A spokesman for Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) asserted on his personal social media account on the day Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted that those who subscribe to “far-right” ideology believe “they should be able to kill you if they want to.”
Demings Communications Director Daniel Gleick posted the remark Friday on Twitter minutes after Rittenhouse was cleared of all charges he faced, including two charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder, in connection with Kenosha, Wisconsin, rioting that took place in August 2020.
Gleick’s post read, “The core of the far-right movement in America is that they should be able to kill you if they want to”:
Gleick later deleted the post, but his comment received more than a thousand “likes” and a few hundred retweets before the Demings staffer removed it from his public account page.
Demings herself has seemingly not commented publicly on the Rittenhouse trial. The congresswoman, a former police chief of Orlando, is in the midst of gearing up for a high-stakes race to unseat Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Florida next year, and the battleground contest is anticipated to be competitive and one of the most expensive in the country.
But while the Florida Democrat has been quiet on Rittenhouse’s exoneration, many of her Democrat colleagues and liberal media allies have come under scrutiny for possible smears and libel against Rittenhouse — largely for associating the then-17-year-old with white supremacy and domestic terrorism.
Rittenhouse, as he was attacked during a riot on August 25, 2020, that had stemmed from ongoing Black Lives Matter protesting, used an AR-15 he had been carrying and killed two of his attackers and injured another. Rittenhouse argued during his trial that he had been acting in self-defense, and a jury decided in the teen’s favor, clearing him from a total of five charges he faced related to the incidents.
Gleick also shared what he called a “good piece” by the Atlantic the day after the verdict announcement that compared Rittenhouse’s acts of self-defense with right-wing “political violence.”
In the article, writer Adam Serwer accused “much of the conservative media and the Republican Party” of “elevating Rittenhouse as the manifestation of retributive violence against their political enemies.” The article later contended that “the fact that Rittenhouse has become a folk hero among Republicans points to darker currents within the GOP, where justifications for political violence against the opposition are becoming more common.”
Breitbart News reached out to Gleick for comment about his since-deleted remark on the “far-right movement” and asked if Demings shared his view, but he did not respond.
Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.