by dap | Sep 16, 2024 | Daily Signal
Just two months after the failed Trump assassination attempt by one Thomas Matthew Crooks, we witnessed Sunday yet another foiled one, by Ryan Wesley Routh—a would-be
and anti-Trump/radical pro-Ukraine War social media addict.
Somehow he, too, once again got within relatively easy shooting range of former President
Is there a continued pattern here of lax Trump
protection, coupled with a general social media and televised climate that equates Trump with Hitler and lowers the bar on assassination?
That is, are we sending unambiguous messages to would-be assassins that a) lots of Trump-hating people would welcome an assassination attempt and canonize the wannabe assailant; b) it would not be that difficult to pull an assassination off, given security laxity and incompetence; and thus c) we will likely witness a series of such unhinged attempts?
On Aug. 14, almost exactly two months ago, I predicted the following:
If Donald Trump all summer has been compared by his enemies to Hitler and his murderous Third Reich, and if a 20-year-old would-be assassin and murderer with ease took up a sniper’s position to kill Trump—without a notified Secret Service or other law enforcement attempting to abort the shooter’s attempted assassination—what signal does that send to other would-be assassins for the next 80 days of the 2024 campaign?
Is the message that if a 20-year-old amateur sniper can brazenly and visibly for nearly an hour breach all Secret Service security perimeters to shoot eight times at the president, hit him in the ear, kill one innocent bystander, and wound two others, then almost any future, more-experienced serious shooter could match or exceed the ability of that disturbed amateur to get close enough to Trump to fire more than eight shots at his head?
And that shooting Trump in many leftist quarters would subsequently earn the unhinged killer eternal fame, applause, and immortality?
And that if there are such anticipated rewards and perceived opportunities, then we may well see more attempts on candidate Trump’s life?
And here is just today’s example of the usual left-wing daily vitriol equating Trump with some sort of existential enemy that must be somehow stopped—expressed on both television and social media:
After the would-be assassination attempt, Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York posted this: “Extreme MAGA Republicans are the party of a national abortion ban and Trump’s Project 2025. We must stop them.”
Jeffries is spreading untruths: Trump has never supported a national abortion ban and has consistently distanced himself from The
‘s
. And after such deliberately lying, what exactly does the House minority leader mean by “We must stop them”?
And after Sunday’s failed assassination attempt, Rachel Vindman, wife of Alexander Vindman of Trump’s first impeachment notoriety, and sister-in-law to current congressional candidate Eugene Vindman, D-Va., posted “No ears were harmed. Carry on with your Sunday afternoon.”
What does Ms. Vindman mean? Another weekend, just another attempt to kill Trump, so no big deal?
And also, on MSNBC, Democratic activist the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis ranted (to the silence of the network’s host, Jonathan Capehart), “Let’s not pretend that Donald Trump isn’t exactly like Mussolini, exactly like Hitler … . You nice Christians, kind, loving Jewish people … we’re not these people. We’re not these people. And we’re not going to get what we want if we elect this fascist, authoritarian weasel.”
So, what does Lewis suggest to Americans that they do with such a “Hitlerian weasel”?
And we should remind Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden—for yet the nth time—that Donald Trump did not call for a “bloodbath” if he lost in November. (He was talking about the economic consequences to the U.S. automobile industry of mandating EVs, and outsourcing automobile plants and jobs to Mexico.)
Nor did he claim that white supremacists were “good people” at Charlottesville, Va.—but, as the liberal Snopes fact-checked, just the opposite: “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”
These serial assassination attempts, unfortunately, occur in a weary context of Russian collusion, laptop disinformation, state ballot removal, and lawfare. And they are starting to reflect a larger environment of justifying extralegal means to achieve the ends of ending Trump’s presidency and later reelection by any means necessary.
So, is it all that hard over the next 50 days for President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to extend adequate Secret Service security for ex-president and Republican presidential nominee Trump (which some congressional Democrats, led by Jan. 6 Committee co-chairman Rep. Benny Thompson, D-Miss., had sought to stop entirely in April of this year)?
