Trump Target of Second Assassination Attempt
The would-be gunman was captured before he could get off a shot.
AP (“Trump was the subject of an apparent assassination attempt at his Florida golf club, the FBI says“):
Donald Trump was the target of what the FBI said “appears to be an attempted assassination” at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday, just nine weeks after the Republican presidential nominee survived another attempt on his life. The former president said he was safe and well, and authorities held a man in custody.
U.S. Secret Service agents stationed a few holes up from where Trump was playing noticed the muzzle of an AK-style rifle sticking through the shrubbery that lines the course, roughly 400 yards away.
An agent fired and the gunman dropped the rifle and fled in an SUV, leaving the firearm behind along with two backpacks, a scope used for aiming and a GoPro camera, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said. The man was later stopped by law enforcement in a neighboring county.
[…]
The man who was detained had a calm, flat demeanor and showed little emotion when he was stopped, according Martin County Sheriff William Snyder.
“He never asked, ‘What is this about?’ Obviously, law enforcement with long rifles, blue lights, a lot going on. He never questioned it,” Snyder said.
In an email to supporters, Trump said: “There were gunshots in my vicinity, but before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first: I AM SAFE AND WELL!” He wrote: “Nothing will slow me down. I will NEVER SURRENDER!”
He returned to Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach where he lives, according to a person familiar with Trump’s movements who was not authorized to discuss them publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
NYT (“Trump Safe as F.B.I. Investigates Apparent ‘Attempted Assassination’“):
The F.B.I. said it was investigating “what appears to be an attempted assassination” of former President Donald J. Trump after the Secret Service fired on an armed man at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Sunday, just over two months after he was wounded during an attempt on his life.
Mr. Trump was on the course, a few hundred yards away, when Secret Service personnel spotted a person concealed in the bushes and opened fire, law enforcement officials said at a briefing. The suspect fled the scene in a vehicle and was taken into custody during a traffic stop, and a rifle with a scope was recovered from the bushes, along with a camera and two backpacks. It was not yet clear whether the suspect had fired any shots, according to the Secret Service.
A U.S. law enforcement official identified the suspect as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, of Hawaii. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing. Mr. Routh was interviewed by The New York Times in 2023 for an article about Americans volunteering to aid the war effort in Ukraine. Mr. Routh, who had no military experience, said he had traveled there after Russia’s invasion in 2022 to recruit Afghan soldiers for the fight. He told The Times he once visited Washington to meet with politicians to strengthen support for Ukraine. “I’m just a U.S. citizen that’s helping out,” he said.
WaPo (“Trump safe after potential assassination attempt at golf course“):
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was unharmed Sunday in what authorities are investigating as another potential assassination attempt, after a man pointed a rifle into a Florida golf course where the former president was playing.
Police arrested Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old man most recently living in Hawaii who spent recent years trying to join the war in Ukraine, according to online posts and law enforcement officials. Routh has a criminal history including barricading himself inside a building with a machine gun in 2002, according to public records and news reports. On Sunday the FBI searched his car as officers looked for clues to a possible motive.
Sunday’s incident occurred while Trump was golfing at his course in West Palm Beach, Fla. Following the usual security procedure, a Secret Service agent moved one or two holes ahead of the former president, 300 to 500 yards away, according to Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw.
Around 1:30 p.m., between the fifth and seventh holes, the agent noticed a rifle muzzle poking through the tree-lined chain-link fence surrounding the golf course, Bradshaw said. The agent opened fire and Trump’s detail rushed him to a holding room. The gunman fled in a black Nissan, leaving behind an AK-47-style rifle, two bags and a camera mounted to the fence to record, according to Bradshaw.
“With a rifle and a scope like that, that’s not a long distance,” Bradshaw said.
I was alive but not old enough to be politically conscious when political assassination was routine in our country. I only vaguely remember the attempts on President Ford. The attempt on President Reagan is much more vivid in my mind but it was just some nut trying to impress an actress.
