The latest apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump seems to have come and gone without much fanfare this time.
It might even be largely forgotten in a week or two.
Whether it was even a real assassination attempt or not could be debated: the suspect, Ryan Routh, reportedly didn’t get to fire any shots, was confronted when his rifle was spotted poking out of bushes some fifty yards from where Trump was playing golf, and was observed fleeing the scene by one sole witness.
It is said he was camped in the vicinity for some twelve hours before his discovery and capture.
I mean, sure, this could’ve been a genuine assassination attempt. Just a cursory visual assessment of the fifty-nine year old Routh suggests a not-entirely-stable individual – he has that Heaven’s Gate type of quality in the eyes.
Video of him being interviewed from a few years ago also hints at a touch of mania. He seems to have the profile of someone with a destiny complex: adopting various political causes and wanting to play some role in world events.
This most notably centered on his concerted efforts to involve himself in Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion. Apparently rejected by the Ukrainians when he went to Kiev and tried to enlist with the Azov fighters, he instead turned to trying to recruit foreign fighters to the cause.
His resentment of Trump, which appears to be demonstrated in his social media record, makes sense.
On the other hand, the timing seems a little funny.
Coming right off the back of Trump’s poor debate performance against Kamala Harris, his poor ratings, and a noted decline in momentum, this seemed like an appropriate time for an incident like this to try to recapture the great boost his campaign enjoyed after the far more dramatic July 13th assassination incident.
Having apparently lost or squandered so much of that momentum from July, this security incident at the golf course could be viewed as a desperate attempt to inject energy into a lagging campaign.
Maybe that’s just being cynical. But I’m still not sure how convinced we should be about the July 13th drama in Butler, Pennsylvania either, which was covered here at the time.
This time has been much more low-key and difficult to analyse: no real footage, no real witnesses, just an official story and an FBI classification of the incident as an assassination attempt.
Routh seems to fit the profile well enough of a slightly unhinged lone wolf with strong feelings about politics.
But it’s odd that the Secret Service, having received so much criticism after July 13th, would allow a gunman to get that close to Trump again so soon.
It’s also odd that Routh reportedly was there for twelve hours before being noticed. That’s a long time.
There’s a whiff of staged theater to this stuff, as usual.
But it doesn’t even appear all that likely that this one will give the Trump campaign any kind of boost in the way that July 13th did.
Especially not now that the apparent High Priestess of Human Civilisation, Taylor Swift, has endorsed the Democrats and Trump reacted to it like an actual toddler.
The Trump campaign really has failed to maintain its momentum from July 13th. Even the strange spectacle of the now weirdly Zionist figures of RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard jumping onto the MAGA train doesn’t seem to have helped all that much.
Not that the election outcome is a foregone conclusion, by any means.
We can reasonably expect more staged theater and various antics between now and election day. Pretty much anything can happen.
Ryan Routh meanwhile seems like an interesting, if odd, sort of character. Some of his misfiring schemes – such as apparently wanting to funnel Afghan and Syrian fighters to Ukraine to fight the Russians – seem like not too far-fetched ideas had they come from the CIA.
All mainstream accounts, however, portray Routh as a lone actor who’s ideas were his alone and were widely rejected.
According to this account, he wasn’t just obsessed with fighting for Ukraine, but also was concocting similar schemes to assist Taiwan against a Chinese invasion.
We’re told by abc: ‘Routh also appears to have operated a Facebook page, which has now been removed, and which listed the same phone number shared on his apparent X profile. When ABC News dialed that number, an answering machine message said: “This is Ryan with Camp Box Buildings in Hawaii, and also the National Volunteer Center sending soldiers to Ukraine as well as Taiwan… Routh’s apparent phone number was also listed on a website for a so-called “Taiwan Foreign Legion,” which calls on international volunteers to fight for Taiwan in the event of a possible conflict with China. The most recent post on Routh’s apparent Facebook page also refers to an effort to convince Taiwan to accept Afghan fighters…’
Which sounds really like an individual attached to one of the agencies, doesn’t it? But, no, everyone insists he’s been a deluded and lone operator. Certainly he seems a little unhinged, even if passionate.
His book on Amazon, the excessively titled ‘Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the Global Citizen-Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea and the end of Humanity‘, might be worth a read, at least as an item of curiosity.
Weird world.
