Washington: Former US President Donald Trump, who was the victim of an apparent second assassination attempt on Sunday, claimed that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris' recent comments had inspired the attack on his life. The attempt on Trump's life came 50 days before the presidential elections in November, already touted as the most turbulent in America's history.
Trump was rushed off the golf course at Trump International in West Palm Beach, Florida, after a Secret Service gunman discovered a gunman in the bushes. Agents engaged the gunman and fired at least four rounds of ammunition around 1:30 pm (1730 GMT). The gunman then dropped his rifle, two backpacks and other items and fled in a black Nissan car.
Authorities identified the suspect as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, who was arrested later in another county as he fled from the spot in an SUV, leaving behind his two backpacks, a scope used for aiming, and a GoPro camera in the vicinity. He was charged with two federal firearms charges. The FBI called it a second assassination attempt on the former President, the second in two months.
Shooter acted on 'highly inflammatory language': Trump
Trump, the Republican candidate for the upcoming elections, told Fox News that the suspected gunman acted on "highly inflammatory language" of Democrats. "He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it. Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out," he said.
Trump pointed to Biden and Harris’ past comments casting Trump as a "threat to democracy," while telling Americans they are "unity" leaders. "They are the opposite. These are people that want to destroy our country... It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat." He also accused the Democrats of "wrapping him up" in lawsuits.
In addition to fundraising appeals, his campaign emailed a statement highlighting earlier comments by Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and other Democrats that the campaign said had prompted the suspected would-be assassin. Harris and other Democrats have cast Trump as a danger to US democracy, citing his effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, which led to the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol.
Why did the suspect target Trump?
Routh has expressed several anti-Trump remarks in the past and has echoed Biden and Harris' anti-Trump comments, that "Democracy is on the ballot" on his social media pages this year, and that Democrats "cannot lose." He has also expressed strong pro-Ukrainian statements and said he was "willing to fight and die" for Ukraine.
In June 2020, he made a post on X in which he asked then-President Trump to win reelection by issuing an executive order directing the Department of Justice to prosecute police misconduct. His post suggested that he was a Trump supporter back then. In recent years, his support appears to have shifted to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. His posts have seemed to have soured on Trump.
“You are free to assassinate Trump,” Routh wrote of Iran in an apparently self-published 2023 book titled “Ukraine's Unwinnable War,” which described the former president as a “fool” and “buffoon” for both the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots and the “tremendous blunder” of leaving the Iran nuclear deal. Routh wrote that he once voted for Trump and must take part of the blame for the “child that we elected for our next president that ended up being brainless.”
However, Trump himself has long used incendiary rhetoric, as well as racist and sexist language, saying on several occasions that immigrants in the US illegally are "poisoning the blood of our country" and more recently spreading the false claims that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs in an Ohio town. After the Sunday incident, Trump said Biden "couldn't have been nicer" after the President spoke to him on the phone and conveyed his relief that the Republican candidate was safe.
(with inputs from agencies)
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