That there have now been two attempts on Trump is disconcerting but perhaps not surprising. The tenor of our politics is against dark and existential—with Trump himself a major contributor. (In fairness, we don’t know this would-be shooter’s motivation. For all we know, he’s a huge Taylor Swift fan.) President Biden and Vice President Harris are saying the right things and condemning the violence. But there’s a strong likelihood that there will be more to come, if not before the election then after—regardless of the outcome.
Interesting choice of photo there, James.
There’s this rare, obscure book hardly anyone has even heard about, that warns against sowing the wind lest you reap the whirlwind.
When does “attempt” start? When he fires the gun, aims the gun at the target, or readies the gun to aim, takes the gun to the firing nest, or buys the gun? I see a lot of references to ‘shots fired’ but the only shots I see documented are the Secret Service firing at the …suspect? potential assassin? likely assassin? And he was ~400 yards away, is that right?
At any rate, so much disinformation is coming out in social media, it’s gonna be a rough ride and I wish that school shootings would get this much attention from the Republicans and MAGA crowd about the connection of violence and ‘provoking through posting’.
Just looking at the guy, he is clearly a Haitian immigrant drag queen bent on destroying the country’s family structure and supply of house pets, by implementing communism through his support of….Nikki Haley.
@Kathy:
Yes, the people who’ve been calling Trump a “threat to democracy” and lying about him being a Russian agent for years should certainly be held accountable for poisoning our political discourse.
@Robert in SF: I think when someone has set up a blind, camouflaged it, protected it (however inadequately), and poked an assault weapon with a scope* out of the blind, it’s safe to call it an assassination attempt. It’s not too much of a leap to think that it was aimed at Trump, but in the interest of completeness, as of last night the gunman wasn’t talking so there might be another explanation, however unlikely.
*Cue the gun nuts who have deemed such terminology as incorrect and such offensive misuse of gun nut terms is the most important thing about this incident
Just for the record, Trump is a dictator wannabe who led a failed coup attempt against our democracy and should be in prison for life and not running for President again, unless it is from a cell. And, as the Mueller report detailed in depth, he and his cronies and his children had numerous suspicious ties to Russia, and further, Trump is obviously subservient to Putin.
@TheRyGuy: For the last week Trump and Vance have been pushing a vicious story about Haitians stealing people’s pets and eating them. This has resulted in numerous threats, including multiple bomb threats that closed
schools. Trump and Vance both knew this was a lie. In this case the threats were a direct result of these lies. Do you hold them accountable?
@TheRyGuy:
Well, let’s tally things up. Trump’s rhetoric has:
1) Inspired a riot at the Capitol, which included people saying they were going to kill the VP. Those people are now proclaimed as heroes by Trump.
2) May or may not played a role in the attempted assassination of Nancy Pelosi, which Trump made gay hooker jokes about
3) Inspired mass shootings in Buffalo, Pittsburgh and El Paso
4) Inspired the Unite the Right rally, which culminated in a murder
5) Is currently driving bomb threats and death threats in Springfield based on a giant pack of lies.
I’ll weight this against two Republicans attempting to assassinate the former President.
Back in reality, this looks a lot like the PA attempt: a crazy person trying to go out in a blaze of glory. It looks like mass shooters are turning their attention to political figures.
Words are interesting…
“Assassination attempt”
vs
“Attempted assassination”
NPR used the second. And it is odd but the second phrase sounds far less threatening, reflecting the poorly planned attempt to even get close to the target.
As to preventing the next attempt, removing the risk is paramount. I suggest a strong impenetrable wall, completely surrounding Trump.
@TheRyGuy: Why are you complaining about Democrats telling the truth about Trump when it’s only Republicans who have tried to assassinate him?
@TheRyGuy: damn. Glad you are taking a day off from calling in bomb threats to schools in Ohio. Notice you and your ilk didn’t show up on the posts explicitly calling you out by name.
