Former President Donald Trump blamed the Biden-Harris administration’s rhetoric for the second assassination attempt against him in just over two months.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, along with their media allies, have called Trump a “threat to democracy” for years. Trump is “the greatest national security threat to the United States,” Harris has declared in a public venue.
Authorities apprehended Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, on Sunday for allegedly attempting to assassinate Trump while he enjoyed a round of golf in South Florida.“He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump told Fox News, commenting on the suspect. “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.”
“They do it with a combination of rhetoric and lawsuits they wrap me up in,” he added. “These are the things that dangerous fools, like the shooter, listen to — that is the rhetoric they listen to, and the same with the first one.”
Politicians on the right and left condemned the attempted assassination — though establishment media immediately blamed Trump, and not Democrats, for supposedly using inflammatory rhetoric that was responsible for political violence. “No ears were harmed. Carry on with your Sunday afternoon,” far-left podcaster Rachel Vindman joked after the shooting.
“The media is made up of fools that will spew [Democrats’] garbage and spew their sick philosophies and will protect them at all costs, and they can’t believe they get away with it,” Trump continued. “Democrats are totally protected by the media.”
“These are people that want to destroy our country,” Trump said of his political foes. “It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat.”
Routh often posted on social media about the Ukraine/Russian conflict. He tried to find volunteers to fight Russia. The New York Times interviewed Routh about his efforts to recruit volunteers to travel to Ukraine and fight in the war.
Routh encouraged Iran to kill Trump in a book about the Ukraine war, according to excerpts circulated on social media, and also claimed that Trump “perpetrated” January 6, a suggestion that mirrors Democrat talking points echoed in the media.
Routh appeared to be a Trump supporter in 2016 but turned against him by 2020. “Make Americans slaves again,” he posted earlier this year. Routh reportedly placed a Biden-Harris bumper sticker on a truck outside his home in Hawaii and donated to ActBlue, Democrats’ fundraising platform.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
