Since August 2020, everything that Bill Ackman, a billionaire Democrat, knew about Kyle Rittenhouse came through the mainstream media's reports.  Those reports painted Rittenhouse as a White supremacist who grabbed a gun and went to Kenosha to kill.  While he didn't get to kill Blacks, said the media, he succeeded in killing two Black allies.  The leniency the media demanded in 2020 for defendants did not extend to young Kyle.  Ackman, however, decided to watch the trial, and, to his shocked dismay, learned that everything the media said was wrong.  His tweets on the subject are instructive.

In an era of in-your-face billionaires, Bill Ackman is a low-key guy.  He founded Pershing Square Capital Management, a hedge fund that manages assets worth over $13 billion.  He's a New Yorker and Ivy League–educated all the way, having received his B.A. and MBA at Harvard.  He's proudly Jewish and is a long-time Democrat party–supporter, having endorsed Michael Bloomberg's short-lived run for president and donated to Richard Blumenthal, Chuck Schumer, Robert Menendez, the DNC, and the DSCC.

Given Ackman's Ivy League background, long history supporting the Democrat party, and reliance solely on the mainstream media, his tweets about the effect the Rittenhouse trial had on him are incredibly powerful.  For him, it was mind-boggling to see the chasm between media reports and the facts ultimately exposed at trial, so much so that he came away believing in Kyle's innocence:

helping his community as an EMT and fireman in training, in his removing hate graffiti earlier that day from a local school, and ultimately in volunteering to protect a business during the night of August 25th in Kenosha.

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) November 11, 2021

believe other articles in the same newspaper about subjects I know less well. Media and political bias are dividing our country and destroying lives. While we have not heard the entire trial, based on our assessment of Kyle on the stand, we believe that he will be found innocent

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) November 11, 2021

to watch the trial, or at a minimum his testimony and cross examination, before you form a view of his guilt or innocence. With respect to my own political bias, I am not a gun owner, nor a member of the NRA. On balance, I support stronger gun regulations and

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) November 11, 2021

Kyle Rittenhouse’s life is at risk. Justice demands a fair trial. Society would benefit greatly if politics did not enter the court room and convict innocent people.

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) November 11, 2021

I wish Ackman could be brought to understand how important guns are to preserving individual liberty, but otherwise, you could not ask for a fairer, more open-minded statement about the evidence at the trial and the only conclusion that makes sense based upon that evidence.

For the media, it was inconceivable that a Democrat party stalwart was looking at the facts and deviating from the accepted narrative:

Just got a call from the media asking if my Twitter account was hacked. That is, the reporter couldn’t conceive of the idea that I could believe that Kyle is innocent because I am not a right winger. Crazy.

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) November 11, 2021

The tweets in response were savage, including accusations that

• a sophisticated, mature businessman doesn't know what an EMT is,
• nobody of goodwill would bring an AR-15 (which, to the left, is much worse than the loaded pistol Gaige Grosskreutz aimed at Kyle's head),
• Kyle's crossing state lines was itself almost criminal (state lines have suddenly become important, even as the left erases our sovereign boundary on the south),
• No 17-year-old should ever be allowed out with a "semiautomatic high caliber weapon,"
• There was something inherently suspect and wrong about Kyle's daring to volunteer to protect a once-peaceful community that rioters were burning to the ground.

What's fascinating is that there are no replies saying, "Wow!  If the trial changed your mind, maybe I should check out the facts for myself instead of relying on the media."  Leftists don't want to have facts interfere with the narrative.  The narrative sustains them in their hatred for America and their desire to overthrow it.  And of course, there's that sense of moral superiority that permeates everything that the Democrats — who have abandoned traditional morality — assert is good and true.

Still, Ackman's experience supports a theory that I've held ever since I made my own journey from mindless Democrat party voter to stalwart conservative: being told the establishment is lying is meaningless; instead, people must have a visceral sense that they are on the receiving end of dishonesty.

For Ackman, that awareness came from watching testimony.  For me, it was NPR's increasingly open hostility to Israel; Hurricane Katrina proving that, when seconds count, the police are days away; and 9/11.

I don't see Ackman abandoning his allegiance to the Democrat party anytime soon.  Breaking from that party is a slow, painful process because it's sold to us as a faith that provides redemption and salvation.  You're a good person if you're a Democrat, and who doesn't want that?

However, to the extent that Ackman supports Israel and believes in the truth, I hope he is on his way to being red-pilled.  A guy who is intellectually honest is a powerful ally.  It would be great, therefore, if he could see his way to abandoning the left and coming over to constitutional conservatism, including supporting the Second Amendment, which is the only thing that constrains the government when it comes to the Bill of Rights.

Image: Bill Ackman by Valeant Pharmaceuticals Business Model.  CC BY 2.0.

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