The judge presiding over the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, Bruce Schroeder, seems to be getting crazier every day. I’m not trying to throw the word around lightly — he is saying and doing things that are way outside of anything you’d call normal.
From screaming at the prosecutor for trying to include evidence of Rittenhouse’s ties to white supremacy [1], to finding out his phone has a Trump ringtone [2] during the trial, to forcing the courtroom to clap for a defense witness [3], and even making a semi-racist joke [4] about “Asian food” as they were about to break for lunch, Schroeder seems to have gone off the deep end.
On Friday, Schroeder managed to mangle his technological savvy in a matter of moments as he explained that screenshots from his own phone being blurry when he zooms in mean that the prosecution can’t zoom in [5] on footage of Rittenhouse’s actions that night.
If you think you’re upset about the way this trial is going, imagine how the families of Rittenhouse’s victims feel. CNN’s Jim Acosta called out the judge perfectly on Saturday during a broadcast, wondering aloud whether Schroeder is after media exposure aimed at Rittenhouse supporters.
And then he distilled exactly what we’ve all been thinking into a few seconds of airtime:
He sounds like he’s watched too much Bill O’Reilly. I mean, he’s acting like Archie Bunker in there, and I’m sorry, it’s supposed to be a court room. I don’t get it. You know, I know there are cameras in the courtroom, it’s really sort of an argument against cameras in the courtroom, which I’m a big proponent of, we should have cameras in the courtroom. But not if the judge is going to act like Archie Bunker.
In case you’re too young to remember Archie Bunker, he was a character in a show called All in the Family who was helplessly thick-headed, racist, and impervious to appeals to logic or reason. So yeah, basically Bill O’Reilly.
Watch Acosta lay into him here:
Acosta: He sounds like he’s watched too much Bill O’Reilly. I mean he’s acting like Archie Bunker in there and I’m sorry it’s supposed to be a court room pic.twitter.com/tjLOf4e90D [6]
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 13, 2021 [7]