Two-time World Series champion Aubrey Huff praised the 17-year-old who was charged with killing two people during a riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
“#KyleRittenhouse is a national treasure,” Huff tweeted on Wednesday night in a post referring to 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse.
Rittenhouse was arrested and charged with murder after allegedly shooting three people, two fatally, following altercations during a riot over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Huff’s post was liked and retweeted thousands of times before being deleted Thursday morning following mixed reactions of both support and disgust.
While many Twitter users slammed the former slugger as being racist, several prominent conservatives echoed similar sentiments.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson argued that Americans shouldn’t be surprised Rittenhouse attempted to “maintain order” after local officials declined to “enforce the law” and “watched Kenosha burn.”
“People in charge, from the governor of Wisconsin on down, refused to enforce the law,” Carlson added. “They stood back and watched Kenosha burn. So are we really surprised looting and arson accelerated to murder? How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”
Others argued that the many viral videos of the incidents show that the teenager was acting in self-defense.
“Have we seen any video of Kyle Rittenhouse than shows anything other than self-defense?” columnist Matt Walsh of Daily Wire tweeted.
Others, primarily on the Left, dismissed the idea that Rittenhouse had the right to defend himself from being attacked because he was wrong to have traveled from Illinois to be there in the first place.
“Anyone defending Kyle Rittenhouse by saying it’s self-defense to go into middle of protest with a weapon & start shooting be careful about your standard,” political commentator Cenk Uygur tweeted. “Is the left-wing also allowed to do that? Walk into a Bundy protest with weapons and start shooting & claim self-defense?”
Rittenhouse is currently being held without bond in Lake County, Illinois, and is due back in court Friday for an extradition hearing for the shooting in Wisconsin.
