Front Burner - Who is Trump's second alleged would-be assassin?

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

Former U.S. president Donald Trump was golfing on his course in Palm Beach, Fla., Sunday afternoon when the Secret Service say they spotted the barrel of a gun in the bushes. It was what they believe to be the second potential attempt at assassinating Trump in just two months.The suspect, arrested after a brief pursuit, was Ryan Welsey Routh: a 58-year-old from North Carolina who's been interviewed in the past about trying to recruit Afghan fighters to join the war effort in Ukraine.Marin Cogan, a senior correspondent for Vox, walks us through what happened, what else we know about the suspect and the tinderbox of a highly polarized and heavily armed America.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. For the second time in as many months, Donald Trump became the subject of an apparent assassination attempt. It began on Sunday afternoon when a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle barrel sticking out of the fence at the former president's Mar-a-Lago golf course in Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump was just a few hundred yards away. Today, Maren Kogan, a senior correspondent with Vox, is on the show. She's going to walk us through what happened and what we know so far about the suspect, Ryan Wesley Ruth. And we're also going to discuss the tinderbox of a highly polarized and heavily armed America. Maren, hi. Thank you so much for making the time today. Thank you for having me on. So what do we know about this man who was arrested on Sunday, Ryan Wesley Ruth? Who is he? What is his history?

We know a good bit about him, actually, especially when compared to the man who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump in July. Ryan Ruth was, he appeared to be from North Carolina. He had recently moved to Hawaii. He had worked in construction previously and roofing. He said he was in Hawaii to build affordable housing. He was still active on the voter rolls in North Carolina as an unaffiliated voter. He did vote in the state's Democratic primary earlier this year. We know that he has given a little bit of money to some Democratic causes. Looking at what appears to be his former ex or Twitter account, his views are not super easily categorized by one point of view or another, one political party or another. So he did say, appear to say on there, someone using an account with his name said that they had voted for Donald Trump in 2016 but had grown very disappointed with him.

He's also on there urging Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, two Republicans, to run together. So kind of unclear. It does seem that he viewed Trump as a threat to democracy. The account at one point says that democracy is on the ballot in November. A big flashpoint issue that he was very seized with was the war in Ukraine. Tell me about that. Yeah. So for Ukraine in particular, we know that he was very, very invested in the war in Ukraine. And actually, he was interviewed by The New York Times and another publication called Semaphore last year because he was one of a handful of Americans who were sort of acting as freelance logistics and military advisors for the war in Ukraine, despite actually not having any real experience in the military or any real military

connections. The question as far as why I'm here, to me, you know, a lot of the other conflicts are gray, but this conflict is definitely black and white. This is about good versus evil. He was known for going over to Ukraine and trying to get a list of fighters who had fled the Afghan Taliban. And he had this idea that he would ship these fighters in from various countries to come and join the war effort in Ukraine. But yeah, if you if you want to fight, come here and see me and I'll put you in a unit so you can go fight. And, you know. So he spoke to a number of media outlets about this. The reporters who spoke to him at the time said it was very clear that he was in way over his head and had no idea what he was doing.

But he was a part of this effort. So we know he felt very strongly about it. Yeah. I saw like Newsweek Romania actually got an interview with him on camera kind of talking about the similar views. I'm 56. So initially they were like, well, I have no military experience. So they're like, you're not an ideal candidate. So they said, not right this minute.

So plan B was to come here to Kyiv and promote getting more people here. Do we know if he was ever in Ukraine? Yeah, I believe he said he had traveled to Ukraine and his son also said that he had been to Ukraine as well. He actually appeared in a number of different, it seems like news outlets, but also just sort of YouTube's video interviews here and there. So it's not the same thing with a man who attempted to assassinate Trump in July, where very little was known about him. This guy, Ryan Ruth, is kind of all over the internet with his political views. I think it might be worth saying here that some of his posts, they seem a bit unmoored, unhinged even.

For example, you know, he tweeted at Elon Musk asking for a rocket to strike Putin. And he tweeted at Elton John asking for a tribute song for Ukraine. In another one, he's tweeting at Seth Rogen and James Franco, asking them to reach out to Kim Jong-un to help squash the beef with North Korea, right? Yes, correct. So a number of his posts did appear to be relatively unhinged or sort of outside of what we would think of as the norms of politics in the U.S. But, you know, there are many people as the norms of politics in the U.S. But, you know, there are many people posting things like that all over the Internet. So it looks somewhat disturbing in retrospect.

