by Alexis Simendinger & Kristina Karisch | The Hill
Former President Trump said he was uninjured Sunday after the Secret Service disrupted what the FBI described as an “apparent assassination attempt” at a Florida golf course where he was playing.
A Secret Service agent saw a rifle muzzle sticking out of shrubbery and fired at a suspect, later located and taken into custody, who dropped the weapon and fled in an SUV, leaving behind two backpacks, a scope used for aiming and a GoPro camera, Palm Beach County authorities said Sunday.
The alleged gunman in the incident is Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, according to multiple news outlets. The New York Times, which interviewed him last year because of his interest in fighting in Ukraine, described him as a former roofing contractor from Greensboro, N.C., who had moved to Hawaii.
Trump suffered a wounded ear in a July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., after a gunman fired 8 rounds during an outdoor campaign rally, killing a 50-year-old bystander while injuring two others. A Secret Service sniper killed the gunman, age 20, who was positioned on a nearby roof.
“Violence has no place in America,” Vice President Harris wrote on X after being briefed about the incident and issuing a formal statement. “I am glad he is safe,” she said of her election opponent.
President Biden issued a statement expressing relief that Trump was unharmed and commending law enforcement and the Secret Service. “As I have said many times, there is no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country,” he said.
The New York Times: A gunman Sunday was able to get a semiautomatic rifle with a telescopic sight roughly 300 to 500 yards away from Trump, raising new questions about the Secret Service.
The former president told supporters in a social media post, “Before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first: I am safe and well!”
Within hours Sunday, Trump released a fundraising entreaty. “I wanted you to hear this first,” Trump said in an email describing his uninjured status. “Nothing will slow me down. I will NEVER SURRENDER! I will always love you for supporting me,” he wrote.
As the FBI described the Florida event as an assassination attempt, Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), had been on the defensive for days after repeating false tales about pet-eating Haitian migrants living in Springfield, Ohio. Following their debunked narratives, bomb threats plagued Springfield last week and racist accusations about Haitians circulated on the internet.
Vance, who, like Trump and Harris has Secret Service protection, was pressed during a Sunday interview about his decision as an Ohio senator to publicly repeat stories he heard from constituents but did not verify about migrants in Springfield who allegedly captured and ate geese and residents’ pets.
If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do … because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast,” Vance told CNN before backpedaling.
“I say that we’re creating a story, meaning we’re creating the American media focusing on it,” he added.
The public uproar following assertions floated by Trump and Vance is not new in TV-age politics, although today’s election-targeted stakes are enormous.
Disgraced Sen. Joe McCarthy, who peddled lies and innuendo about supposed communist sympathizers before his death in 1957, had in common with a younger Trump a hard-charging adviser, the attorney Roy Cohn, who died in 1986. Cohn served as the senator’s investigative chief counsel.
McCarthy “learned early that there was no worse a penalty for a big lie than for a little one, but that only the big ones drew a crowd, so he told whoppers,” Larry Tye wrote in his 2020 biography of the senator titled, “Demagogue.”
The New York Times’s “The Daily” podcast explained the history of Springfield, Ohio, and the facts leading up to Trump’s unsubstantiated assertion last week that Haitian immigrants “are eating the pets.”
The Hill: Neo-Nazi extremists stoked anti-Haitian sentiment in Springfield, Ohio, before the Trump campaign gave a national platform to false allegations.
