The Rittenhouse trial has offered us a steady stream of eyebrow-raising moments from both inside and outside the courtroom itself, but perhaps none of them have been as shocking as the off-the-cuff remark made by Judge Bruce Schroeder shortly before the trial broke for lunch on Thursday.

“I hope the Asian food isn’t coming … isn’t on one of those boats from Long Beach Harbor,” he said.

My God, what a monster. I mean, clearly there must have been some sort of racial animus at work here for him to brazenly declare that he.. uh, hoped the jury’s lunch wasn’t going to be delayed because it was Asian food and we’re having lot of supply chain issues with getting product from our Pacific trading partners.

It was a silly aside, but not according to some on the Left, who insist that somehow this is evidence of Schroeder’s racism.

2) And yes it is RACIST. The boats in the harbor are majority boats from Asia. And he said Asian food – which further connects the Asian boats. It’s racist c’mon.

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) November 11, 2021

“C’mon” is not an argument that Schroeder’s comment had any sort of racist intent. It was a supply chain joke; stuff coming over from Asia are experiencing delays, the jury was getting Asian food for lunch, so let’s hope the Asian food wasn’t actually coming over from Asia because it would be late.

That’s it. That’s the joke.

What we have here isn’t a case of a judge making a racist remark, but the Left attempting to craft a narrative in the case of Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal by a jury; it’s not that prosecutors failed to prove beyon a reasonable doubt that Rittenhouse wasn’t acting in self-defense, its that the criminal justice system is inherently biased, the judge had his fingers on the scale in favor of the defendant, and Rittenhouse’s acquittal is actually an indictment of America itself.

The sad thing is that Schroeder apparently has a bit of a reputation for not allowing prosecutors to run roughshod over defendants, which ordinarily the Left would applaud.

“For a jury trial, if you get him, you are happy as a defense attorney,” said Michael Cicchini, a criminal defense lawyer in Kenosha, Wis., who has appeared before Schroeder numerous times, including earlier this year. In that case, he won an acquittal for his client, who was charged with battery.

… Justin Blake singled out one of Schroeder’s rulings that has generated anger and confusion in many quarters, even though it long has been one of the judge’s most steadfast rules: As the trial began last week, Schroeder forbade the prosecution from calling the three men Rittenhouse shot “victims,” which the judge has long called a “loaded term.” He prefers “decedents” or “complaining witnesses.”

“That’s been a rule in his courtroom since Day One,” said Cicchini, who has been practicing law in Kenosha for two decades. “Whether the person is a victim is the very thing the prosecution has to prove.”

The Left is also incensed that Schroeder allowed for Rosenbaum, Huber, and Grosskreutz to be labeled as “rioters” and “looters,” even though that’s not what the judge actually said. Schroeder ruled that if Rittenhouse’s defense team was able to show that Rosenbaum, Huber, and Grosskreutz had taken part in any rioting or looting they they could refer to them in those terms; a distinction that went almost completely unreported by the media.

The attacks on Schroeder are only going to get more intense if Rittenhouse ends up being acquitted by the jury, but the judge won’t be the only target of the Left’s rage. So far, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger has been the subject of mild criticism for “prosecutorial missteps,” but if he loses this case I hope he’s prepared for the Left’s response. You know it won’t be long before Binger’s accused of intentionally tanking the case against Rittenhouse because of his own latent racism and sympathy for the defendant. There are far too many on the Left who are completely invested in the idea of Kyle Rittenhouse as the villain of this story that they’re going to treat anything short of a murder conviction as an injustice, and their fingers will be pointing at as many people as possible, including the prosecutors themselves.

Finger pointing is one thing, but as my friend Ed Morrissey points out at HotAir, the media’s malpractice could lead to a much more dangerous response as well.