Again? That was the immediate reaction I had when the Associated Press bulletin popped up on my phone as I was watching copious amounts of football on a Sunday afternoon: “BREAKING: Trump was the subject of an ‘apparent assassination attempt’ at his Florida golf club, FBI says.” The second question immediately followed: how on Earth could this happen again?
Fortunately, unlike the incident in July when Donald Trump had to duck and cover on stage during a rally and spend a few days with a bandage on his ear, the former president wasn’t hurt this time around. The Secret Service detail prevented the attack from actually occurring, spotting a rifle scope through the trees as Trump was playing a round of golf at his Palm Beach, Florida resort. The agents fired at the intruder, forcing him to take off in his car. He was picked up shortly thereafter on the I-95 corridor, taken into custody, presented in court yesterday morning and charged with two gun counts.
We know a little bit about the suspect, a fifty-eight-year-old man named Ryan Wesley Routh. Even before he tried to kill the former president, the guy had a rap sheet—charged in 2002 with carrying a concealed weapon as well as several other misdemeanor offenses between 2001 and 2010. In typical sociopathic fashion, Routh apparently thought of himself as far more influential than he really was; in a May 2020 post on X, he invited North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to Hawaii for vacation, presenting himself as somebody who could act as an intermediary to bring peace between the United States and North Korea. He attempted to entice foreigners to fight for Ukraine. And he wrote a book, where he egged on Iran to assassinate Trump.
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