Earlier this week, a second gunman set his sights on Donald Trump. Unlike the first attempt over the summer, the would-be assassin in Florida didn’t set eyes on Trump, let alone get a shot off. Also, unlike the shooter in Pennsylvania, the Florida sniper survived and we are learning more about his background and motive.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, is a former Trump supporter and Democratic donor who went to Ukraine to volunteer after the full-scale Russian invasion. Routh had a history of violence that included resisting an officer, weapons charges, and possession of a weapon of mass destruction, described as “a binary explosive with a 10-inch detonation cord and a blasting cap.” Routh had barricaded himself into a North Carolina roofing company with a fully automatic weapon after fleeing a traffic stop in 2002.
More recently, Routh was rejected by the Ukrainian army, a force direly in need of manpower, A Ukrainian official called Routh “eccentric” and told the UK Telegraph that he was rejected because he was “full of s*** and hot air.”
At the time of his Ukraine activities, Routh was interviewed by a number of US outlets. His behavior did not raise red flags at the time, but some journalists say in retrospect they missed the signals that were already there.
Routh seems to have been somewhat politically active. That was not the case for Thomas Crooks, the Pennsylvania shooter who paid with his life for his attempt to kill Trump in July. Crooks was a registered Republican but never seemed to talk politics. There were reports that Crooks donated $15 to a Democratic group, but that seems to have been a different person. Crooks seems to have wanted to make a name for himself by killing a public figure since he searched for information about Joe Biden and the Democratic National Convention as well as Donald Trump.
In the wake of the second attempt, Republicans have called for Democrats to tone down their rhetoric about Donald Trump. That’s always a reasonable request and a good idea. Going back to the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, a Democratic congresswoman who was shot by a mental patient in 2011, overheated rhetoric has been blamed on political violence. In Giffords’ case, the rhetoric was a Sarah Palin ad that placed Giffords’ district in the crosshairs was pretty tame compared to a lot of what we see today.
One of the most egregious statements by a Democratic official was cited by JD Vance in the wake of the Florida incident, a comment that Trump needed to be “eliminated.” That is over the top, but New York Democrat Daniel Goldman apologized for that remark almost a year ago. I can’t find that any other prominent Democrats have used similar language recently.
Democrats have said things along the lines of Trump being a threat to democracy. That’s a bit of a different case. The case that Trump is a threat to democracy is pretty strong based on his past actions and his current bombast, and even Fox News could only cite the Goldman comment and a donor letter that “put Trump in the bulls-eye,” a phrase strikingly similar to the Palin ad about Giffords, as evidence of Democratic violent rhetoric.
In fact, I hesitate to blame the victim here, but Trump’s own language goes far beyond what Democrats typically say. In addition to using similar words to stir tensions after the 2020 election and provoke the January 6 insurrection, Trump has called for the termination of the Constitution, said that he wants to be a dictator but “only on day one,” has said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country, has warned of a “bloodbath” if he loses, and as recently as this month said his crackdown on immigrants would be a “bloody story.” Trump’s claims that Democrats are corrupt communists who will literally and permanently destroy America if they win one more election are too numerous to list.
And let’s not forget the entire Springfield dog-and-cats-for-dinner story. Trump’s false claims made during the debate led to more than 30 bomb threats that closed schools, forced the cancellation of a town festival, and raised concerns about potential violence against the town’s Haitian immigrants, prompting the mayor to tell ABC News, “We need help, not hate.”
I believe that the would-be assassins were absolutely responsible for their actions, but Republicans need to consider that maybe it’s their own rhetoric that pushed Ryan Routh over the edge. It’s one thing for Democrats to say that Donald Trump is an authoritarian who wants to violently crack down on the opposition and ethnic minorities. It’s quite another when Trump himself says it.
The vast majority of Americans won’t react to Trump’s statements by picking up a gun. Quite a few of Trump’s supporters either applaud his violent imagery or just shake their heads and say, “At least he isn’t a Democrat.” Even among Democrats, the far more common reaction is to want to stop him at the ballot box or failing that, use Congress and the courts to stop his abuses of power.
But there is a tiny subset of people who might hear Trump talk and think to themselves, “This guy is literally Hitler and the world would have been a better place if someone had killed Hitler in 1932.” This may describe Ryan Routh.
I’m all for toning down the rhetoric. Back before the 2020 elections when I was writing for The First, I wrote that I was concerned about the potential for violence no matter what the outcome was. Sadly, my prediction was correct, and we don’t seem to have learned anything from the experience. Far from turning down the heat, Trump and the Republicans have rationalized and excused the violence from their ranks and even call the January 6 convicts “political prisoners.”
As I said back then, “We need to tone it down. We are all Americans and we all want what is best for our country. We disagree on what is best, but we need to at least start with the premise that the other side is not out to purposely destroy the nation. You can’t find common ground with people who you believe are trying to destroy you, and we desperately need to find common ground and unity.”
As much as rhetoric, the assassination attempts seem to bear the hallmarks of the spree killings that we see all too often. The two perpetrators seem likely to have had some sort of mental illness. Although undiagnosed in Thomas Crooks’ case, he reportedly searched for information about depression. Routh had a history of violence and erratic behavior as well as a criminal record. All are classic signs of a potential shooter, and I have to wonder if Routh might have engaged in a spree killing back in 2002 if the officer had not intervened.
We should all be disturbed and alarmed by this second assassination attempt on Donald Trump. It should be a warning sign to both sides that they need to take a step back and reduce the violent imagery.
Politicians and pundits also should not tar everyone on the opposition with the radical brush. Not all MAGAs are January 6 sympathizers. Not all Democrats are Ryan Routh. And contrary to what some like Erick Erickson say, there seems to be no evidence that Thomas Crooks was a “progressive.” [As an aside, many of you know that I used to work for Erickson on The Resurgent. His metamorphosis from a thoughtful critic of Trump to a dishonest partisan bomb thrower (although only in the figurative sense) has been very disappointing.]
That Republicans should be cautious in their claims is especially true when we know that Republican rhetoric has been directly linked to a number of violent incidents in addition to January 6. To name a few, there was the MAGA bomber who targeted Democrats with mail bombs in 2018, the mass murder of 23 in an El Paso Walmart in 2019 by a man whose manifesto mirrored anti-immigrant language about “invaders,” and a string of QAnon violence that includes a woman who traveled from Illinois to New York in 2020 to “take out” Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.
I’ll state it categorically. I don’t want to see violence from either side. That’s not the American way.
I don’t want to see Donald Trump killed or injured in any way for a multitude of reasons. The Bible and the law tell me murder is wrong. I want Trump to live to be defeated at the ballot box. I don’t want him to become a martyr. I don’t want to subject America to the widespread political violence that could easily follow an assassination.
Thomas Crooks and Ryan Routh are ultimately responsible for their actions, as are the MAGA Republicans who break the law, but both sides do need to be more responsible in the language they use to persuade voters. That includes Donald Trump, who was the intended victim this week, but whose words have already directly inspired violence against others. If Republicans are serious in their concerns about violent language, they can start by turning down the heat in their own rhetoric.
ROUTH ARREST VIDEO: Body-cam video of Routh’s arrest has been posted to YouTube by KSDK News.
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