Former President Donald Trump said Monday that the man who allegedly tried to assassinate him while he was golfing Sunday was motivated by “rhetoric” from President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” the 78-year-old Republican presidential candidate told Fox News.
“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, even though I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones who are destroying the country, from the inside and the outside.”
Trump cited suspect Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, using language nearly identical to that of Biden and Harris that the former president would pose a threat to American democracy if he regained the White House.
Routh was discovered hiding in the bushes near Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, while Trump was playing a round. Authorities discovered a tactical rifle, a rifle scope and a GoPro camera.
“These are people who want to destroy our country,” Trump said of Biden and Harris. “They’re called the enemy within. They’re the real threat.”
Routh has posted a series of political comments on social media and been interviewed by major media outlets in recent years about his efforts to recruit Afghans to support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.
In April, Routh wrote that “DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose.”
Biden, 81, repeatedly used the phrase “democracy is on the ballot” before ending his campaign for a second term on July 21 and endorsing Harris as his successor.
Harris, 59, has also claimed that Trump is a threat to democracy — before and after he was shot and wounded on July 13 at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle in an attack whose motive is still unclear.
“Donald Trump wants to turn our democracy into a dictatorship,” Harris said on July 9 in Las Vegas, four days before the first assassination attempt on Trump.
Less than a month later, Harris reiterated her claim that “our fundamental freedoms are at stake, as is our democracy,” twice delivering identical statements on July 31.
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Democrats point to Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 election defeat, which culminated in the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
Biden and Harris have been criticized for taking Trump out of context to make this argument, including saying this year that Trump had threatened a “bloodbath” if he lost, when the former president was actually referring to the election’s possible effects on the auto industry.
Spokespeople for Biden and Harris have not commented on Routh’s use of language similar to theirs.
Routh has posted a series of other messages online, including in 2020 claiming that he was a disillusioned former Trump supporter who had supported the populist conservative in 2016.
Also this year, he wrote that he thought two former Trump rivals, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Republican businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, should run together as an independent presidential ticket.
