Kyle Rittenhouse Insists He Didn’t Flee Event After Heckling

Kyle Rittenhouse has denied claims that he fled an event at the University of Memphis on Wednesday.

He was invited by the college’s Turning Point USA chapter to speak at the campus. However, the event was met with backlash from a variety of students who objected to Rittenhouse’s presence.

Rittenhouse seemed to abruptly depart the stage after audience members questioned him about comments made by political activist Charlie Kirk, the founder and president of TPUSA, a youth organization that says it aims to “restore traditional American values like patriotism, respect for life, liberty, family, and fiscal responsibility.”

Rittenhouse has rejected the claims that he finished talking before his allotted time on Wednesday.

“The event was scheduled for 30 minutes. I spoke for 30 minutes, and then my security team told the coordinator that we were leaving after the question, and we left. I stayed for the scheduled time,” he told Newsweek in a statement.

Rittenhouse also shared a variety of posts to X (formerly Twitter) about the event.

“No one forced me to leave the stage… The event was scheduled for 30 minutes and I was on stage for 30 minutes,” he wrote in one post.

“What I find hilarious is that everyone is saying I was ‘chased’ out of Memphis, when in reality, we went to this restaurant called Huey’s, grabbed some food, and nobody seemed to care or notice,” he wrote in another.

He also reposted a tweet from Kirk in which the TPUSA president said he’d be asking Tennessee lawmakers to investigate if the University of Memphis colluded with local protesters to “sabotage last night’s TPUSA event.” Rittenhouse added: “It’s ridiculous to see a university censoring speech ‘yes what they did was censorship.'”

In another post on Thursday, Rittenhouse denied claims he was booed off stage Wednesday, writing: “The headlines are wrong again – I wasn’t booed off stage at the University of Memphis last night. The far left’s attempts to intimidate me won’t stop me from speaking with college students and sharing my story.”

One clip of Wednesday’s event shared on X shows the 21-year-old addressing students while a group taunts him from their seats. Since being posted online, the footage has received 7 million views.

More videos show Rittenhouse being chased from the college by protesters after leaving the venue.

In an interview with Real America’s Voice about Wednesday’s event, Kirk said he might file a lawsuit.

“The way that campus speech was supposed to be administered is from viewpoint neutrality,” he said. “Tax-funded universities, especially state universities, they’re not allowed to say ‘You know we really don’t like Kyle Rittenhouse, we don’t like Turning Point, we’re going to help BLM, compromise the ticketing system and give them a leg up.’ It’s not, it’s not, legal, you can’t do that.

“It’s interesting, I think the university thought they could get away with it, they are terrified of these students. They’re terrified of the activists on campus and we see this so often.”

Newsweek emailed the University of Memphis for comment Friday.

The incident has highlighted what some activists say is growing censorship on college campuses. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, since 2014 students have increasingly called for banning speakers for making what they consider offensive or hateful remarks.

Rittenhouse made headlines in 2020 after he shot and killed two men—Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, as well as injuring 26-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz—during a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The demonstration was sparked after Jacob Blake, a Black man, was paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by police.

He said the three shootings, carried out with a semi-automatic AR-15-style firearm, were in self-defense. He was acquitted of all charges in 2021.

Rittenhouse later said he supported the BLM movement, explaining that he was at the demonstration to “protect businesses and provide medical assistance.”

Kirk has previously come under fire from critics for statements such as suggesting that children should watch public executions and saying that he’d question the credentials of Black airline pilots.

Of this, he said it was “not who I am, that’s not what I believe,” but that he was being made to react that way because he felt policies adopted by major companies regarding ethnic minorities meant less-qualified people were being given jobs with significant responsibility, including airline pilots.