Kyle Rittenhouse abruptly stormed off stage at the University of Memphis as he received boos from a crowd of demonstrators on Wednesday night.
The 21-year-old who was acquitted of murder for shooting dead two men - Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26 - at a Black Lives Matter rally in 2020 has been embraced by the right ever since.
In the footage from the event, a number of protesters in black T-shirts can be seen in the audience and one got the opportunity to ask Rittenhouse about far-right conservative activist, Charlie Kirk.
(Kirk's youth organisation, Turning Point U.S.A., also happens to be the sponsor of Rittenhouse’s university appearance).
The protester claimed Kirk has "said a lot of racist things," something which Rittenhouse didn't take too kindly to.
“Like what? What racist things has Charlie Kirk said?” he asked defensively. “We’re gonna have a bit of a dialogue of what racist things Charlie Kirk said.”
In response, the protestor was ready with an answer as he replied: "He says that we shouldn't celebrate Juneteenth, we shouldn’t celebrate Martin Luther King Day—we should be working those days. He called Ketanji Brown Jackson an affirmative action hire, he said all this nonsense about George Floyd, and he said he’d be scared if a Black pilot was on a plane. Does that not seem racist?”
"I don’t know anything about that,” Rittenhouse simply said, as the audience jeered and another attendee shouted: "Does that seem racist is a yes or no question, Kyle."
“After all the things I just told you, would you consider that hate speech?” the protester questioned once again.
“I’m not gonna comment on that,” Rittenhouse repeated his stance.
The sounds of boos can be heard in the room as Rittenhouse remained on stage for a moment but cheers then erupted when he stormed off stage with his service dog after one of the event organisers appeared to have a brief word with him.
Rittenhouse later claimed that he didn’t run off stage at the event because he was being booed and heckled, but rather he just had a “hard cutoff time”.
Meanwhile, other videos also show protestors gathering ahead of the event - around 200 in total according to Daily Beast - where they could be seen with signs that had slogans such as "Put Rittenhouse behind bars not a podium” and “No killers on my campus”.
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