Former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated — again — in West Palm Beach, Fla. on Sept. 15 by Ryan Wesley Routh, a radical political activist who in his 2023 book, “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” said he wanted the West to “instigate” a nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine.
Routh, who claimed in a June 2022 Newsweek Romania interview he spent time recruiting foreign mercenaries to fight on behalf of Ukraine for the International Legion — Ukrainian officials are disputing his account, saying he was “delusional” — came within 500 yards of Trump before being spotted by the Secret Service, who opened fire and scared him off. As Routh fled in his black sports utility vehicle, he was apprehended shortly thereafter.
According to Secret Service Special Agent Rafael Barros, speaking at a Sept. 15 press conference, it was not clear if Routh got any shots off: “He noticed that the rifle was pointing out, our agents engaged. We are not sure right now if the individual was able to take a shot at our agents. But for sure our agents were able to engage with the suspect.”
Key questions include how Routh knew Trump would be at the golf course that day at that time as it wasn’t publicly available information.
As for why the golf course’s perimeter was not secured, according to Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, former presidents do not get that level of protection: “And at this level that he is at right now, he’s not the sitting president. If he was, we would have had the entire golf course surrounded. Well, because he’s not, the security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible.”
Bradshaw added, “you got to understand, the golf course is surrounded by shrubbery. So when somebody gets into the shrubbery, they’re pretty much out of sight. All right… So I would imagine that the next time he comes at a golf course, there’ll probably be a little more people around the perimeter.”
But after the July 13 attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pa., when Trump was nearly killed, why wasn’t Secret Service protection sufficiently upgraded to prevent this from happening? How can shooters be able to hide in the bushes waiting for Trump to come along?
And what about other presidential candidates, including Robert Kennedy, Jr., who after he endorsed Trump had Secret Service protection Jill Stein, Chase Oliver and Cornell West?
What we learned on Sept. 15, when former President Trump — or any other candidate for president who is not the sitting president — visits a golf course or anywhere else off-schedule, there is not a full perimeter. In other words, it’s open season on challenger candidates in presidential elections. After July 13, how is that possible?
Every candidate should be secured, not just former presidents, including substantial third-party candidates for president like Kennedy, who is still on the ballot, and Stein, Oliver and West. You get to 1 percent, you get protection. Third party candidates can have just as much impact on the outcome of an election as the two major party candidates, with Ralph Nader’s 2000 campaign and Jill Stein’s 2016 campaign being credited in part for the outcomes. Now we know they are much softer targets.
As for Routh, he was apparently radicalized by Russiagate propaganda and later by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a war which Trump has campaigned on wanting to end and restore peace to the region via a negotiated settlement.
In his book, Routh wrote he wanted the West to “instigate” nuclear war with Russia, in a chapter titled, “Why not nuclear war?”: “We must institigate this war and push the issue to the end.”
Routh added, “The entire world runs and hides in fear because Putin has [n]uclear weapons… Enough is [e]nough, the world cannot allow a country [to] be involved in conflict after conflict and do nothing. It must be quick and decisive and [a] powerful blow to end it once and for all. Again, we must give Ukraine back all of the nuclear warhead[s] that we took with the only stipulation is that they all be used.”
Unbelievably, Routh thinks such a war is survivable, “All NATO nations have missile defense systems in place to eliminate… what Putin sends and the fallout will blow in his direction… Why do we even have nuclear weapons if we are not prepared to use them?”
That’s nuts. And yet this nut got pretty close to killing the former president, whose peace plan Routh might have viewed as an obstacle to destroying Russia. Imagine if he had connected with his target?
Given similar facts as Butler, Pa., where security was more lax than that of a sitting president (again) as a matter of policy, coupled with the additional facts of being in contact with a foreign military with an interest in a more pro-active U.S. involvement in the war and also with U.S. government agencies, a good number of people would be convinced this meant it was an inside job, even if it turns out the assassin was no more than a delusional radical. Once again, we’d be tearing ourselves apart in the fallout.
As it is, protection for former presidents and presidential candidates is inadequate. And it still remains to be answered: How did Routh know where Trump would be?
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
