As the dust settles this morning following a second confirmed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, here’s what we know about the alleged assailant.
Authorities identified the man seen outside the Trump International Golf Club with an AK-style rifle on Sunday as Ryan Wesley Routh. Routh has a lot of social media presence and mainstream media references having been previously profiled by Newsweek Romania and The New York Times.
Routh’s main topic of concern seems to be the war in Ukraine though his content is devoutly leftist and intently pro-Democrat and, it goes without saying, anti-Trump. Furthermore, Routh routinely and regularly repeats the same tropes about Donald Trump being an “existential threat to democracy” that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden use ad nauseam.
In other words, if there ever was a person with likely mental illness who decided to take it upon themselves to “fix” this threat to democracy that the Democratic Party screams about, it was Ryan Routh.
The New York Post has done quite a bit of reporting on his views and found him to be as overtly left-leaning as they:
The alleged gunman who authorities said targeted former President Donald Trump while he golfed in Florida on Sunday afternoon previously declared on social media that “Democracy is on the ballot” this year and “we cannot lose” — echoing the anti-Trump rhetoric used by Vice President Kamala Harris and President Biden.
Law enforcement sources identified the suspect as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58.
Routh, who has a lengthy criminal record from North Carolina, frequently posted about politics and exclusively donated to Democratic candidates and causes dating back to 2019.
He also bashed Trump in an April 22 post on X in which he declared, “DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose.”
He advised Biden, 81, in an April 22 X post, when he was still running for re-election, to run a campaign around keeping “America democratic and free.”
He claimed Trump wants to “make Americans slaves against master.”
“DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose,” he wrote, a slogan similar to those commonly used by Biden and Harris.
“We cannot afford to fail,” Routh continued. “The world is counting on us to show the way.”
This is similar to language that Harris continues to use on the campaign trail. On Aug. 29, she said at a rally in Savannah, Ga., “We are fighting for our democracy.”
Sounds like Routh was listening to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on repeat and the consequences of allowing Trump to win a second term in the White House pushed him to action with a point of no return.
When you tell people with a straight face that Donald Trump wants to be a “dictator on day one,” which is what Kamala Harris said during the debate last week, some people will believe you and take it to heart. When you say the future of democracy is at stake, there will be a handful of lunatics who decide that they better do something to alter the course of history.
"He (Trump) admires dictators, wants to be a dictator on DAY ONE' – Kamala Harris pic.twitter.com/8jiugSif29
— Soumyajit Pattnaik (@soumyajitt) September 11, 2024
In separate reporting, the Post spoke to one of Routh’s neighbors who admitted he was off his rocker and that people were generally afraid of him:
A longtime neighbor of alleged Donald Trump gunman Ryan Wesley Routh in North Carolina has admitted Routh was “a little cuckoo” and “a lot of people were afraid” of him.
“I knew he was a little cuckoo,” the anonymous neighbor, who claimed to have known Routh for nearly two decades when he lived in Greensboro, told Fox 8 Sunday, adding, “He’s going to be going away for a long time.”
The woman, however, was still stunned that the devoted Democrat would target the former president.
“I mean, trying to shoot Trump? That’s a lot. I would have never guessed, and I would have swore up and down, no, that’s not him,” Routh’s dumbfounded former neighbor said.
“I just can’t believe it. I mean, if I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I mean the pictures and stuff and all, then I wouldn’t be able to believe that.”
Another question we’ll probably never get an answer to is just how Routh knew Trump would be golfing this weekend at his course in West Palm Beach. Sure, Trump golfs plenty on the weekends but there was no publicly available knowledge providing an advance schedule of his activities that are not campaign-related.
Almost immediately and without fail, mainstream media outlets began muddying the waters calling Routh’s views “unclear” despite the, um, obvious signs:
Trump would-be assassin Ryan Routh has a Biden-Harris bumper sticker on his pickup truck and apparently donated entirely to Democrats (spreadsheet via @Techno_Fog, photo @nypost) pic.twitter.com/mWHCKLZiDC
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) September 16, 2024
Which brings us back to the failed debate last week where the moderators neglected to ask Kamala Harris an obvious question: “Does your inflammatory rhetoric referring to the former president as a threat to democracy bear any consequences for the violent political environment we’re experiencing today?”
Why didn’t David Muir or Linsey Davis ask that question? They don’t want to implicate their preferred candidate, of course, but it’s a question that needs to be asked.
Democrats have screamed for years that Donald Trump is inciting violence yet the only political violence being perpetrated seems to be by avowed leftists as they attempt to take out their political frustrations on their top political opponent.
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