Politico: Maybe Trump’s Would-Be Assassin Wasn’t Really Inspired by Democratic Talking Points

Politico received a letter from Ryan Routh, the man who attempted to assassinate Trump at a Florida golf course in September. Today, they published an article about the letter the framing of which is all about whether Trump was right to blame Biden and Harris for motivating him. It’s a very odd take, almost as if the author is still looking to deflect blame from Democrats. Here’s the opening paragraph.

The day after the second attempt on his life this year, Donald Trump blamed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at,” Trump said. His running mate, JD Vance, also blamed Harris and other Democrats, and the question of what motivated the alleged would-be assassin, Ryan Routh, remained a hot topic heading into Election Day.

Author Ankush Khardori says the letter was eventually shown to have been written by Routh. It was also clearly written before the election but he doesn’t exactly say when he received it or how long he’s been sitting on it. It left me wondering if he got this pre-election (when his focus on deflecting from Biden and Harris’ responsibility would have made more sense) and eventually decided he would wait until the election was over before mentioning it.

After some more throat clearing about not wanting to provide Routh a platform, we finally get to the contents and once again, Khardori leads with his best defense of Democrats.

To hear Routh tell it, he has no particular affinity for the Democratic Party — or either major political party, for that matter.

“I am unclear how we allowed ourselves to fall into just a two-party system,” Routh wrote, “but it infuriates me.

But eventually we get to some of the other things Routh wrote and here there’s really no avoiding the fact that he sounds just like a lot of Democrats did pre-election.

To be sure, Routh is a vigorous Trump opponent. He wrote his letter before the election and urged the country, in the event of a Trump victory, “to remove the power of our military by the President and place it with Congress before January.” “We must limit all Presidential power before Trump seizes our country,” he wrote. He referred to Trump at one point as a “dictator.” (Last year, Trump said he would not be a dictator if reelected “except for day one.”)

In the event that Trump lost, Routh called on Americans “to encircle the capitol” in order to prevent another siege of the U.S. Capitol akin to the one that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021.

So he believed Trump was a “dictator,” he was concerned about a repeat of Jan. 6 and (elsewhere in the letter) expressed concern that Trump had withdrawn from Obama’s JCPOA, i.e. the Iran deal. He may not consider himself a Democrat but he’s certainly echoing a lot of their talking points.

On top of that, Khardori leaves out a few details which were reported previously, such as Routh’s donation to ActBlue and the “Biden/Harris” bumper sticker on his truck.

That’s an Interesting bumper sticker on Ryan Wesley Routh’s truck. pic.twitter.com/BBnJgIvq5X

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 16, 2024

Then there were his anti-Trump, pro-Biden social media posts which seem hard to misinterpret.

Gee, Ankush Khardori, which party does that sound like? But having skipped over all of the evidence that doesn’t fit into his thesis, Khardori concludes that Routh is at best an unreliable narrator. We shouldn’t believe him and we also shouldn’t believe Trump.

You don’t have to believe Routh based on what he put in his letter. He’s not exactly a reliable narrator. But you also don’t have to take the word of partisan politicians.

The evidence strongly suggests that Routh was motivated by the very sort of “Democracy is on the ballot” rhetoric that Biden, Harris and most elected Democrats were pushing prior to Routh’s assassination attempt. I realize that was very awkward for Democrats and their media allies to admit that, but those are the facts. 

Trying to rehabilitate Routh after the fact based on a letter he sent from jail while he awaits trial is a fool’s errand, but he apparently found just the right person to send his letter to at Politico. What an embarrassment.