But I think overall, the picture that is starting to come together of this guy is someone without a super strong, coherent worldview. And that is sort of the profile of other both sort of people prone to political violence in recent history and also mass shooters. There's a sense of strong feelings about some political issue or another, but not necessarily fitting anywhere on the on the sort of typical political spectrum. That's so interesting. I mean, why why do people think that is? I mean, why do people think that is? It's a really good question. And I don't know that there are great answers to this, or maybe there are sociologists out there that have a really great theory about this. My own sort of pet theory is that it has something to do with the age of the internet and the

rise of disinformation and misinformation on the internet. There's so much out there now. And for someone who is a little bit lonely, a little bit unmoored, but has passionate sort of feelings and is interested in politics, there are a lot of ways to end up going down various rabbit holes. And it certainly seems like Ryan Ruth went down those rabbit holes. I should say also that he does have a criminal record in his history. And it's a number of different arrests. And he has a felony conviction. At one point, I think in 2002, he was engaged in a standoff with the police for three hours, and he was charged for having a semi-automatic weapon at the time as well. Take me through exactly what we know about what happened on Sunday, with the caveat that I know the story can change.

You and I are talking at about 3 p.m. on Monday. Absolutely. So this is what we know so far. On Sunday early afternoon, Trump was on one of his golf courses in West Palm Beach, Florida. He was walking, I think, between the fifth and sixth holes. A Secret Service agent was one hole ahead of him, acting as a sort of buffer to create a zone of safety around the former president. They have an agent that jumps one hole ahead of time to where the president was at.

And he was able to spot this rifle barrel sticking out of the fence and immediately engage that individual. He acted very quickly to let the other agents know he fired shots. The other agents got former President Trump on the ground and a man fled the scene from the direction of the bushes. A witness actually saw a man fleeing this area into a black Nissan vehicle and took a photo of the vehicle. Using that photo, police were able to apprehend Ryan Ruth on the interstate later that day. The police said that he appeared very calm and wasn't armed at the time he was arrested.

But at that spot on the fence, they found an AK-47, a semi-automatic rifle, two backpacks, and a GoPro camera indicating that whoever was there intended to film what they were doing. Yeah, that was a really chilling detail, I thought. Yeah. Now, of course, it's only been about two months since the first assassination attempt on Trump, and that was on July 13th. And after that attempt, you wrote this piece. I remember reading it at the time, quoting an expert who basically predicted that this, remember reading it at the time, quoting an expert who basically predicted that this or something like this, not this, you know, exactly, would happen. And tell me more about what he told you. Yeah, absolutely. So I have been thinking about this as well, and I find it somewhat chilling. After the first Trump assassination attempt, I reached out to a doctor named Garen Wintemute,

who is one of the premier gun violence researchers in the country and one of the original gun violence researchers in the country. A few years ago, he decided to switch what he was studying and focus on political violence because he had the sense that incidents of political violence were becoming more common in the United States and would continue to become more common. He has done some studies showing that there is a small, thankfully very small, but a real contingent of people in the United States who believe that violence is sometimes justifiable for political reasons. Now, the vast majority of Americans in the U.S. do not think that that is justifiable ever, but there is a small contingent

of people who are. And so when I spoke to him, it was shortly after the first Trump assassination attempt. And he said, you know, I was making it to the end of every day and saying, I can't believe we made it another day. And he said, I think with some degree of certainty, this will happen again. And I can't tell you who the target will be. I can't tell you whether it will be an elected official or the general public. But he said, I can say pretty certainly that this will happen again. He also really worried that in a closely held election and one that was particularly contentious as this one is, that it created conditions that were vulnerable to violence. So the idea that one violent act

might incite another violent act and might encourage more violence in the future. And I think he was feeling that both because of that political situation and because of the prevalence of guns, we were much more likely to see future events happen. So yeah, I mean, I don't think he would have anticipated that it would happen so quickly after, but it certainly is sort of a troubling precedent. And I think it's going to raise a lot of questions about how we can keep elected officials safe moving forward, given that these threats, as we see, are very, very real. Listening to you talk right now, I just, last week we did this episode on the militia group AP3 in the U.S.

the militia group AP3 in the U.S. and the very specific ways that members in that group have openly talked about how they think political violence is acceptable and how now may be the time for that political violence. It's really quite terrifying. If people want to go back and listen to that episode. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years.

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Donald Trump put out a long tweet this morning where he essentially blamed the escalating violence on the way Kamala Harris and the Democrats have talked about him. He said, quote, because of this communist left rhetoric, the bullets are flying and it will only get worse. What do you make of that argument that people are emboldened to attack Trump violently when his rivals talk about him as this existential threat to American democracy? Yeah, I think it's a great question. You know, the question of whether rhetoric incites violence and to what degree rhetoric incites violence directly is always an extremely hotly contested one. So there's a lot of disagreement. Most of us hear the same rhetoric from politicians every day, right? And we don't go out and commit acts of

political violence. So I think we have to be really careful when we're making those connections. And when we're saying that this kind of rhetoric causes that kind of political violence, the flip side of it is, you know, is it possible that some of this rhetoric about Trump being a threat to American democracy, to democracy in the United States, is that inciting violence? It's possible. The difficulty about this question is that one needs to be able to accurately describe what Donald Trump is doing and what he has been saying on the campaign trail. And when you look at someone who is talking about a bloodbath, if he is not reelected.

