Kyle Rittenhouse: The media tried to make me look guilty, 'put me in prison the rest of my life'

Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who was acquitted in November of homicide charges following a self-defense shooting, slammed the media Wednesday for lying about him and trying to put him in prison.

Rittenhouse fatally shot two men in self-defense during an August 2020 riot in Kenosha, Wisc. The media claimed he was a white supremacist and a murderer, despite the lack of evidence.

"I'm angry that the media thinks they can get away with lying," Rittenhouse told "Just the News, Not Noise" cohosts John Solomon and Amanda Head.

"[L]ike Malcolm X said: 'The media is the most powerful entity on the planet. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and the guilty, innocent.' And they tried to do that to me. They lied, and they almost put me in prison the rest of my life. Thank God the jury didn't buy into the false narratives."

Rittenhouse has launched The Media Accountability Project, which is a fundraising effort to help him cover legal costs in his lawsuits against media companies who defamed him.

"The Media Accountability Project consists of two parts," he said. "And Part A is to hold the media accountable and make them pay for what they did."

"And then Part B, which isn't quite here yet, is to keep them accountable and help independent journalism spread, such as providing grants or new equipment, but also creating like a hub on your phone to where independent journalists can post what they're filming and compared to what mainstream media is saying so people can see the truth of what's happening."

Rittenhouse said that he's "still working on the lawsuits, getting them done right."

"And what we hope to accomplish from this is that this never happens to anybody else again," he continued. "I don't want to see anybody else smeared like how they smeared Nick Sandmann. They didn't learn when they had to pay Nick, but I want them to learn that they can't defame people."

Sandmann was another high schooler who was slandered by the media following his interaction with Native American activist Nathan Phillips during the 2019 March for Life. He reached legal settlements with CNN, NBC, and the Washington Post for their media coverage regarding the incident.