THE FORGOTTEN TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT. You might not be aware of it, but there is a trial going on in Florida for Ryan Routh, the man authorities say came within minutes of carrying out his plan to assassinate President Donald Trump on Sept. 15, 2024, during the presidential campaign.
The Routh assassination attempt came just two months after Thomas Crooks fired a high-velocity rifle round that hit Trump in the ear during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. One man was killed and two others were wounded in Crooks’s attack. Crooks was killed by a Secret Service sniper after firing eight rounds.
Crooks’s motive has never been clear. That is not to say he did not have one. But all levels of law enforcement — Secret Service, police, and others — have been decidedly nontransparent in this case. When the subject came up on Fox News recently, anchorman Bret Baier, with frustration in his voice, said, “We still ask questions about the shooter in Butler. We still do not have the answers that we have been seeking, either from Capitol Hill or from authorities.”
Routh’s motive, on the other hand, is clear. He is a hardcore anti-Trump warrior who was obsessed with a) the war in Ukraine, and b) ridding the world of the threat of Donald Trump.
Routh, 59, has worked off-and-on as a builder and roofer. He has also racked up weapons charges in the last 25 years or so. In the past few years, he has claimed to be recruiting foreign fighters to go to Ukraine to fight the Russians. And then, authorities say, he began plotting to kill Trump.
Routh researched where Trump would be at various times in the fall of 2024. He spent time scoping out Mar-a-Lago and Trump’s various golf destinations in South Florida. And he helpfully composed a handwritten note, which he began with “Dear World,” explaining his intentions, presumably to be discovered if he was unable to kill Trump. “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, but I failed you,” Routh wrote. “I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job.”
By September 2024, police say Routh had been living for a few weeks out of his car at a truck stop in South Bay, Florida. Around 2:00 a.m. on Sept. 15, he set up what police called a sniper’s nest at a shrubbery-covered fence on the sixth hole of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. He brought with him a Chinese SKS semiautomatic rifle with a scope and extended magazine, two backpacks with bulletproof plating inside them, a GoPro camera, and a pack containing Vienna sausages, which were apparently a staple of his diet at the time.
According to prosecutors, Routh set up the gun, pointing through the fence with a clear shot at the sixth hole. As Trump was on the fifth green, Secret Service agents moved ahead to check out the next hole. Agent Robert Fercano, who was going ahead of Trump’s group, testified that he noticed “abnormalities” around the tree line. Fercano said he saw someone’s face and thought there was a homeless person in the trees. Fercano was just a few feet away from Routh when he saw the SKS. “The barrel of the rifle was continuously moving in my direction,” Fercano testified. “I made the decision to fire my service weapon in the last known direction of the subject.”
Routh, who was not hit, scrambled out of the woods, jumped in his car, and got away. He was later stopped and arrested on I-95. Now, he is charged with attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number, and other counts.
Routh has pleaded not guilty to everything. In his trial, he is defending himself. You know that saying that “a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client”? That appears doubly true of Routh, who is not only not a lawyer but might also be crazy. Look, for example, at this account of Routh’s opening statement before federal Judge Aileen Cannon:
Routh began by asking “what happened to homo erectus” and proceeded to address violence in other countries, mentioning Russian President Vladimir Putin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Adolf Hitler. “Putin has murdered 1.5 million and we do nothing,” Routh said. Cannon interrupted Routh after less than five minutes, warning him to “stay within bounds.” Routh told the judge his argument centers on “nonviolence” and said he could talk about the Constitution. At one point, Routh grew emotional as he continued addressing the jury, crying softly as he spoke of America and invention, mentioning the Wright Brothers’ contributions.
OK, he might definitely be nuts. But here is the thing. No matter Routh’s state of mind, the fact is that an assassination-crazed gunman got agonizingly close to shooting Trump, who at the time was the former president running for the White House again. And that was just 64 days after another would-be assassin, Thomas Crooks, actually shot Trump in Pennsylvania. And yet in some parts of the media and political world, both assassination attempts, especially Routh’s, seem to have disappeared down the memory hole. Why is that?