Donald Trump faced yet another assassination attempt when a sniper with a scoped AK-47 rifle got within a few hundred yards of him while playing golf at his West Palm Beach, Florida club on Sunday.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff said the suspect was between 300 and 500 yards from Trump, as he teed-off at the fifth hole around 2 p.m. — noting that “with a rifle and scope, like, that is not a long distance.” In other words, he probably could not have missed if he had got a shot off.
The suspect is Ryan Routh, a 58-year-old resident of Hawaii who was a donor to Democratic causes and candidates and has a Biden-Harris bumper sticker on his pickup truck. It is being reported that he is a ‘pro-Ukraine activist’ and, according to the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction, somebody with Routh’s name and date of birth had more than a dozen criminal charges in 2001 and 2002, including carrying a concealed weapon and hit and run. Alarmingly, in April 2002 he was done for “possessing a weapon of mass destruction” (sic).
On Sunday the would-be assassin set up a GoPro camera on a fence, intending to record the shooting! Fortunately, a Secret Service agent spotted Routh and opened fire on him as he poked his gun through the fence. Routh then fled but was arrested a short time later. According to Palm Beach County Sheriff, Ric Bradshaw, Trump’s security detail was lighter because he isn’t a sitting president — despite the previous attempt on his life in July.
“At this level that he is at right now, he’s not the sitting president. If he was, we would have had this entire golf course surrounded. But because he’s not, security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible,” Bradshaw said. Obviously, this has raised concerns and, of course, the inevitable conspiracy theory, this time centred around how the shooter could have known that Trump would be playing golf where and when he was.
Trump put out a brief statement saying that “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!” Later, speaking to Fox News he said “Ugh, I really wanted to finish the hole! I was even and I had a birdie putt.” He later added “Nothing will slow me down, I will NEVER SURRENDER! I will always love you for supporting me.”
Magnanimously, Trump has also thanked the law enforcement officers involved: “I would like to thank everyone for your concern and well wishes. It was certainly an interesting day! Most importantly, I want to thank the U.S. Secret Service, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw and his Office of brave and dedicated Patriots, and, all of Law Enforcement, for the incredible job done today at Trump International in keeping me safe.”
It has emerged that the would-be assassin Routh has been in the news before. A vocal Ukraine supporter, he spoke to Newsweek Romania in 2022 and to Semafor a year later, about helping to recruit for Ukraine in its war against Russia. Reportedly, he was trying to recruit Afghan soldiers who had fled the Taliban to fight in Ukraine. He expressed frustration over Ukraine’s attitude to foreign soldiers. “Ukraine is very often hard to work with,” he said. “Many foreign soldiers leave after a week in Ukraine or must move from unit to unit to find a place they are respected and appreciated.” Perhaps he doesn’t understand that nothing happens in Ukraine unless money changes hands.
Routh’s girlfriend wrote about his time in Kyiv on Facebook: “My fiancé put his life at home on hold and travelled to Kyiv in April to support the people of Ukraine. He plans on staying for at least 90 days and stays at a hostel with a military unit”, adding that he had set up a memorial for Ukrainians killed in the war and arranged deliveries of tactical gear to soldiers on the front line
The assassination attempt comes almost exactly two months after Thomas Matthew Crooks shot Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, wounding him in the ear. A bystander was killed when Crooks shot at Trump. While this attempt on Trump's life was thwarted before it became a serious threat, it is still important, again raising questions as to how an armed man was, yet again, able to get so close to Trump.
Given all the MSM's positive coverage of Harris, maybe this incident will remind voters of the depth of the hatred the US Establishment has raised against Trump and those who support him, of his courage under fire, and the instinctive ‘fight fight fight!’ response on being shot that the media has tried to erase from the public’s consciousness.
It may remind them of the truth Trump spoke in his debate with Harris, when he said that ‘he probably took a bullet to the head’ because of Biden and Harris’s inflammatory rhetoric against him, a remark the MSM largely ignored.
It is to be hoped so, and that the US electorate sees that, while Trump is by no means perfect and for all his faults he is a force for reason, common sense and normality against the evil forces trying to create an authoritarian globalist world order that few want. Not only the US needs a Trump win in November, the rest of the world does too, not least us back here in dear old Blighty!