Probably kept him alive.
I'm not very convinced by the argument that if Rittenhouse wasn't there that night everyone would have gotten out alive, either.
Rosenbaum, a violent sex offender with a history of unprovoked assaults and serious mental health issue, had just been released from a mental health institution where he had ended up after making attempts on his own life and violently attacking and body slamming his girlfriend. Initially he had no intention of going to downtown Kenosha that night. He ended up there because after calling his girlfriend and asking to come over she refused and reminded him of the no contact order against him. That's when he decided to wade into the chaos, clearly agitated, shouting the N word repeatedly at the top of his voice at a BLM protest, confronting armed men, and literally asking them to shoot him.
To pretend that Rittenhouse was the catalyst of all that happened that night, given that context, is entirely a bad faith argument.
Rosenbaum was a loose canon. Had Rittenhouse not been there, there's a very good chance that it would have been someone else and also a very good chance that things wouldn't have ended until Rosenbaum had either harmed someone badly, or killed them, or been harmed badly or killed himself.
