The era of close shaves continues
What we know about the second attempt on Trump’s life.
When Donald Trump barely escaped a gunman’s bullet in July, I wrote that we were living in an era of close shaves, skating dangerously close to major political violence again and again. Just more than two months later, that point was underscored, as Trump survived yet another assassination attempt on Sunday.
According to law enforcement officials, Trump was playing at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, when a Secret Service agent — posted just one hole ahead of the former president — spotted an AK-47-style rifle sticking through the chain-link fence surrounding the perimeter of the course. The agent opened fire at the individual, who fled the scene, leaving behind the rifle, a scope, two backpacks, and a GoPro. Trump was not injured.
The suspected gunman was later stopped on Interstate 95 and identified as 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh.
Unlike Thomas Matthew Crooks (the gunman in Trump’s first assassination attempt), Routh has an extensive online history, although, like Crooks, his political identity has been difficult to pin down. In previous social media posts, Routh has said that he supported Trump in 2016 but broke with him by the next election cycle. Throughout 2020, he sent small donations to a range of Democrats seeking to face the then-president, including Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and Tom Steyer; in 2024, he sent a tweet calling on Republicans Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy to form a joint ticket against Trump.
His most passionate political belief in recent years appeared to be in support of Ukraine; he was even quoted by news outlets like Semafor and The New York Times last year, about his work as an American volunteer in Ukraine working to rally support for the country against Russia.
Routh’s online commentary was wide-ranging — with one post touching on Trump’s previous assassination attempt in July. “You and Biden should visit the injured people in the hospital from the Trump rally and attend the funeral of the murdered fireman,” he wrote in a post at the time, tagging Kamala Harris. “Trump will never do anything for them.”
According to CNN, Routh — who most recently lived in Hawaii — had repeated “scrapes with the law” while previously residing in North Carolina. He was arrested in 2002 after barricading himself inside a building with a fully automatic weapon; he also faced several tax charges and civil suits throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
What happens now?
Previous presidential assassinations — and assassination attempts — have often triggered changes to Secret Service protocol. The murder of John F. Kennedy in 1963 ended the era of presidents riding in open vehicles; since the shooting of Ronald Reagan in 1981, presidents rarely enter buildings through the front door.
After the back-to-back assassination attempts against Gerald Ford in September 1975 — separated by 17 days, perhaps the closest analogue to the two consecutive attempts on Trump’s life — Ford began wearing a bulletproof trenchcoat, equipped with a vest made of Kevlar.
The Secret Service beefed up Trump’s security after his first assassination attempt against Trump — although it is unclear whether major shifts were implemented, besides the resignation of its then-director, Kimberly Cheatle.
After Trump has been targeted yet again, with a gunman able to expect bipartisan calls for changes at the agency.
At a Sunday briefing, Palm Beach County sheriff Ric Bradshaw said that the entire perimeter of Trump’s golf course would have been guarded if he was the current president — but that being a former president and presidential candidate didn’t merit that level of protection.
“The level where he is at right now, he is not the sitting president,” Bradshaw said. “If he was, we would have had the entire golf course surrounded. But because he’s not, security is limited to the areas the Secret Service deems possible.”
At least one congressman, Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY), has already called for that to change, issuing a statement calling on the Biden administration to grant Trump the “same security levels afforded to a sitting president to ensure his safety.” From across the aisle, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) called on the Secret Service to “come to Congress tomorrow, tell us what resources are needed to expand the protective perimeter, & lets allocate it in a bipartisan vote the same day.”
Reps. Mike Kelly (R-PA) and Jason Crow (D-CO), the chair and ranking member of the bipartisan House task force investigating the July attack against Trump, signaled that their probe would expand, in a joint statement requesting a Secret Service briefing on Sunday’s incident.
The day ahead
President Biden will deliver remarks at the 2024 National HBCU Week Conference in Philadelphia.
Vice President Harris will meet with leaders of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to seek the union’s endorsement.
Sen. JD Vance will deliver remarks at a dinner hosted by the Faith & Freedom Coalition in Atlanta.
The Senate will vote on confirmation of Kevin Gafford Ritz to be a U.S. Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit.
The House is out until tomorrow.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hold oral arguments on ByteDance’s challenge against the law forcing TikTok to either be sold or banned in the U.S.
The Washoe County Second Judicial Court in Nevada will begin a Murdoch family trial that could decide the future of Fox News.
Instead of granting Trump MORE secret service protection - at taxpayer expense - why shouldn't Trump curtail his activities, such as golfing, for a couple of months until the election is over? If nothing else, he could bombastically claim he's saving people money at great sacrifice to his freedom. Or, he could pay for his own protection. After all, he often boasts he knows more than everyone and anyone, so he clearly must know more about what it would take to protect him than anyone else!
Roy Cohn's motto, any news, good or bad, about a candidate is always good, seems to be running true to form.