There was no time to waste. Former President Donald Trump sent out a fundraising appeal within hours of being targeted by an alleged shooter armed with an AK-47 named Ryan Wesley Routh at his golf course in West Palm Beach. Trump declared in his appeal, “I will NEVER SURRENDER! I will always love you for supporting me.”

Both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris sent out messages condemning the attacks, but leading Republicans are accusing their Democrats of having precipitated it by depicting Trump as a menace to American democracy. This rhetorical ju-jitsu aims to depict Democrats, not Republicans, as the real authoritarians. “This rhetoric against President Trump, this narrative that he will be the next dictator, that he is the next Hitler coming,” said Rep. Mike Walt on Fox News, “it has got to stop.” On “X,” Roger Kimball, the editor of the New Criterion, stated, “The Dems…completely own these attempts on Trump’s life and the attacks on Trump’s supporters.”

Whether this line of argument, which seeks to hoist Trump’s political adversaries by their own petard, will prove politically effective is questionable. For one thing, the peculiar background of the shooter suggests the classic lone wolf shooter who is animated by a strange stew of grievances and resentments that are not readily susceptible to rational interpretation. Put bluntly, Routh comes across as a nutjob.

Routh has already apparently compiled a whopping 100 counts for various crimes. In 2002, he was arrested for possession of a weapon of mass destruction following a several hours-long confrontation with the North Carolina police. He saw himself as an advocate of peace, inviting North Korean leader Kim-Jong Un to Hawaii, where he, Routh, would be a self-described “ambassador and liaison.” The former roofing contractor also came to see himself as a warrior. He wanted to fight against Russia on behalf of Ukraine. The Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel has an exclusive from a reporter who interviewed Routh in May 2022 and notes that he was so unhinged that the Ukrainian army declined his services. A unit of foreign nationals fighting in Ukraine says that “American citizen Ryan Routh has never served in the International Legion of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine…”

None of this will stem the tide of conspiracy thinking that permeates social media. Elon Musk himself mused, “And no one is even trying to kill Biden/Kamala,” accompanied by a thinking face emoji. He has since deleted the tweet and called it a joke. But others are claiming that Trump himself staged the event or that the Deep State is behind it—when only the quick action of a Secret Service agent, of course, is what nabbed the shooter in the first place.

The truth is that the ubiquity of guns in America is a big part of the problem. Political violence, you could even say, is part of the American tradition. Already in Springfield, Ohio, city officials are canceling numerous events as bomb threats proliferate. “There’s no evidence of this at all,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said about the Trump campaign’s claims that Haitians are running amok in Springfield. Trump is planning to visit the town later this month. Local mayor Rob Rue says his visit could be “difficult.” Before he can visit, however, Trump is announcing his latest grift. Today, he’s touting the establishment of his new World Liberty Fiinancial cryptocurrency platform. 

About the Author: Editor of the National Interest, Jacob Heilbrunn

Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He has written on both foreign and domestic issues for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Reuters, Washington Monthly, and The Weekly Standard. He has also written for German publications such as Cicero, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Der Tagesspiegel. In 2008, his book They Knew They Were Right: the Rise of the Neocons was published by Doubleday. It was named one of the one hundred notable books of the year by The New York Times. He is the author of America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators.

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