An officer with the Palm Beach County Sheriffs works outside of Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla. on Sept. 16, after the apparent assassination attempt of Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump.Lynne Sladky/The Associated Press
Donald Trump is blaming his political opponents for a suspected second attempt to assassinate him, even as the former U.S. president’s rivals and allies are joining together to demand that his security be tightened.
Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson led a bipartisan chorus on Monday promising the Secret Service more resources after, for the second time in as many months, Mr. Trump’s bodyguards did not create a large enough security perimeter to stop a gunman from getting within 500 metres of him.
Police revealed on Monday that the accused gunman may have lain in wait for Mr. Trump for nearly 12 hours without anyone noticing him, ratcheting up questions over security lapses that could have proven deadly during the Sunday incident.
At a press conference, however, Secret Service acting director Ronald Rowe defended his agency’s work and said for the first time that the suspect did not have a line of sight to the former president and did not fire his gun. The man fled when fired upon by Secret Service agents and was later arrested.
The day after the alleged attempt, Mr. Trump described Mr. Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, his rival in November’s presidential election, as the U.S.’s “enemy from within” and said “bullets are flying” because of their “Communist Left Rhetoric.” The FBI is investigating the crime as an assassination attempt but has so far not commented on a motive for it.
In e-mails to supporters and on his Truth Social platform, Mr. Trump followed up messages about the suspected assassination attempt with requests for money. “FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!!!!!” he wrote in one Truth Social message over a link to his donation page.
Mr. Trump’s messaging continued the campaign’s attacks ahead of the hard-fought Nov. 5 vote. The attempts on Mr. Trump’s life mark only the two latest in a string of violent episodes to shake the country’s politics in recent years.
Mr. Trump was playing a round at the Trump International Golf Club at 1:30 p.m. Sunday when one of his Secret Service agents noticed a rifle barrel sticking through a chain-link fence in the bushes at the perimeter of the course. The Secret Service opened fire, the gunman fled and was stopped 70 kilometres to the north on I-95 in Martin County, police said.
The accused, Ryan Wesley Routh, is a 58-year-old roofer from Greensboro, N.C., with a criminal history, including once barricading himself inside a business with a machine gun. Most recently, according to neighbours and extensive online writings under his name, he has been living in Hawaii, running a business making low-cost shelters and trying to recruit people to fight for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.
Trump assassination attempt in Florida
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was safe after what the FBI said appeared to be an assassination attempt on Sunday while he was golfing on his course in West Palm Beach, Fla. The suspect was apprehended about 65 km away.
Mar-a-Lago
Trump's Florida
residence
Palm Beach Int’l Airport
I-95
Detail
Trump International
Golf Club
Fla.
1 km
Trump was playing
hole 5
5
S. Congress Ave.
4
6
7
8
Summit Blvd.
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: REUTERS;
OPENSTREETMAP; GRAPHIC NEWS; GOOGLE EARTH
Trump assassination attempt in Florida
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was safe after what the FBI said appeared to be an assassination attempt on Sunday while he was golfing on his course in West Palm Beach, Fla. The suspect was apprehended about 65 km away.
Mar-a-Lago
Trump's Florida
residence
Palm Beach Int’l Airport
I-95
Detail
Trump International
Golf Club
Fla.
1 km
Trump was playing
hole 5
5
S. Congress Ave.
4
6
7
8
Summit Blvd.
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: REUTERS;
OPENSTREETMAP; GRAPHIC NEWS; GOOGLE EARTH
Trump assassination attempt in Florida
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was safe after what the FBI said appeared to be an assassination attempt on Sunday while he was golfing on his course in West Palm Beach, Fla. The suspect was apprehended about 65 km away.
Palm Beach Int’l Airport
Fla.
Detail
I-95
Mar-a-Lago
Trump's Florida
residence
Trump International
Golf Club
1 km
Trump was playing
hole 5
5
S. Congress Ave.
4
6
7
8
Summit Blvd.
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: REUTERS; OPENSTREETMAP; GRAPHIC NEWS; GOOGLE EARTH
His writings indicate he once voted for Mr. Trump but later soured on him. He has indicated support for Mr. Biden, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, and decried the former president’s campaign as “make Americans slaves again.”