And can we just stop with the demonizing of Trump as a “Hitler/fascist/bloodbath/weasel/dictator” that must be stopped—before we see third, fourth, and fifth such assassination attempts?
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
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by | Sep 16, 2024 | The Hill
Phone records place the suspect in
on former President Trump near the scene almost 12 hours ahead of the incident at Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach.
Ryan Wesley Routh, the 58-year-old suspect, left a digital footprint through phone records that tracked him at the golf course from 1:59 a.m. Sunday until about 1:31 p.m., according to federal prosecutors’ complaint
.
Routh camped out with a plastic bag containing food, a digital camera and loaded AK-47 style rifle with scope, according to the FBI affidavit attached to the complaint. It said the serial number on the rifle “was obliterated and unreadable to the naked eye.”
The agent who retrieved the weapon say it was likely brought from out of state at some point, as the style of rifle is not manufactured in Florida.
Authorities ultimately tracked Routh down on 1-95 at 2:14 p.m., more than 40 minutes after Secret Service fired shots at the suspect once they saw his rifle poking out of a fence near the golf course. The FBI affidavit said the Nissan he fled in had stolen license plates.
Routh was charged Monday morning with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Together the two charges could carry a 20 year maximum sentence and $500,000 fine.
The suspect had previously been convicted on multiple counts of possession of stolen goods in March of 2010, and possession of weapons of mass death and destruction in 2002.
Routh was a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its fight against and reportedly attempted to join the international effort to defend the county, though Ukraine’s foreign legion has said he never fought with it’s unit of foreign troops.
Routh said he voted for former President Trump in 2016 but had become disillusioned with the ex-president, who is seeking to return to the White House in 2024.
“While you were my choice in 2106 [sic], I and the world hoped that president Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment and it seems you are getting worse and devolving,” Routh wrote in a post on X in July of 2020. “I will be glad when you gone.”
Federal agents are continuing their investigation into the case along with state and local law officials.
by dap | Sep 16, 2024 | Daily Signal
The second assassination attempt against
while he was golfing at one of his Florida courses on Sunday is forcing the United States Secret Service to further tighten security around the Republican presidential nominee and to reevaluate just how much Trump should be venturing out—whether he should continue to golf and participate in other outdoor activities, according to multiple sources in the Secret Service community.
From the information released so far, it appears that the
reacted far more aggressively and quickly Sunday than it did on July 13 when a 20-year-old shooter wounded Trump and killed a firefighter attending his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
But many questions remain.
Just two months after the first assassination attempt, the Secret Service is again grappling with whether it has the capacity to fully protect the former president in such a heightened threat environment and how far to restrict his movements during the final 49 days of an intense presidential campaign. Members of Trump’s protective detail reportedly were briefed recently about intensified Iranian plots to assassinate Trump in retaliation for his order to kill Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani in a Jan. 3, 2020, drone strike.
On July 12, the day before the first assassination attempt against Trump,
arrested Asif Merchant, a Pakistani citizen with deep ties to Iran. Merchant had traveled to Iran and plotted the assassination of Trump with an Iranian handler and funding from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s elite military forces, according to an
.
obtained that document from a whistleblower and released it last week. The FBI nabbed Merchant when he was trying to hire hitmen in New York.
A
, which Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s religious and military leader, posted on his website, shows an animated scenario in which a robot drone assassinates Trump while the former president is golfing. It ends with the words, “Revenge is definite.” An earlier
three days after Soleimani’s death enacts Trump’s assassination during a speech, threatening that “If you begin the war, we will end the war.”
Other more specific security questions remain about whether the Secret Service deployed drones to help surveil the golf course on Sunday after failing to do so at the Butler rally and why it didn’t place better security along the perimeter of both venues.
Multiple sources in the Secret Service community are describing Sunday’s golfing event at Trump National Golf Club in West Palm Beach as an OTR, which translates to “off the record” in Secret Service parlance.