Now, if I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole, that's going to be the least of it. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country. When you look at someone who is talking about a, quote, bloody effort that he will undertake to expel migrants from the country. In Colorado, they're so brazen, they're taking over sections of the state. And, you know, getting them out will be a bloody story. Should have never been allowed to come into our country. Nobody checked them. Someone whose team is talking about going after people who have criticized him publicly,

using the legal system to go after them, purging civil servants and replacing them with people who are loyal to Trump. I mean, those are things that are direct threats to American democracy. So it's a difficult situation. They need to be able to describe the threat accurately. And let's not forget, too, that currently in the United States, there is a city that is Springfield, Ohio, that is essentially under lockdown. And it's under lockdown because the former president, Donald Trump, and his vice presidential candidate have been spreading these really malicious lies about Haitian migrants. They're saying that they're that they're eating people's pets. The city has seen multiple bomb threats against city hall and local schools.

Members of the far-right group the Proud Boys were seen marching through the streets over the weekend and a branch of the Ku Klux Klan spread leaflets with hateful messages. Bomb threats prompted lockdowns at two hospitals and shuttered events at the local campus of Wittenberg University. It is a very dangerous situation we're in with the amount of rhetoric we have and the amount of guns that are circulating in the U.S. The questions of specifically what caused violence, I think, are a little bit harder to answer. But we can say that this situation that we're in is very precarious and very worrisome. You mentioned guns, which are the other very obvious piece of this puzzle.

The would-be shooter, in this case on Sunday, had an AK-47-style rifle. Thomas Crooks, the man who tried to assassinate Trump in July, had an AR-15 style rifle. I know you've reported on how people are ramping up when it comes to buying guns. And tell me more about that. Yeah, absolutely. So there are already more guns than people in the United States. That was true before the pandemic. The early years of the pandemic kicked off a massive gun buying spree for a couple of

different reasons. I mean, one was a reaction to the pandemic and feeling like they needed to be prepared. But the other part of it that is really important to remember is that the United States saw a massive surge in gun violence in particular during the pandemic. It was alone. It was sort of unique in the world and having this huge surge in gun violence in particular during the pandemic. It was alone. It was sort of unique in the world and having this huge surge in gun violence. At the same time, we had a sort of real reckoning over the role of police in this country following the police killing of George Floyd. So a big surge in gun violence had a number of people very concerned about violence in their

communities. And that did drive people to go out and get guns. Not long after that, the Supreme Court basically issued a ruling saying that Americans had a Second Amendment right to carry their guns with them in public, and that led to even more people going out and getting guns and getting licenses to carry them in public. So something like 60 million guns being sold every year. We've had a proliferation of ghost guns or illegal guns that can't be traced by serial numbers. And at the same time, since we've had the expiration of the assault weapons ban in 2004, you've seen a huge push by the gun industry to sell assault style rifles like the AR-15 to the American public. Today, it is the most popular rifle in the United States. So the guns

are really the big thing here. You know, many countries have really heated and dangerous political rhetoric. What the United States also has is a lot of guns and a lot of people thinking, as to your point earlier, a lot of people thinking like this could come to violence at some point, I better be ready. The problem with that kind of thinking is that it just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and sort of a circular issue of people feeling like they're not safe, so they need to arm themselves and then other people don't feel safe, so they need to arm themselves. It's a difficult situation and we don't have in the United States an agreement about what gun regulations should look like. And as a result of that, we have very, very lax gun regulations. So

that is the reality that the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies are going to have to contend with in the months and really the years ahead. Do you think that there is a way to turn down the temperature here during this election cycle? Is there a way to reduce the potential for future political violence here? Yeah, absolutely. So Garen Wintemute, the researcher that I mentioned earlier, told me that something that he found in his research really gave him hope. And it was that of the people who said that they absolutely would never engage in political violence, those people said that there was no way they would change their minds. They were committed to never committing political violence.

Of the people who said that they were open to or willing, a lot of them said that they would be willing to change their mind if a friend, a family member, a loved one, even media that they respected, talked them out of it. So what he was saying is the conclusion that he came to is that you can treat this like a public health issue and you can talk about prevention and it will work. So if you create a culture of non-acceptance for violence, that can have an important sort of preventative effect against violence. So he said what we need to be doing right now,

those of us who are citizens of the United States, the politicians of the United States, is really setting a tone of we do not tolerate political violence in this country. This is completely unacceptable. And you do see politicians, Democrats, Republicans, everyone in between. I mean, we saw this from President Biden. We saw this from Vice President Kamala Harris saying this is completely unacceptable and political violence is never justified. Now, that can be helpful. We do need to acknowledge that it is just a very difficult situation when this many people have guns. And you hope that every potential shooter has someone in their life who could talk them

down and is connected enough. But there's always an opportunity for someone to fall through the cracks. And when that happens, law enforcement is just going to have to be ready. Maren, I want to thank you so much for this. Really, really appreciate you coming by. Thank you so much for having me. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.