This isn't the slam dunk folks think it is as Kyle Rittenhouse isn't broke per se but isn't getting to dictate a lot of his wealth. And it's complicated because Kyle is a pawn so trying to state things in terms of "how does this affect Kyle Rittenhouse" is missing a larger point about how Kyle is to the GOP actually useful.
First off, Kyle's book bombed. It's not good. Even for those from the Conservative realm, it's not a good book. This is likely in that a lot of what was promised by the book was either culled or just never written to begin with given that Kyle is facing civil litigation now and a book giving "full account" would not help his position. But also the author, yeah it's complicated but most people do not actually write their own biographies, Michael Quinn Sullivan isn't a good writer. He's one of the Republican's think tank folks from Empower Texans which… that's its own ball of yarn to untangle so I'll just end it there. I'm sure guy is a great GOP strategist, he just really sucks at writing and you can really feel the "suck" level of his writing in his sci-fi book Finding the Void. But you know everyone has different taste so Sullivan is a more "specific" taste, and Kyle didn't pick Sullivan, that's who was suggested to him for his book. And this gets to the point.
Kyle is a pawn. The GOP is using him for an agenda and Kyle is just looking for a paycheck. And something people should quickly note, don't rely on the GOP to hand you a paycheck. This shouldn't be new knowledge, but just in case anyone is out there: You get paid by political organizations based on utility and that's true for both of them. But there is a caveat to this seeming "both sides" and boy oh boy is it the GOP is some of the most fickle of political groups. With the GOP it can be here today, gone tomorrow like a beach house in a hurricane. Democrats do indeed back away from "troublesome" folks within their own rank, but man GOP people will drop you like you were Cobalt-60.
And this gets into Kyle's "foundation". Right out the door, it's not exactly doing as well as folks might have hoped. it's operating at -$60k with 72% of its expense being Charitable Disbursements, which is fancy talk for "someone got paid". And that's likely indicative that Kyle's foundation is being used as a funnel for money for someone else. Which absolutely indicates that Kyle isn't getting a say in the foundation but boy oh boy is he the face for it. Usually a low revenue, high disbursement means mismanagement and I'm doubting that the far-right folks that helped him set it up put a moron in charge of it. It's likely that the person they put in charge of it is getting a pay check for (insert wild speculation here). But point being someone is being rewarded that's not Kyle Rittenhouse.
"Now that's what I call being a pawn!". There's clearly a lot of people who want to give Kyle Rittenhouse, for whatever reason, money. The thing is, that money is passing though hands that are distinctly not Kyle Rittenhouse's hands and that's Kyle's actual finical issues. Not that he doesn't have money or he's not popular enough to rake in money, it's that he hasn't been promoted on the chessboard that is the GOP politics to a chess piece that gets to enjoy some of his spoils. He is very much "useful tool" but a lot of the public information about him and his finances show, he is not getting any benefits, or at least very few of them. Someone else (or perhaps the plural version of that) is raking in the cash due Kyle.
Given the GOP, I don't think any of this comes off as shocking news to anyone that Kyle's money is being slowly siphoned from him. Or that true endeavors of his "like his book" are only given token measures of care. That's a lot of the GOP this day and age. The second someone becomes a nonuseful tool it's "Phil Valentine who?" Kyle has money, he's just not allowed to use it. Other people get to use Kyle's money. That should be the key take away here.
Yeah, he really leaned into being a pawn instead of forging his own identity. He was too young to know that he wouldn’t be the main beneficiary of the grift and that it would not be a viable career.
Sounds like a fitting consequence, maybe one day his one-brain cell will bump into the other and he'll realize that he was being manipulated from the beginning, before the GOP even knew who he was, that he murdered two human beings for a lie.
Hey guys, it's me again, I just wanted to say I'm still a child mascot for uncontrolled weapon violence.
Hey, if you give me like $500. I'll bounce around like a kangaroo and pretend that I am defending gun rights, when all I did was treat a protest like call of duty match.
After referencing actress-comedienne and Trump supporter Roseanne Barr earlier in the interview, Grammer was asked by host Justin Webb if he was still a supporter of the former president.
“I am,” Grammer said. “And I’ll let that be the end of it.”
What Rittenhouse did was a huge problem, obviously. I'm just frustrated he took the entire fall while the store owner who hired a kid with a rifle trained only to kill with it instead of trained security and the militia who raised Rittenhouse only to kill in the name of fascism get away just fine and will continue to generate problems like this.
Edit: This is based on my recollection of reading about the event soon after it happened. I had read Rittenhouse came from a militia background, when in fact he was only involved with militias in Kenosha though participated in some police programs. It was initially reported that the business sought out Rittenhouse to guard their building but the owners later claimed they did not although whether they did is still controversial.
If you can dodge criminal discharge of a firearm, you can dodge a bill. Seriously though, how did he manage to blow through his speaking money? I’d read that he’d earned 10k on several.
Rittenhouse may be disappointed because according to figures from Amazon, the work is sitting at #9,569 in the Kindle Store sector as of Tuesday. It also ranks 510 in Nonfiction in the Kindle store.
"Well done book about someone forced to defend themselves and what that means in America now. Well done. Highly recommend for everyone, especially now," one reviewer wrote.