing invitation. Governor, a standing invitation. [00:41:35][3.4]
Huckabee: [00:41:37] Hey, I’m grateful for that, and one of these days I’m coming to Memphis and we’re going to hit the barbecue spots and we’ll do some live remotes from Memphis best barbecue. How would that sound? [00:41:48][10.1]
Starnes: [00:41:48] You know what? That’s actually a terrific idea doing a national radio show from a barbecue joint. I’m all over that. That’s a great shot. And I’m there, grace to make this happen. Right? It get get, get go at all that. All right. Well, get Grace Baker on the case there. Governor, I wanted this prosecutor in the Rittenhouse case yesterday. He points the gun with his finger on the trigger at the jury, and I’m thinking, Oh my God, so he went to the Alec Baldwin School of Gun Training. [00:42:17][28.9]
Huckabee: [00:42:19] It was one of the most bizarre things I’ve seen, and I’m surprised that the judge didn’t stop him and say, Sir, what you’re doing is really a very reckless use of a firearm, and I’m sure there’s a law somewhere in Wisconsin that you can be charged for. But it was a stupid thing to do. First of all, all of us boys in the South know you consider every gun to be loaded, even if you know it isn’t. You never point a gun at anything you don’t plan to shoot. You don’t shoot unless you plan to kill, and you don’t kill unless you plan to eat it now, unless he was planning on eating the jury. There was no reason for him to point that gun at him, and you never, ever put your finger on the trigger unless you’re ready to squeeze it and fire around. I mean, the whole thing was just absurd. And I also thought that his closing arguments were really revolting for him to say that this kid had no right to defend himself against the guy who was holding a gun to his head or swinging a skateboard at his head or chasing him down the street so he could beat the daylights out of him. I’m not going to say that the boy had the best judgment in the world. To show up in the middle of a riot is 17 years older than they are 15. But there’s no law against doing something that lacks judgment. There is a law against threatening another person, and when a person is threatened, they have every right to defend themselves. I’ve had too many attorneys with whom I’ve had conversations, including Jim Trusty this morning, all of whom said if there ever was a solid case of self-defense, this was it. [00:43:52][93.4]
Starnes: [00:43:53] You know, I’m with you on the, you know again, was it wise for him to show up? Was it wise for a mom and dad to let him do that? That is a fair question to ask, but that’s not what he’s on trial for. And my contention is once he got there and he was in the middle of a riot, I think he conducted himself, quite frankly, in a noble fashion. He did what I would like to expect and think every, you know, red blooded American Patriot would do. [00:44:22][28.9]
Huckabee: [00:44:24] Yeah. I don’t know what choice he had. Unless he followed the idea that the prosecutor said, no, no, no [00:44:30][5.9]
Starnes: [00:44:30] governor, I think that they I mean, the prosecutor all but said he should have just let himself been beaten to a pulp or something even worse. [00:44:37][7.3]
Huckabee: [00:44:38] That’s basically what the prosecutor said, that the kid should have just stood there and taken it, taken the beating. And I’m thinking, What planet is this prosecutor from? I don’t know of anybody who would say to their kids, now, if somebody is going to beat the daylights out of you and potentially kill you, make sure that you’re compliant. Don’t fight back and don’t defend yourself because your life isn’t worth very much. Just go and let them kill you. This person who, by the way, was setting fire to the very courthouse where this trial was going on. I mean, that irony is not lost on me. [00:45:09][31.0]
Starnes: [00:45:10] It’s really when you hear some of the arguments coming from the left, the idea as well. These businesses had insurance. They should have let them burn to the ground. These folks are out there. They’re peaceful protesters. I mean, it flies in the face and now this whole racial component. And again, if you’re watching the mainstream media, you would think the three victims were in fact black, but they’re not. They’re white. And so it’s almost like a novelization, a novella that the mainstream media is covering compared to the actual trial, which is what all the rest of us are watching. [00:45:42][32.5]
Huckabee: [00:45:44] And it’s also very disconcerting, and I think could be problematic for the White House. When you had Joe Biden, president of the United States, weighing in, calling this kid a white supremacist before he even goes to trial, when, as you point out, his victims were all white. I mean, how does that make him a white supremacist of anything? Yeah. And the president of the United States should never inject himself in the pretrial of some person who is going to have to be facing a jury. That’s just [00:46:13][29.5]
Starnes: [00:46:14] absurd. As a matter of fact, we have some audio here. This is from yesterday’s White House press briefing. Peter Doocy asking Jen Psaki that very question [00:46:22][8.1]
