As you all know by now, there was another assassination attempt on Donald Trump this afternoon at the former president’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida. Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, the alleged would-be assassin, is allegedly shown in the photo above. What I want to know is: what the heck are those button-like things on either side of his chest? Readers are invited to share any (reasonable, not too wacky) theories in the comments.
I’ll assume you’re familiar with the general outlines of what happened, so I’ll just paste a few odds and ends that Vlad and I found in various places on the Interwebs.
The quotes below are from various media sources. I didn’t hang on to the URLs, but if you check the news feed later tonight, you’ll find a lot of material there.
Voter records indicate that he was an unaffiliated voter but did vote in the Democratic primary in Guilford County.
Social media posts allegedly belonging to Routh indicate he was a believer in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and he had posted that he had voted for Trump in 2016 but was disappointed with him after the fact, expressing support for Tulsi Gabbard in various posts.
The North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections has records for Routh going back to 2002. That year, he barricaded himself inside a business with a gun in Greensboro, per the News & Record.
He’s starting to look like a composite character.
CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller reported Sunday afternoon that Routh’s social media accounts have focused on his “self-proclaimed involvement” in the war in Ukraine, including his supposed effort to recruit soldiers to fight in the conflict. Routh also claimed to have fought in Ukraine as it continues to hold off Russia’s invasion.
Routh appears to have previously spoken with The New York Times about his effort to recruit Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban to fight in Ukraine. At the time of the report, which was published on March 25, 2023, Routh told the Times that he had spent several months in Ukraine in 2022.
A Semafor report published on March 10, 2023, cited Routh as the head of the International Volunteer Center (IVC) in Ukraine, a private organization that works to “empower volunteers” and other non-profit groups that work to “enhance the distribution of humanitarian aid throughout Ukraine,” according to the IVC’s website.
In a June 2022 interview with Newsweek Romania, Routh spoke about his efforts to recruit volunteers for the International Legion Defense of Ukraine, a unit of Ukraine’s Ground Forces.
The guy’s really got form:
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A hypersonic missile fired by the Houthis in Yemen evaded Israeli air defenses and reached central Israel today. No injuries were reported.
