Former US president Donald Trump was safe after the US Secret Service foiled what the FBI called an apparent assassination attempt on the Republican candidate for president while he was golfing in Florida.
Several Secret Service agents fired on a gunman in bushes after he was spotted near the edge of Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course, a few hundred meters from where Trump was playing on Sunday, law enforcement officials said.
The suspect was arrested after fleeing the scene in a vehicle, leaving behind two backpacks and an AK-47-style assault rifle.
Photo: Reuters
The apparent attempt on Trump’s life came just two months after he was grazed in the right ear when a gunman fired on him at a campaign rally. That shooter was killed in return fire by security agents.
Both incidents highlight the challenge of keeping presidential candidates safe in a febrile campaign, with just over seven weeks to go before the Nov. 5 election.
“I would like to thank everyone for your concern and well wishes — It was certainly an interesting day!” Trump said on social media late on Sunday, thanking Secret Service and police for keeping him safe.
The suspect was widely identified in US media as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, of Hawaii. Late on Sunday, Secret Service and Homeland Security agents searched a home in Greensboro, North Carolina, which a neighbor told Reuters had belonged to Routh.
The attempted attack raises fresh questions about the level of protection for Trump, who is guarded by the Secret Service as a candidate and former president, though less stringently than a serving president.
If Trump were in office “we would have had the entire golf course surrounded,” Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said during Sunday’s briefing. “Because he’s not, security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible.”
Soon after the incident, Trump sent an e-mail to his supporters, saying: “Nothing will slow me down.
His election opponent, US Vice President Kamala Harris, said on X: “Violence has no place in America.”
US President Joe Biden directed his team to ensure the Secret Service has the resources it needs to ensure Trump’s safety. Biden and Harris had been briefed and were relieved to know Trump was safe, the White House said in a statement.
The suspect was an outspoken supporter of Ukraine who traveled there after Russia’s invasion in 2022 and told journalists he aimed to help recruit foreign fighters to Kyiv’s cause, having been rejected as too old to volunteer.
“A lot of the other conflicts are gray, but this conflict is definitely black and white. This is about good versus evil,” Routh said in a video interview posted by Newsweek Romania in June 2022, showing emotion as he pleaded to the camera in a shirt with US flag symbols.
“If the governments will not send their official military, then we, civilians, have to pick up the torch,” said Routh, who maintained a tent in central Kyiv with flags of countries whose citizens had died in the war.
Ukraine’s International Legion of foreign volunteers told Reuters Routh had “never been part of, associated with, or linked to the International Legion in any capacity.”
A legion official told CNN Routh had sent e-mails offering to recruit foreign volunteers, but Ukraine’s military thought the American was “delusional.”
“We didn’t even answer, there was nothing to answer to. He was never part of the Legion and didn’t cooperate with us in any way,” Oleksandr Shaguri, an officer of the Foreigners Coordination Department of the Land Forces Command, told CNN.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was glad to hear Trump was safe, and that there was no place for violence in politics anywhere.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared to link the attempt to Washington’s support for Ukraine.
“It is not us who should be thinking, it is the US intelligence services who should be thinking. In any case, playing with fire has its consequences,” Peskov said when asked about the attempted assassination.
The head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, said Moscow was “using another assassination attempt on Trump against Ukraine in the information field.”
“The enemy will launch a number of conspiracy theories about the ‘Ukrainian trace’. Of course, all of this is a lie,” he said.
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