In Secret Service parlance, an OTR refers to activities or events that are not listed in the internal schedule and are more spontaneous in nature and those in which the Secret Service team that protects Trump has to jump into action to do its best to protect him on short notice.
The campaign had not made the Republican nominee’s schedule public after a West Coast swing that culminated in Las Vegas the night before, though Trump is known to frequent the golf course on weekends.
Trump’s Secret Service detail may have had access to an array of security assets to help protect him at a golf course he regularly plays, but for OTR events, it depends on what headquarters have approved for Trump and what special agents and Uniformed Division officers are available that particular day.
“So more or less, you generally don’t have a massive footprint with an OTR,” one source told RealClearPolitics. “You kind of just show up and then you own whatever happens that day.”
What happened on Sunday was that Trump once again narrowly escaped an attempted assassination. This time, the Secret Service appeared to act decisively and professionally. At a Sunday afternoon press conference, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw recounted how a Secret Service special agent saw the barrel of an AK-47-style rifle poking out from a fence in the brush while the Republican presidential nominee was walking the course just 300-500 yards away.
The suspect, who anonymous local law enforcement authorities identified as Ryan Wesley Routh, had hung two backpacks full of ceramics and a GoPro camera on a chain-link fence where he was positioned. Sources tell RealClearPolitics that the ceramics were apparently intended to help shield the shooter from return fire.
“Soft body armor like what we wear, and police wear, can only stop pistol rounds,” one of the sources said. “In order to stop rifle rounds, which travel MUCH faster, you need rifle plates like the military wear or SWAT teams wear.”
“I believe that the suspect hanging two backpacks on the fence filled with ceramic tile was his attempt to provide himself a somewhat protected firing position,” the source added.
Bradshaw said the suspect ditched his weapon and fled in a Nissan SUV when agents opened fire. The sheriff credited a witness with taking a photo of the departing vehicle and its license plate number, which enabled police to find the suspect on the freeway. When taken into custody, Routh reacted calmly and didn’t say anything, the sheriff recalled.
Unlike Thomas Matthew Crooks, the alleged gunman in the first assassination attempt, Routh has a robust social media presence, repeatedly expressing his willingness to “fight and die” in Ukraine in social media posts.
A 58-year-old former construction worker from Greensboro, North Carolina, Routh also wrote what appears to be a scathing diatribe against Trump in a June 11, 2020, post on X replete with misspellings and grammar mistakes.
@realDonaldTrump While you were my choice in 2106, I and the world hoped that you President Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment and it seems you are getting worse and devolving; are you retarded; I will be glad when you gone.
The golf course was partially shut down as Trump played Sunday. It’s unclear whether the Secret Service utilized a drone to assist its surveillance of the golf course. Sources in the Secret Service community have told RealClearPolitics that the agency is quickly trying to bolster its drone program after agency leaders had resisted doing so for years.
Crooks flew a drone just hours before the rally started, and he opened fire on Trump and the crowd from a rooftop an estimated 350 yards away. Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe, in Senate testimony on July 30, acknowledged that local law enforcement had offered the agents a drone to help surveil the Butler rally but that the Secret Service rejected the offer.
Agency leaders had resisted the widespread use of drones dating back to 2016 when some divisions were working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a research and development agency of the
, to develop an unmanned aerial vehicle program. But Secret Service leaders rejected the push for a comprehensive implementation of drones, although the agency does have a counter-drone system that can disable other entities’ drones that appear in the sky.
Rowe confirmed that the reason the counter-drone system was not deployed at Butler earlier in the day when Crooks flew his drone was because of internet connectivity issues.
“On this day in particular, because of the connectivity challenge … there was a delay,” he said.
The failure to use drones or the counter-drone system has “cost me a lot of sleep,” Rowe said.
