I didn’t see this earlier but Gaige Grosskreutz went on Good Morning America today to offer his thoughts on the case. His lawyer was also present and answered some questions.

The clip is interesting mostly because Grosskreutz’ testimony at trial didn’t seem to go very well. I expected this interview would be his attempt to take another bite at the apple in public but if that was the plan it didn’t work out much better.

Asked what he thought of Rittenhouse’s testimony, Grosskreutz said, “Well, I think any time you see your would-be murderer on the stand it’s emotional.” Already, this is a big attempt to backtrack from what was shown at trial. When Grosskreutz ran up to Rittenhouse, who was still seated on the ground, he put his hands up in surrender. Rittenhouse pointed the gun at him but didn’t fire. It was only after Grosskreutz lunged forward, bringing the barrel of his own gun downward toward Rittenhouse’s head, that Rittenhouse fired one shot, hitting Grosskreutz in the arm.

Rittenhouse then got up and ran away to turn himself in. If the goal had been to murder Grosskreutz, he could have easily kept shooting. The fact that he didn’t suggests he wasn’t trying to murder, only to protect himself from someone moving his direction with a weapon.

Grosskreutz’ attorney then claimed Rittenhouse was an “active shooter” though that’s really just an assumption that the shooting of Joseph Rosenbaum couldn’t have been self-defense. If that shooting was self-defense then he would not be an “active shooter” according to the FBI’s definition of that phrase, i.e. someone trying to kill people in a confined space.

Of course there was no mention of the fact that Grosskreutz failed to tell police who interviewed him the next day that he had a handgun in his hand when he was shot.

Asked why he pointed his gun at Rittenhouse, this was Grosskreutz’ moment to improve on his trial testimony. “During cross-examination it’s hard to say what you want to say,” he said, acknowledging that his testimony at trial was probably more helpful to the defense than the prosecutors. He continued, “I do believe that in that photo, given the right narrative, one could suggest that yes, I was pointing my weapon at the defendant. But when you play it as a movie or look at different stills, my arm was being vaporized as I was alleged pointing my weapon at the defendant. It’s completely inconsistent with the physiology of my wound that he would have shot me while my weapon was pointed at his head.”

“You weren’t pointing your gun at him, is that what you’re saying?” Michael Strahan asked.

“That’s absolutely what I’m saying, yes.” Grosskreutz replied. The problem of course is that’s not consistent with what he said at trial.

But the real problem is that I think most people including, hopefully, the jury will agree that if he’d not run after Rittenhouse or if he’d simply kept his hands up and not lunged forward with a gun in his hand, he wouldn’t have been shot at all.

Here’s the interview. There are some odd splices in this clip which was uploaded by GMA. I’m guessing there’s more to this interview that got edited out but if so I haven’t seen the longer version of it. Below that is a report on his trial testimony for comparison purposes.