The gunman never had him in his line of sight nor fired a shot. Trump ignored Secret Service warnings about security at his golf course. Yet he’s blaming Democrats and raising money.
Palm Beach County Sheriff personnel block a road near the Trump International Golf Club after an apparent assassination attempt of former president Donald Trump on September 16, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida.(Joe Raedle / Getty Images)
Supposed strongman Donald Trump is surprisingly good at playing the victim. After what is widely being called his “second assassination attempt”—a man set up a rifle in the woods outside his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday–he blamed the “highly inflammatory language” of Democrats for the violence. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have called him “a threat to democracy,” he noted.
“These are people that want to destroy our country,” Trump countered. “It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat.”
Who’s using “inflammatory language”?
His running mate and lackey Senator JD Vance sounded the same notes. “No one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in last couple of months and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months. I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down their rhetoric.”
Vance was also echoing Twitter destroyer Elon Musk, who said on his hellsite: “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.” (He later took the post down, saying critics misunderstood his attempt at humor.)
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported that after Trump’s 2016 election, the Secret Service briefed him on his vulnerability while golfing at his own courses, “because of their proximity to public roads.” They even brought photos to help convince the notoriously inattentive president that his courses were tough to secure. It didn’t work; Trump kept golfing at Trump properties. (His West Palm Beach course is one of the most exposed, bordered by busy major thoroughfares near the local airport).
Trump also made his own protection more difficult last Sunday by golfing unexpectedly, forcing security to scramble. “The president wasn’t even really supposed to go there,” acting Secret Service head Ronald Rowe told reporters Monday. “It was not on his official schedule.” He also said the gunman, repeated gun felon Ryan Wesley Routh, never had Trump in his sights and never fired a shot.
By contrast, President Obama, also an avid golfer, mostly golfed at the course at the military’s Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, or on military bases in Hawaii while vacationing there. Obviously, security there was tighter, with rigid screening protocols.
People who’ve golfed at Trump International told the Post they were surprised how little screening they received and how close they could get to the former president: “One person who played last year said he wasn’t asked any questions or subjected to a bag search. After he finished his round, this person said, he walked into the clubhouse and took a corner table near where Trump later came to dine.”
I’m not blaming Trump for Routh’s alleged intention to shoot him. I’m just noting that he’s made it more difficult for Secret Service and other law enforcement officials to protect him—at the taxpayers’ expense. So far, Routh has only been charged with gun crimes, not attempted murder or assassination. Yet Republicans are not only raving about a second assassination attempt but blaming Democrats for it.
Even the mainstream media is occasionally resorting to false equivalence about rhetoric on “both sides.” But as David Frum succinctly tweeted Tuesday:
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The upsetting things said by Trump and Vance are not true.
The upsetting things said about Trump and Vance are true.
(Read the whole thing here.)
Enragingly, Trump and Vance continue their lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, killing and eating cats and dogs, which Republican Governor Mike DeWine told reporters has led to at least 33 bomb threats. The city has had to cancel its annual cultural festival. State troopers are patrolling 17 local schools, after many had to be evacuated. DeWine called his fellow Republicans’ claims “garbage,” and begged them to stop the lies. They won’t.
One final irony: The US Attorney helping to investigate the threat to Trump, Markenzy Lapointe, is a Haitian immigrant.
Joan WalshTwitterJoan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.