Moving forward, Rowe pledged to upgrade the agency’s technology to ensure interoperability in communications with local law enforcement to help better secure future events. He also announced a new research and development division and formed a task force to improve technology co-chaired by Secret Service supervisors in the Protective Division in partnership with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which helps coordinate cybersecurity and infrastructure programs across all levels of government.
Before that fateful day in July, Trump was treated like a typical former president and repeatedly denied additional security assets by agency leaders who admitted they were abiding by outdated protocols. Those denials, which took place over two years, occurred even though Trump is the current Republican presidential nominee as well as one of the most divisive political figures in the world—and a man who undoubtedly faces the biggest threats of anyone the Secret Service is supposed to protect.
Multiple sources have said Rowe was directly involved in the decisions to deny security assets to the Trump detail for years, although Rowe denied doing so when he testified before the Senate.
Agency leaders have since ramped up security for Trump to a level just shy of a sitting president, according to several sources in the Secret Service community. While he lacks the military assets such as Marine One, the presidential helicopter, and Air Force One, the presidential jet, and a military aide, the Secret Service after the first assassination attempt added multiple countersniper teams to guard Mar-a-Lago, as well as a Counter Assault Team, a special operations unit that provides tactical support to the entire Trump special agent detail, and Counter Surveillance Units. How many of these assets were utilized during the golf outing is also unknown.
“He is not the sitting president,” Bradshaw said during Sunday’s press conference. “If he was, we would have this entire golf course surrounded.”
The essential question to determine whether the Secret Service was providing the most robust protection for Trump after a previous
roughly two months ago is whether Trump had the exact same assets on the golf course as President Joe Biden does when he plays in Wilmington, Delaware, according to two sources in the Secret Service community.
Although the Secret Service didn’t immediately respond to that question Sunday night, Bradshaw’s comments call into question whether the lessons of Butler have been implemented. Several sources said that when Biden golfs in Delaware, the service implements a highly fortified perimeter, along with countersniper teams and agents sweeping the woods with canines, among other security measures.
Still, Trump and other protectees, including presidents and first ladies, have a lot of leeway in taking the risk to mingle with the public on short notice to their Secret Service detail.
and first lady Jill Biden opted for an “OTR” visit to a local Waffle House in the Atlanta area the morning after the president’s June 24 debate against Trump that led to his forced ouster from leading the Democratic presidential ticket and the party tapping Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him.
Others in the Secret Service community say that while Trump was president, his protective detail treated every weekend golf outing Trump took to his own golf club near Sterling, Virginia, as an OTR. The Secret Service has far more control and even veto power over rallies and event sites that it deems too dangerous.
The Secret Service could lock down the entire golf course when Trump plays, but the former president has previously told his detail that he wanted more interaction with his golf club guests—and locking it down is obviously bad for business as well.
According to two sources in the Secret Service community, the agency provided trucks to help protect secure sites at the Butler rally, but Trump’s campaign found them unsightly and opted not to use them.
But because Trump regularly golfs on the weekends at his own courses, the Secret Service is losing strategic advantages, Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service special agent and a popular conservative commentator, warned on X Sunday afternoon.
“Looks like it was an OTR (off the record) movement for President Trump,” Bongino said in a post. “Security is handled differently for OTR movements, and this policy may have to change moving forward. The Secret Service loses any element of surprise with an OTR movement with President Trump because he’s so recognizable, and his in-town schedule can be predictable.”
While Bradshaw was quick to praise the Secret Service, especially the agent who engaged with the failed assassin on Sunday, others were more hesitant to sing their praises.
“Be cautious of early details about who shot first,” Bongino also warned Sunday, responding to reports that the Secret Service fired off the shots but didn’t hit the suspect, who then fled into the woods.
The Secret Service also has been under scrutiny from lawmakers on Capitol Hill who have called for someone to be fired after July 13 failures. In the face of withering and bipartisan congressional criticism, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned, but so far, no one else has been fired.
Michael Plati, the assistant director of the Office of Protective Operations, who is charged with signing off on the security allocations and denials, several weeks ago internally announced plans to retire. His departure could come as early as this week.
