|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The gunman and would-be assassin who fired shots at former President Donald Trump at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida Sunday has been identified as 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh.
Originally from North Carolina, Routh is currently listed as residing in Hawaii, and has a lengthy criminal record with multiple arrests over the past 30 years.
Active on social media outlets including X/Twitter, Routh indicated that while he had supported Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign, he has since become critical of the former president, and in recent months warned Trump’s return to the White House could imperil the country.
“DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose,” Routh tweeted on April 22nd, calling on Biden, then the 2024 presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to focus his campaign on a pledge to keep “America democratic and free,” arguing that Trump wants to “make Americans slaves against master.”
“We cannot afford to fail. The world is counting on us to show the way.”
According to a report by The New York Post, Routh has donated exclusively to Democratic candidates since 2019.
Photographs taken by The Associated Press of Routh’s home in Kaaawa, Hawaii reveal that Routh’s pickup truck features a Biden – Harris sticker.
On December 7th, 2023, Routh also appeared to weigh in on the Israeli-Arab conflict, tweeting a map of the biblical Holy Land, showing the Land of Israel divided into Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee.
Above the map, Routh wrote that the entire area appeared to be “historically” all Palestinian, based on the title of the map: “Map of Palestine.”
“I am unclear what part of Isreal [sic] the Jews owned based on this historic map; Judea perhaps? it seems to historically all be palestinian,” he tweeted.
Routh also used his social media presence to try to recruit soldiers for Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia.
On Sunday, Routh opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle towards the golf hole where former President Donald Trump was approaching at the Trump International Golf Club, after pushing the muzzle of his rifle through a chainlink fence on the outside of the club, some 400 to 500 yards away from Trump’s position.
Secret Service agents spotted the rifle muzzle and opened fire on Routh, who then fled the scene before being apprehended shortly thereafter.