@Hal_10000:
@Mikey:
You are getting out over your skis calling this Roush guy a “Republican,” it’s a bit more complicated than that, even for the PA kid too. Exaggeration does not enhance credibility, it just gives real Republicans something to quibble over.
@charontwo: PA guy was a registered Republican. Yesterday’s guy was a Trump voter who recently supported Haley and Ramaswamy. How is that at all “complicated?” Seems pretty straightforward to me.
And regardless of any nuances in the perpetrators’ political alignment, neither was motivated by Democratic rhetoric, as TheRyGuy is asserting.
Also I don’t care if Republicans quibble. They’d quibble over anything Democrats say.
I’ll ask again: Has Melania left NY and rushed down to Florida to be with her husband? No? Called to see if he was truly okay? No? Oh, well. Maybe when she gets around to it.
If the “liberal media” worked like the rightwing media does, there would already be reports of how the event was staged, that the goal was to change the topic from the disastrous debate performance by a cognitively impaired old man obsessed with pet-eating illegals to the astounding bravery of Mr. Trump. Alas….we have hair splitting about whether a nutcase with an AR-15 who didn’t get off a shot “attempted to assassinate” the Former Guy.
Does JD Vance have deep thoughts on Denying Women Our Essence? Many are saying this.
For those not aware of the joke, your next Netflix special should be Dr. Strangelove.
If you haven’t seen Junior Varsity Thiel admit to Dana Bash that he made up out of whole cloth the entire Haitian immigrants story, expect nothing better from Republicans because they’re all vibes, all cap now.
Announcer voice: The Haitians have TPS and are present legally.. just like Trump gave TPS to the same Venezuelans he’s now lying about in Aurora, Colorado. Gish gallop debunking is fun.
@Robert in SF: @MarkedMan: @Liberal Capitalist: Yes, we are in a terminology gray area here. Until charges are filed, what words are used are kind of irrelevant. Having said that, I think planned assassination is a better phrase.
@Charley in Cleveland:
And the suspect would have been depicted as a patriotic citizen exercising his second amendment rights.
@Gavin:
This idiot with a violent history walked into a Florida gun store, showed an ID from Hawaii, and walked out with a gun.
This is the world the Republicans wanted. So I’ll be damned if they get to complain about it now.
As I said last night: assassination attempts are just a fact of life that we have to learn to live with, amiright JD?
@charontwo: Let real Republicans quibble over Trump reversing Obama-era requirements on gun checks for the mentally ill. And they should quibble over Trump having mocked the assassination attempt on Paul Pelosi — within the past two weeks, on video. Trump reaps what he sows.
I see no outsized reason to quibble about calling a Republican voter a Republican. So thoughts and prayers to Putin-puppet and threat to democracy Trump, that white male Republican gun nuts (not trans Haitain expats) keep trying to off him. Just an unfortunate fact of life, as JD Vance would say.
I’ve been to Trump National Golf club. Both as a golf fan, the LPGA’s ADT Championship was played there, and as a blogger. It was during the latter that I was in the same room as Trump. He was getting food.
The holes/area of the golf course where the assassination attempt took place I don’t recall very well.
@TheRyGuy: Oh, look, another of our little Trumpies is peeking out from under the covers where they’ve been hiding since the debate, terrified they’ll have to come up with a way to defend that performance or the claim about cat-eating immigrants.
Now that RyGuy can pretend his hero is a martyr again, he thinks that we’ll simply forget about The Great Disappearance of 2024. Ain’t gonna happen.
So now that you’re here, RyGuy, how about that debate?
@Tony W: “This idiot with a violent history walked into a Florida gun store, showed an ID from Hawaii, and walked out with a gun.”
As I understand it, not just “this idiot,” but this convicted felon who is forbidden by law from owning a gun.
@Robert in SF:
It depends. Reading comments at RW sites a guy walking past Brett Kavanaugh’s house with a gun and then calling the police on himself was a very serious attempt.
“NMMNB”
He also has a history of supporting Elizabeth Warren.
