Exclusive — Ret. Navy SEAL Jonathan Gilliam on Kyle Rittenhouse: ‘Everything He Did Was Textbook Perfect’

Kyle Rittenhouse’s conduct on August 25, 2020, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was “textbook perfect,” Jonathan Gilliam, retired Navy SEAL, former FBI agent, and author of Sheep No More: The Art of Awareness and Attack Survival, said on Wednesday’s edition of the Breitbart News Daily podcast with host Alex Marlow.

Gilliam stated, “When he had his weapon and he was confronted by these imminent threats of loss of life or serious bodily injury, he engaged in a proper manner to eliminate the threat. You didn’t see him out there hammering people down, mowing people down. It’s when the threat got too close and it posed an imminent threat … he took action.”

Rittenhouse was not “praying and spraying in a total reaction,” Gilliam added. “If you look at who these people were that he actually shot, and what their actions were, and how he was trying to get away, and they came after him, everything he did was textbook perfect.”

“Even when he was on the ground, he was not engaging people unless they engaged him,” he remarked. “It was perfect.”

Rittenhouse’s control of his firearm was “amazing,” Gilliam emphasized. “[He] held his weapon properly … kept his weapon in his hands when he was getting beat [and] when he was running. He wasn’t sweeping people. He didn’t drop his gun, He held onto it and maintained positive control the whole time with his finger off the trigger.”

Leftist riots would have been prevented had thousands of Americans followed Rittenhouse’s example to defend the peace, Gilliam held.

“He was going to help out a neighborhood that he knew was going to be targeted by violent thugs that burned places down and destroyed businesses and lives,” he observed. “He went there to support those people. If 10,000 people had gone there and done that, none of that stuff would have happened.”

He added, “I commend him even more because he had the guts to go there at 17 years old, and go there and try to help people, take care and save their community. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

Videos of Rittenhouse shooting his attackers revealed “great weapon-handling skills,” Gilliam concluded. Rittenhouse “did not engage targets that were not presenting an imminent threat of loss of life or serious bodily injury.”

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