Kyle Rittenhouse denounces ‘the woke mob’ after Las Vegas hotel cancels his event

Kyle Rittenhouse, the young man who was controversially aquitted of all charges after claiming he acted in self defence when he shot three people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, has condemned the so-called “woke mob” after several of his planned events were cancelled by the venues.

Mr Rittenhouse, 20, has been something of a hero of the gun rights movement and makes regular appearances at both private and public events, since he was cleared by a Wisconsin jury.

Two of the people he shot died, and a third was seriously injured, amid disturbances and high tensions that followed the August 2020 shooting by police of a Black man, Jacob Blake.

Speaking to Sebastian Gorka, a right-wing populist who briefly served in the administration of Donald Trump and is now a conservative media personality, Mr Rittenhouse complained that two events he was due to appear at had been cancelled.

One had been due to be held at a brewery in Texas, while another, a “private reception”, was scheduled to take place in the The Oak Room inside the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian, in Las Vegas.

Mr Gorka, who has his own podcast, “America First”, and also hosts a weekend programme called The Gorka Reality Check on NewsMax TV, asked Mr Rittenhouse what had happened.

”I was supposed to be giving a speech at Southern Star Brewery with Defiance Press, and they booted us because the woke mob found out I posted about it,” Mr Rittenhouse told Mr Gorka, who was apparently hosting his programme from a gun show.

“I tried to promote it to get people to come and hear about censorship and the Second Amendment and they didn't like that.”

Mr Rittenhouse went on to say that the Texas event had now been rearranged.

“But just recently, as of this morning, the Oak Room room at the Venetian canceled us and bent to the woke mob, saying we aren't going to host you guys anymore,” he said.

While Mr Rittenhouse has become a hero to the gun rights lobby and speaks at events across the nation, Las Vegas also has its own place in the debate about America’s gun culture.

In October 2017, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on a crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. He fired more than 1,000 bullets with the help of a bumpstock. A total of 60 people were killed and more than 860 inured, in what became the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in US history.

Neither the Oak Room or the Southern Star Brewing Company immediately responded to inquiries from The Independent.

However, in a statement to Fox News, Grand Canal Shoppes confirmed the event at the Oak Room had been cancelled.

“Our tenant informed us that they have canceled the event. We do not speak on behalf of our tenants, but want to emphasize this event did not align with our property’s core event guidelines,” it said in a statement.

In a post on Twitter, the Southern Star Brewing Company said it would no longer be hosting Mr Rittenhouse of his right-wing “Rally Against Censorship”.

CEO Dave Fougeron told Newsweek the company had been inundated with threats and harassment.

“The threats we have received so far have been mostly on our Squarespace account, where people can leave burner or made-up email addresses,” he said.

“We were receiving about 50 of these messages per hour. Most of them were just name-calling, but some of them were people wishing us bodily harm and property damage.”