At a brief appearance in federal court on Monday, he was handed two weapons charges. Prosecutors could opt to lay more serious charges later.
In an affidavit, FBI agent Mark Thomas said officers recovered a loaded high-powered SKS-style rifle with the serial number shaved off, a camera and a black plastic bag of food from the bushes at the edge of the golf course.
Mobile phone data indicate Mr. Routh’s device was in the area from 1:59 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Mr. Thomas wrote. This suggests that Mr. Routh may have stalked the golf course for half a day.
At the Monday news conference, Mr. Rowe told reporters that Mr. Trump’s golf game was “an off-the-record movement.”
“The President wasn’t even really supposed to go there. It was not on his official schedule. And so we put together a security plan,” he said. Mr. Rowe said that for decades, the Secret Service has done “more with less.”
Mr. Rowe did not directly answer questions about whether Mr. Routh knew Mr. Trump would be on the course, or whether agents searched the area before the former president arrived.
Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw has previously said police did not surround the entire golf course because Mr. Trump is not a sitting president and therefore has less protection. This meant people could approach the course’s fence from the outside.
During the previous attempt on Mr. Trump’s life, at a July rally in Pennsylvania, the Secret Service perimeter around the former president did not include the warehouse from which his would-be assassin opened fire, grazing the former president’s ear.
As it did after that shooting, the Secret Service on Monday said it would conduct a review. After the July assassination attempt, the service’s head resigned.
Mr. Biden on Monday called for Congress to give the Secret Service more funding if they need more bodyguards to protect Mr. Trump properly.
“The Service needs more help and I think the Congress should respond to their need, if they in fact need more service people,” the President told reporters as he left the White House for Delaware on Monday morning. He said he was glad Mr. Trump was unhurt. “Thank God the president is okay.”
Mr. Johnson promised to deliver whatever was necessary for the Secret Service.
“President Trump needs the most coverage of anyone. He’s the most attacked, he’s the most threatened,” the Speaker said on Fox News. “We are demanding in the House that they make every asset available and we will make more available if necessary.”
Congressional voices in both parties, from leftist California Democrat Ro Khanna to New York Republican Nick Langworthy, pressed for the same.
In a statement, Ms. Harris called for calm. “I condemn political violence. We all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more to violence,” she said.
In an interview Monday with Fox News’s website, Mr. Trump said his opponents’ criticisms of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election had motivated the gunman. “He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” the site quoted Mr. Trump as saying. “It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat.”
In a subsequent tweet, Mr. Trump picked up the thread, blaming those on the left without providing evidence. The rest of the message claimed Mr. Trump’s debate against Ms. Harris last week was “rigged” and repeated in all-caps a series of his stock phrases demonizing immigrants.
In a later broadcast on Twitter Spaces, Mr. Trump said Mr. Biden called him after the shooting. “He called up to make sure I was okay. To make sure. ‘Do I have any suggestions?’ We need some more people on my detail,” Mr. Trump said. “He couldn’t have been nicer.”
Online, some responded to the shooting with conspiracy theories. X owner Elon Musk wrote: “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” accompanied by a thinking-face emoji. He later deleted the post.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that his state would conduct “its own investigation” in addition to the FBI probe. “The people deserve the truth,” he wrote.
The U.S. has been shaken by a range of political violence, including a 2017 shooting at a Republican congressional baseball practice, a 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol and a 2022 hammer attack against then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband.
“We live in dangerous times,” Rafael Barros, the Secret Service’s special agent in charge of the Miami field office, told reporters. “The threat level is high.”
On Monday, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s vehicles still blocked the course, as press photographers and reporters flooded the gas station and 7-Eleven on a nearby street corner.
Raymond Ghods, the manager of Netto Motors, which sits next to a canal near the course, said his business was closed Sunday, but that its cameras had captured something that was of interest to law enforcement. He declined to say what it was. “I cannot release any information about the camera footage. There has to be a court order.”
With a report from Laura Stone in Toronto