Scenes from the “Rittenhouse: That’s The Way It Is.”

[EMBARGOED]

These scenes from the Kyle Rittenhouse documentary that Tucker Carlson made during his trial are embargoed, so please don’t tell anyone where you saw them.

[Gentle, evocative Ken Burns music. Slow, sepia-toned pans of the interior of the RITTENHOUSE apartment, including shelves in the living room laden with photos of KYLE RITTENHOUSE shaking hands with admirers such as TUCKER CARLSON, GAVIN McINNES, and various unidentified men wearing Punisher and Stormfront logo clothing, and KYLE’s bedroom, with Katy Perry and Eminem posters and an “illegitimi non carborundum” sampler on the walls, and rifles stacked up in the corners like baseball bats.]

VOICE OF KYLE RITTENHOUSE: Mom was working really hard, and I had a lot of time on my hands, so I really got into gaming and cop shows. If you’re serious about law enforcement, you really have to get sharp on your marksmanship. Gaming’s good for, you know, scenarios and response speed, but you have to actually practice a lot with live ammunition, so I spent a lot of hours in the backyard training, you know, on targets. Sometimes at night Mom would come out there with a laser pointer and turn it on targets at random, you know, target transition drills.

VOICE OF TUCKER CARLSON: Did the neighbors complain about that?

VOICE OF KYLE RITTENHOUSE: We don’t talk to the neighbors much.

VOICE OF TUCKER CARLSON: I bet! [Both laugh]

[CUT TO KYLE in an unidentified church, sitting with a man in a minister’s outfit. Religious music in the background; occasional cuts to stained glass windows and crosses.]

MAN DRESSED AS MINISTER: People don’t think of you as religious, but before the incident, you had been coming to my church secretly for many months because you felt you had a calling from God, isn’t that right?

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: That’s right, Reverend Smith. One night I had been up late watching a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit marathon, and I fell asleep, and I thought maybe I was still watching the show because I heard a voice that sounded like Fin, that’s Ice-T’s character, you know, but it was actually, you know, well, I really think it was God, and he said I had a calling, you know, like maybe it was the police and maybe it was the military and maybe, you know, it wasn’t any of those things. And I said God, if it isn’t any of those things, what is it, and he said it would be revealed to me in time.

MAN DRESSED AS MINISTER: I see. He didn’t look like Ice-T from Special Victims Unit, did he?

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: Uh, no, Reverend Smith. He, he didn’t look like anything.

MAN DRESSED AS MINISTER: Because God certainly wouldn’t look like Ice-T and I think we should make it clear —

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: Oh, yeah, of course not.

MAN DRESSED AS MINISTER: — to the people at home that this is —

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: No, definitely not, sir.

MAN DRESSED AS MINISTER: Though he is very good on the show.

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: Oh, yeah, he’s great!  

MAN DRESSED AS MINISTER: God looks more like Tom Selleck in Blue Bloods.

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: That’s another really good show.

MAN DRESSED AS MINISTER: Yes, it is.

[CUT TO TUCKER CARLSON and KYLE RITTENHOUSE sitting across from one another in a TV studio.]

TUCKER CARLSON: We’re talking now just before the jury verdict, Kyle. Look at this, can we zoom in here?

[CARLSON holds up a copy of the New York Post from November 18.]

See? This is from today, Thursday, November 18. We’re all still waiting for the verdict. And Kyle, I can’t even imagine the pressure you’re under. You must be really nervous!

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: Not at all, Tucker. I’m very calm.

TUCKER CARLSON: Really?

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: Really.

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s amazing. How can you be so calm?

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: Mainly it’s knowing that I’m innocent and I have so much faith in the justice system and my fellow Americans. And God. Thank you Reverend Smith!

TUCKER CARLSON: That’s incredible. What do you think about how this trial has become so politicized by liberals and Democrats?

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: You know, Tucker, it’s weird, because this is not about politics at all. This is about self-defense and the Second Amendment. But it’s also about standing up for what you believe. You know, I’m actually in favor of Black Lives Matter, I think there are really some problems with the prosecutors, just like the prosecutors in my trial. But the answer isn’t to defund the police because the police aren’t the problem. The problem is critical race theory which is being taught in our schools, and that’s why there’s violence in these protests, and that’s why we have to defend ourselves with our Second Amendment rights, for people of all races. And also inflation is really out of control. I drink a lot of milk, you know, I drink it with every meal —

TUCKER CARLSON: You know, you look like it! You have such creamy-white skin.

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: Thank you.

TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t mean anything gay, there, it’s just remarkable.

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: Ha, thank you.

TUCKER CARLSON: You were saying about the Biden Inflation.

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: Oh, yeah. Inflation’s so bad now, you know, like milk is like ten dollars a gallon, I can’t afford that, I don’t see how anyone can, so it’s up to our elected representatives to do something about it.

TUCKER CARLSON: And might one of those elected representatives be a young freedom fighter by the name of Kyle Rittenhouse, by any chance?

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: [laughing bashfully] Oh gosh, well you know I can’t think about that until after this trial is over, Tucker.

TUCKER CARLSON: I guess you can’t. But soon! Good luck, Kyle, I’m sure America is with you.

[CARLSON reaches over and shakes RITTENHOUSE’s hand.]

KYLE RITTENHOUSE: Thank you.

[The camera freeze-frames and zooms in on the handshake.]

TUCKER CARLSON V/O: That was the last time I shook Kyle’s hand before the verdict, and let me tell you, not only was it obvious from the way his hand felt that he was perfectly calm, but he gave me a calm feeling, too — the way I’d heard people talk about feeling after they’d shaken the hand of Pope John Paul II, or JFK.

[CUT TO TUCKER CARLSON at his desk at the show.]

I knew that day that the man I talked to was not only innocent — he was something very, very special. And soon all of you will know how special. So good night from the show that’s the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink, and so is Kyle Rittenhouse.