The Second Assassination Attempt on Trump: Profile of a Neocon Terrorist

by Adam Garrie, The Kennedy Beacon

On Sunday, September 15, a casual afternoon round of golf turned into a chaotic scene, when  a man was spotted with a rifle near where former president Donald Trump was golfing.

Authorities now believe the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, was planning to assassinate Trump –  just over two months after another assassination attempt on the former president, in Pennsylvania. 

Routh’s numerous online statements are at times indecipherable; at others, he sounds like a virulent Washington D.C. neocon – a man who prioritizes radical, ideologically-motivated military interventionism in foreign conflicts at the expense of traditional diplomacy. 

“Routh seems to embody the feverish insanity of the Neocons and their intelligence apparatus allies, their revulsion for diplomacy and their preference for violence-assassination and war- as the instruments for US global hegemony,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  

Once Routh’s location in bushes near the golf course became known, he fled by foot before driving off in a black Nissan SUV.  Local police apprehended the suspect from his vehicle and took him into custody without a struggle. Law enforcement later confirmed that Routh was armed with an AK-47 style weapon and scope. He was also in possession of a GoPro camera, which suggests he planned to document his crime. 

Unlike the suspect in the first attempted assassination of Trump, who on July 13 fired shots at the former president during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Routh did not fire any shots, according to multiple news agencies. He is a 58 year old with a criminal record, whereas the Pennsylvania shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was 20 years old. Routh was carrying an AK-47 style rifle; Crooks fired from an AR-15.  

Through his writings and actions, Routh made his motive abundantly clear. The suspect sought to take Donald Trump’s life because of his policy to bring a peaceful settlement to the Russia-Ukraine war. He was passionately pro-Ukraine, traveling there to, as The Epoch Times reports, “assist in the conflict” by recruiting volunteers for the International Legion. 

Routh’s beliefs about the war in Ukraine, and other conflicts, not only puts him at odds with Trump but also with Kennedy, who shares the former president’s desire to end the Ukraine war. 

The shooter, then, can be  linked to the neocon project, supported most prominently by former Republican vice president Dick Cheney.

Cheney recently endorsed Kamala Harris and the majority of Democrats have welcomed that endorsement. The united neocon front in Washington is now a political bulwark intent on turning up the temperature on foreign conflicts. 

Was Routh the Democrats’ patsy?

During his time in Ukraine, Routh was interviewed by Newsweek and The New York Times. He opened up about his grievances against Trump due to the former president’s promise to bring an end to the Ukraine-Russia conflict. 

In 2023, Routh self-published a book about how Ukraine needs a more aggressive military posture vis-a-vis Russia. In the book, he also advocates for Iran to assassinate Trump. Routh’s advocacy for Iran to do harm to Trump is both disturbing and seemingly out of place, given Routh’s fanatically anti-Russian sentiments. 

Routh also openly bragged about trying to recruit Afghan fighters to join Ukraine’s forces and more bizarrely attempted to recruit Afghans to join the police force of Haiti, according to a 2023 post on X.

Even more bizarre was a social media post in which he offered to broker peace between North and South Korea, likening his activities to those for former Chicago Bulls star Dennis Rodman,who visited North Korea and organized exhibition basketball games as part of a goodwill mission. 

Routh also proudly supported ultra-nationalist forces inTaiwan that are hostile to Beijing – further connecting him to the Republican and Democratic neo-cons. Between September 2019 and March 2020, Routh made multiple donations to ActBlue, a pro-Democrat political action committee (PAC). Although voting records indicate that the suspect is a registered Democrat, he wanted 2024 Republican primary hopefuls Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley to join forces on a would-be Republican electoral ticket. This too is odd given the personal and ideological hostility between Ramaswamy and Haley. 

Born in North Carolina, Routh most recently lived in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he ran Camp Box Building, an apparently largely inactive business, Routh put the phone number of his business in virtually every post he made on X, A call to that number resulted in a voice recording with the  suspect identifying himself as a man involved with the “National Volunteer Center, sending soldiers to Ukraine as well as Taiwan.” The message asks would-be fighters to send him a message over WhatsApp, Viber or Telegram if they are interested in fighting in Ukraine or Taiwan. 

In his first public comments about the foiled assassination, Trump said, referring to his Democratic Party opponents, said  “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”. 

Routh fits the profile of a neocon terrorist. That is beyond dispute. But did he act alone?