“NMMNB”
Trump has been a Roy Cohn acolyte since forever, it’s habitual with him to do things the Roy Cohn way. People with advanced senile dementia, like Trump, become unable to deviate from their habitual behaviors – not that Trump has ever had any behavioral adaptability anyway.
@charontwo:
You’re right that it’s more complicated than republican/democrat. However, the suspect’s politics in the Trump-as-a-Republican era appear to be Trump supporter in 2016, Tulsi Gabbard supporter in the 2020 primary (? in 2020 general), and Nikki Haley/Vivek Ramaswamy supporter in 2024. His ActBlue contributions during the 2020 primary, if to Gabbard, don’t change the narrative. I haven’t seen his support of Warren reported.
Do you know where Trump could go to be out of harm’s way from gun violence?
Federal prison. Only guards are allowed military grade weaponry there.
A stay in federal prison, by the way @TheRyGuy, is the accountability proposed by those of us who want Trump to answer for behaving as though he is above the law.
Of course, Trump would no longer be a threat to democracy if he were to drop from the presidential race. I don’t think anyone who sees Trump as dangerous would have a problem with that. JD would still be a threat to democracy as POTUS, but I believe he’s proven himself unelectable.
Beyond that the Democrat ticket also supports an assault weapons ban and background checks. These would have made it much harder for this guy with a criminal record to have threatened violence in this case.
Trump has lots of options if he wants to live more safely, it seems to me. I hope he might take one up.
Since mentally ill people can layer all sorts of beliefs on top of each other totally oblivious to the inconsistencies, I don’t think that we can easily pigeonhole Ryan Routh as easily “left” or “right”. What is obvious is that he obtained a gun even though he should never have been allowed one, then, drunk off the supply of righteousness provided by the belief demons in his own head, he tried to assassinate someone who is known for being a controversial figure.
I think we’ll find it’s probably Trump’s willingness to sacrifice Ukraine that will turn out to have been the final straw.
@Scott F.:
Federal prison, state prison, county jail, Gitmo, there’s plenty to choose from.
@Grumpy realist:
FWIW, I think this applies to so-called “sane” people as well. We hope that we are all more aware of our inconsistencies. Having participated in online political and other sometimes heated discussions for years, I am skeptical that should be taken as a given.
@Kathy: It was written by people who believe in an imaginary sky daddy. Why would you look to deranged (and probably hypocritical) people for advice on how to live? You might as well ask Trump.
@CSK: “I don’t care, do u?”
@just nutha:
No, but I think it’s amusing that the MAGAs like to promote them as a devoted, faithful, caring couple when the evidence to the contrary is staggering.
The MAGAs have, by the way, studiously ignored Melania’s absence.
@charontwo: Holy shit people consider Tulsi Gabbard to be a democrat? She’s been gulping/spouting the Putin/GOP koolaid/propaganda for several years now.
I knew a fellow who was a hardcore fan of hers during the 2016 election and every fucking time we talked I had to correct bullshit he heard her say. Dude was like “I’m voting for Trump” because of Gabbard’s stupidity. Never did get that guy to understand that Clinton aligned with his desires and that Trump was against everything he wanted. Mostly because of that stupid woman repeating Russian and domestic lies.
In Florida it’s my understanding that you can ‘open carry’ just about any weapon you want. So, I’m only mildly surprised that he came all the way from Hawaii and didn’t take this opportunity to purchase (with no intrusive lib-marxist background check required) a shoulder-mounted surface-air-missile apparatus.
America is all about PTSD these days. I hope enough people in the battleground states are fed up with 9 years of the Trump Experience.
@Matt Bernius: based on my experience, people can talk themselves into mental disorders. I had a friend who managed to talk himself from far left to far right. Very easy if you fall into the trap of self-pity and your friends on the left tell you to qwicherbitchen what those on the right keep telling you yes, yes, none of your problems are your fault; it’t always THEM who have done you wrong…