The Making of the President 2024: The Second Trump Assassination Attempt
On the afternoon of Sunday, September 15, 2024, former President Donald Trump was playing golf at the Trump International Golf Course West Palm Beach. While the golf game was taking place, at around 1:30 p.m. Eastern time, a Secret Service agent spotted a man with a rifle standing by a chain-link fence on the perimeter of the course. This agent and others opened fire, and the man fled off in a black Nissan. He was eventually taken into custody, the officials said.
President Trump was safe and unharmed, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation was treating the episode as an attempted assassination, making it the second one against the former president in just over two months. Mr. Trump had received a minor wound to his ear in a previous attempt during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024.
The suspected gunman was later identified as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, of Hawaii.
The Secret Service agent who spotted the gunman was standing at least one hole away from Trump. He reportedly saw the armed man hiding in the shrubbery by a fence at the perimeter of the golf course. The Secret Service fired at the man, although the suspect had not fired any shots. Routh was approximately 400 yards from Trump at the time he was spotted.
After Routh left the scene, Secret Service agents located a semiautomatic rifle with a scope near the property line, along with two backpacks that were hung on the fence. The backpacks contained ceramic tile, and a video camera. A witness saw the man rin from the bushes to a black Nissan. The witness took a photo of the car and shared it with law enforcement officials. Routh was stopped driving northbound on Interstate 95 after crossing into Martin County.
Routh had been interviewed by The New York Times in 2023 for an article about Americans volunteering to aid the war effort in Ukraine. Routh had no military experience, but claimed that he had traveled to Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in 2022 to recruit Afghan soldiers to fight there. He told The Times he once visited Washington to meet with politicians to strengthen support for Ukraine. “I’m just a U.S. citizen that’s helping out,” he said.
Trump had been golfing with his friend Steve Witkoff, a New York real estate investor, when the shots were fired by the Secret Service agents. Trump then returned to Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach estate. His campaign sent two fund-raising emails connected to the episode. “There are people in this world who will do whatever it takes to stop us,” one of them said.
Vice President Kamala Harris posted on social media that she had been briefed on the shooting, and she wrote, “I am glad he is safe. Violence has no place in America.”
President Joe Biden issued a statement that he had been briefed on the investigation. He said: “I am relieved that the former president is unharmed. There is an active investigation into this incident as law enforcement gathers more details about what happened. As I have said many times, there is no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country, and I have directed my team to continue to ensure that Secret Service has every resource, capability and protective measure necessary to ensure the former president’s continued safety.”
Routh, who is 58 years of age, had posted a number of messages in the past on the social media site X, expressing his support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. Weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he posted, “I AM WILLING TO FLY TO KRAKOW AND GO TO THE BORDER OF UKRAINE TO VOLUNTEER AND FIGHT AND DIE.”
On another social media site, Signal, Routh wrote: “Civilians must change this war and prevent future wars. On WhatsApp, his biography read, “Each one of us must do our part daily in the smallest steps help support human rights, freedom and democracy; we each must help the chinese [sic].”
Routh was arrested in 2002 in Greensboro, N.C., after barricading himself inside a building with a fully automatic weapon, according to the Greensboro News & Record newspaper. He was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and possession of a fully automatic machine gun. It is not clear how the charges were resolved. At some point Routh moved to Hawaii, where a man he ran a small business. In a May 2020 post, he invited Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, to Hawaii for a vacation and offered to act as “ambassador and liaison” to resolve disputes between the two nations.
When deputies stopped him on Interstate 95 after the incident, Routh appeared calm. He did not ask why he was being detained, and he was not armed when he was taken out of his car. Following is a video of his arrest.
Click to viewThe cellphone of the suspect charged on Monday in a possible assassination attempt against former President Donald J. Trump was near the golf course where the episode took place for nearly 12 hours, court records show.
The cellphone of Ryan W. Routh, the suspect, was “in the vicinity of the area along the tree line” of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., beginning at 1:59 a.m. on Sunday, according to a federal criminal complaint filed on Monday.
Vice President Kamala Harris called former President Donald J. Trump on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 17, 20204, to directly express that “she is grateful he is safe.”
Trump's running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, spoke on Monday September 16, 2024 and he blamed inflammatory rhetoric “coming from too many corners of our politics.” He accused Democrats of going too far in casting Mr. Trump’s potential re-election as the end of democracy. He said, "I’m not going to say conservatives always get things exactly right, but no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months. I think that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric or somebody is going to get hurt.” In a social media post after his speech, Mr. Vance again blamed Democrats for the assassination attempts.
Routh has been charged with possession of a prohibited firearm by a convicted felon, and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. The court documents concerning this case can be found here.