Kyle Rittenhouse was bitten by a brown recluse spider, which can be painful. If a person is hit with a large dose of hemotoxic venom, it can cause necrotic wounds or lesions that can take months to heal or require surgical repair. Rittenhouse ended up in the hospital from such a bite and posted a photo to X. NBC Fake News thought this would be a good opportunity to rewrite history.
As a reminder, Kyle went to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to protect people, taking a friend’s rifle. While doing nothing to anyone, he was attacked by three rioters who were breaking the law at the time. One was a convicted child molester, another had strangled his brother and abused his wife, and the third was illegally carrying a firearm. Rittenhouse shot in self-defense. Two criminals died.
He was providing security services during a riot and was chased down and forced to open fire when ambushed by multiple assailants. Rittenhouse was charged with murder and acquitted by a jury. He didn’t “open fire” as the story suggests. Rittenhouse shot in self-defense.
NBC decided to call the violent Antifa rally a “civil rights rally.” Their article was worse in what it left out, the media’s favorite way to lie.
A “civil rights rally.”
You don’t hate the media enough. https://t.co/gPGTLE5k1L
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) May 8, 2026
If you read the NBC article, you will never know the truth. This is their version:
Rittenhouse became a household name in late summer 2020 after he fatally shot two men and wounded a third during civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The city had been rocked by protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake two days earlier. Rittenhouse, then a 17-year-old resident of Antioch, Illinois, went to Kenosha with an AR-15-style rifle and first aid supplies, saying he was there to protect property and render any medical care.
He ended up killing Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounding paramedic Gaige Grosskreutz during the melee.
Rittenhouse, who testified in his own defense, claimed he was acting in self-defense before jurors acquitted him on all five charges connected to the shooting.
Rittenhouse became an overnight folk hero to gun rights advocates, and he has leaned into that fame.
Footnote to this: Jacob Blake was wanted for felony sexual abuse and domestic abuse. He was threatening a civilian and a police officer with a knife at the time of his death.
The communists couldn’t take me out and i’ll be damned if I let a brown recluse take me out. pic.twitter.com/75xSoshhdv
— Kyle Rittenhouse 🇺🇸 (@rittenhouse2a) May 6, 2026