Teen Kenosha riot gunman ‘overwhelmed’ with job offers
Before Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two men and injured a third during a night of civil unrest in Wisconsin, he had expressed an ambition to work in law enforcement.
Now that he has been acquitted of murder, he is being offered work in politics.
Several Republican congressmen have sought to offer him a post as an intern – apparently with an eye to his emerging status as a hero for some American conservatives.
Overtures have come from the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz and from Paul Gosar, of Arizona, who said on Twitter that he would ‘‘arm wrestle [Gaetz] to get dibs for Kyle as an intern.’’ Madison Cawthorn, another congressman on the right of the Republican Party, has made a similar offer.
Rittenhouse’s lawyer, Mark Richards, condemned the overtures. He told Business Insider: ‘‘They want to trade on his celebrity and I think it’s disgusting.’’
Greg Keller, a Republican strategist, cautioned in Politico against lionising a teenager who went to Kenosha with an assault rifle hoping to take a stand against disorder and protests against police brutality.
The conservative commentator David French said that making a hero of Rittenhouse risked more bloodshed. ‘‘You’ll see more foolish young men try to emulate his example,’’ he wrote in The Atlantic magazine.