Speaker 1: [00:46:23] Why did President Biden suggest that Kyle Rittenhouse on trial in Kenosha is a white supremacist? [00:46:29][6.1]
Speaker 3: [00:46:33] So, Peter, what I’m not going to speak to right now is anything about an ongoing trial, nor the president’s past comments. What I can reiterate for you is the president’s view that we shouldn’t have, broadly speaking, vigilantes patrolling our communities with assault weapons we shouldn’t have opportunist crept in peaceful protests by rioting and burning down the communities they claim to represent anywhere in the country. As you know, closing arguments in this particular case, which I’m not speaking, so I’m just making broad comments about his own view. There’s an ongoing trial. We’re awaiting a verdict. Beyond that, I’m not going to speak to any individuals or this case. [00:47:09][36.8]
Speaker 1: [00:47:10] The president has spoken to it already and his mom, now Kyle Rittenhouse, his mom, came out saying that the president defamed her son and the claims. She claims that when the president suggested her son is a white supremacist, he was doing that to win votes. Is that what happened? [00:47:25][15.0]
Speaker 3: [00:47:26] I just have nothing more to speak to an ongoing case where the closing lines were just made up. [00:47:31][4.8]
Starnes: [00:47:31] There you go, gov. [00:47:31][0.5]
Huckabee: [00:47:33] Yeah, nothing to speak to, but her boss already did speak to it. That’s the point. She never answered Peter duces question. And then this whole thing about peaceful protesters. Gosh, when you hit somebody in the head with a brick and you burn a police car and you light a courthouse on fire? I’m sorry, I’m not quite seeing. And that is just a peaceful little gathering of some ladies from the Sunday school class who just finished their chicken dinner. [00:47:56][23.7]
Starnes: [00:47:58] No way. No, that is if that’s a fair point, but in their minds, though, there are people who will generally believe that kind of violence is justified, and we saw this in Seattle and Portland and Minneapolis and of course in Kenosha. And people are really concerned about what’s going to happen. And it’s funny because they don’t. They offer a caveat. They go, Well, we’re bracing for violence. No, they’re only bracing for violence that they find him not guilty. If they find him guilty, nothing’s burning down. But if they find him not guilty, that’s when they’re going to have problems. [00:48:29][30.4]
Huckabee: [00:48:30] And one would beg the question if he’s found guilty and the place isn’t set a fire one or not. Is it because the people who watch this trial who don’t want to go burning a city? Maybe they supported Rittenhouse, but they don’t believe that they have the right to riot and loot and burn the cars of police officers if they get a verdict they don’t like. That’s what we have courts for. We have due process. We have appellate opportunities. Most of us just don’t believe that the way to handle something Jen Psaki wants to talk about vigilante. What is it when people go to the streets to riot because they didn’t get what they wanted out of the regular process? Todd, that is vigilantism, and I don’t know why. Jen Psaki can stand there with a straight face and pretend that she’s somehow a virtue signal when it comes to how this trial is going on. [00:49:24][54.3]
Starnes: [00:49:25] Yeah, it’s a good point. All right. Hey, what’s coming up this weekend on The Big Show? [00:49:27][2.8]
Huckabee: [00:49:29] But we’re going to have the Isaacs, which are going to be really good. We’ve got Jim Jordan, congressman from Ohio. We’ll be talking with him and it’s going to be, I think, a terrific show. I don’t want anyone to miss it because if they do, they’re going to miss a lot of fun. [00:49:41][12.6]
Starnes: [00:49:42] You’re going to make him wear a suit. You know, he doesn’t like to wear the suit coat, Jim Jordan. [00:49:44][2.8]
Huckabee: [00:49:46] He probably is one guy who wears out the pants of his suit, and he still has the jacket in plastic. He’s never even so much as [00:49:54][8.6]
Starnes: [00:49:55] put it on. It’s that whole wrestling coach. You know, the wrestling coaches wear your sleeves always rolled up. You know, it’s it’s a look. [00:50:02][7.1]
Huckabee: [00:50:03] I’ve got to show your guns, man. That’s what it’s about. [00:50:05][2.0]
Starnes: [00:50:06] By the way, I got to tell you about this. I signed up for I don’t know how I got signed up for this, but I’m on some sort of a vegan food like email chain. I have no idea. I got an email how to make vegan sausage and cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving. [00:50:21][14.8]
Huckabee: [00:50:23] Oh Todd, I’ve known you a long time. I’m pretty sure you ain’t havin no vegan Thanksgiving. [00:50:30][6.9]
Starnes: [00:50:30] No, even my even my salads are meat. Are protein based. [00:50:33][2.8]
Huckabee: [00:50:36] They should be my friend. [00:50:37][0.8]
Starnes: [00:50:37] All right, governor. Appreciate it. And looking forward to seeing you on TV this weekend. [00:50:41][4.0]
Huckabee: [00:50:43] All right. Take care. [00:50:43][0.7]