Sources last week said Rowe and other agency leaders “encouraged” Plati to retire, while several rank-and-file special agents took exception to reports that Plati was being forced out. They argued that Rowe and Cheatle were behind the denials of additional assets to Trump—that Plati was simply following orders.
Secret Service leaders have placed several members of the Pittsburgh Field Office on work-from-home status while the investigation proceeds. Other sources said a special agent for the detail assigned to Trump was also on leave, but one source told RealClearPolitics Sunday that the agent is now back on the job.
The decision to put more agents from the Pittsburgh Field Office on leave than the Trump detail has stirred resentment in Secret Service field offices across the country, according to two sources in the Secret Service community.
The field office agents worry that Pittsburgh is “taking the fall” for the mistakes at Butler and argue that several members of the detail assigned to Trump are also at fault and should also be forced onto work-from-home status until the internal investigation into who is responsible for the July 13 failures concludes.
The Pittsburgh Field Office staff weren’t briefed on the acute Iranian threat Trump was facing just before the Butler rally, according to these two sources, but the FBI told Secret Service headquarters, who shared the news with the Trump detail.
A
on Sunday also mentioned a possible Iranian connection to Routh. The reporter, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, wrote a piece recalling his experience interviewing Routh in Washington last year. Routh was apparently there to speak to members of Congress about his support for the Ukraine war and efforts to recruit Afghan fighters defecting from the Taliban to fight in Ukraine.
“When I talked to Mr. Routh in March of last year, he had compiled a list of hundreds of Afghans spread between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan whom he wanted to fly, somehow to Ukraine,” Gibbons-Neff said, noting that he didn’t know if the meeting with the congressmen ever occurred.
Gibbons-Neff explained that he had met Routh through an old colleague and friend from Kabul, Afghanistan.
“Through the strange nexus of combatants as one war ended and another began, he had learned of Mr. Routh through a source of his in Iran, a former Afghan special operations soldier who was trying to get out of Iran and fight in Ukraine,” the reporter said.
“(Anything, even war, was better than the conditions in Iran for Afghans after the Taliban took Kabul in August of 2021),” Gibbons-Neff asserted, describing Routh as “exasperated and a little suspicious over the phone.”
By the time he got off the phone with Routh, Gibbons-Neff said it was clear to him “he was in way over his head.”
“He talked of buying off corrupt officials, forging passports, and doing whatever it takes to get his Afghan cadre to Ukraine, but he had no real way to accomplish his goals,” he wrote.
“Like many of the volunteers I interviewed, he fell off the map again. Until Sunday.”
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by | Sep 16, 2024 | The Hill
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he thinks former President Trump’s comments about solving the war in Ukraine are “election messages.”
In
with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Zelensky was asked what he makes of Trump’s claim that if he were president, he would solve the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours.
“I can’t understand today, because I don’t know the details of what he means and what does it mean,” Zelensky replied. “So, my position [is] that [it is a] election period, and the election messages are election messages.”
Zelensky said he thinks that sometimes Trump’s election messages are “not very real.”
The Ukrainian president and Trump have exchanged in a back-and-forth publicly about Trump’s comments.
The former president said in March 2023 that, if he wins in November, he would
in one day by working with Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump has touted his relationship with Putin as an avenue to end the war, though Putin
he favors Trump’s opponent, Vice President Harris, to win.
Zelensky says he has a plan for Ukraine to win the war and rebuild after it ends, which he
with President Biden, as well as Harris and Trump.
“It may sound too ambitious for some, but it is an important plan for us,” he
.
Zelensky told Zakaria that he had a “good conversation” with Trump over the phone about two months ago.
“He will be very supportive,” Zelensky said. “He understands how it’s difficult to survive during the war and he will do everything to strengthen Ukraine.”
During his debate with Harris earlier this month, Trump repeatedly declined to say that he wanted Ukraine to win the war against Russia.
