TTHE LATEST The attempt to assassinate Donald Trump on Sept. 15 was only uncovered when a Secret Service agent spotted a gun barrel sticking out of a fence next to the Florida golf course where Trump was playing a round. Agents opened fire and a man jumped out of the bushes. He fled in a black Nissan, an eyewitness told police. The witness photographed the vehicle’s license plate and police soon pursued it down a highway, where they stopped and arrested the suspect.
The motives of the attacker are still unclear. Last year, the man, identified by the media as Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old, told the New York Timesin which he said he wanted to volunteer to fight for Ukraine in the war against Russia. That interview, as well as others and accounts of his social media postings, portrayed a man with shifting partisan views who rumbled about the difficulties of volunteering in Ukraine and sometimes talked about participating in violence.
Mr. Trump soon said in a fundraising email that he was “SAFE AND COMFORTABLE.” But the apparent assassination attempt would be the second attempt to endanger his life within two months. At the scene, police found a AK-47-style rifle with a scope and a GoPro camera that the suspect intended to use to document his exploits, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said at a news conference.
The arrest will send a fresh jolt to a presidential campaign that has endured one shock after another in recent months. The momentum and media attention that Vice President Kamala Harris enjoyed after her strong debate against Mr Trump on September 10 will now compete with exhaustive coverage of the suspect’s background and the confounding question of how another shooter was able to get within a few hundred yards of the former president undetected.
The Secret Service has been under intense scrutiny since its agents failed to prevent Thomas Crooks from shooting Trump in the ear with an assault rifle during a speech at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13. Now the service and the Biden administration’s overall oversight of the former president’s security are under renewed scrutiny. Asked at a press conference how a gunman managed to get so close to the golf course, Bradshaw gave an explanation that raised further questions: “He is not the sitting president. If he were, we would have had the entire golf course surrounded. But because he is not, security is limited to the areas the Secret Service believes are possible.”
The big challenge will be to hold those responsible accountable and continue to ramp up efforts to protect Trump, Harris and other candidates while keeping politicization to a minimum. Rick Scott, a Republican senator from Florida, did that task no favors, quickly posting an accusation that will likely be all too typical in the days to come: “The media and the radical left must immediately stop this dangerous and senseless rhetoric.” Scott’s statement echoed accusations made by Republicans after the July attempt that Democrats’ demonization of Trump had given power to would-be killers.
Ms Harris said she was “deeply disturbed” by the possible assassination attempt and “grateful” that Trump was safe. “We must all do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to further violence,” she added. After his near-death experience in July, Trump enjoyed a rallying effect among grateful supporters and a brief pause in partisan hostilities. He responded to that attack with defiance and resolve, but also with more than a hint of martyrdom. Hours after that incident, Trump released a series of statements via email: “My resolve is only stronger after another attempt on my life! … I WILL NEVER SUSPEND!”
Until this year, one might have thought that massive investments in the Secret Service and aggressive, preventive policing had curbed America’s vulnerability to presidential assassinations – of which there have been four (Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy) – as well as to serious assassination attempts on presidents and candidates (too many to list). But just as Jan. 6 shattered complacency about the stability of American constitutional norms, the Trump assassination attempts have made clear that America’s gun violence knows no bounds. “The threat level is high,” a Secret Service spokesman said after Routh’s arrest. “We live in dangerous times.”■
