The Stream

The Brew: Angry Rhetoric and Donald Trump’s Latest, Happy, Would-Be Assassin

By Al Perrotta Published on September 17, 2024 •

Al Perrotta

Happy Tuesday!

Today’s Brew is pouring in West Palm Beach, where we’re getting more questions about Sunday’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump than we are real answers.

Newsflash: Trump Is a Human Being

This may come as a surprise to many, but Donald Trump is a human being. A man with a family.

We got a reminder of this in a post from Don Jr. Monday.

Trump himself may seem to be divinely protected from danger, but what an impact this second attempt on his life has to have had on his loved ones. If you missed yesterday’s serving of Al’s Afternoon Tea, we used as our feature image a shot of Trump last week at the Trump National Golf Club in beautiful Rancho Palos Verdes, California (the assassination attempt this Sunday occurred at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida). But looking at that picture, it hit me again: Before running for the White House, Donald Trump had an amazing job. He built resorts on the most exquisite places on the planet. When he went to the office, it would be at a golf resort or five-star hotel. And he gave that up to run for the highest office in the land because he loves this country — and is running again, despite every force on earth and not of this earth being marshalled against him — just for the privilege of nearly getting killed, TWICE? And then being blamed for the attacks?

Trump Blames the Rhetoric

“He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump told Fox News about his latest shooter, 58-year-old Ryan Routh. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out.”

What rhetoric is that? This rhetoric:

On Monday, Joe Biden expressed his relief that Trump is okay and declared that the Secret Service needs help. If only he knew an executive in charge of that agency! He certainly seems capable of moving money and personnel around when he wants to facilitate getting illegals into the country, so surely he can move to shore up the Secret Service during his time left in lame-duck office.

Routh Having a Good Time of It

Meanwhile, Ryan Wesley Routh was arraigned on two federal gun charges Monday: possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. More charges are expected to follow soon.

Fox News reported that Routh was laughing and smiling on his way into court, while the sheriff who arrested him said the would-be assassin was as “calm as if going to a Sunday picnic.”

In fact, compare the photos of him taken Sunday to other images online. It looks like he shaved and cleaned up for his big day.

No doubt Routh is a zealot, and makes no bones about thinking Trump deserves to die. He even wrote about that in a book he published last year, called Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment, and the Global Citizen — Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea, and the End of Humanity. According to Amazon, the book has received a one-star rating out of its three (3) reviews.

Thanks, Andy Ngo, for catching that.

At one point, Routh writes about Trump’s withdrawal from a pre-existing deal with Iran:

I must take part of the blame for the retarded child that we elected for our next president that ended up being brainless, but I am man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake and Iran I apologize.

You are free to assassinate Trump as well as me for that error in judgment and the dismantling of the deal. No one here in the US seems to have the balls to put natural selection to work or even unnatural selection.

This sounds like someone Iran would want to recruit — or someone the Secret Service should have had on its radar.

Is There a Mole in the Secret Service?

According to GPS cell tracking data, Routh spent 12 hours at the golf course before opening fire. Nobody spotted him? How was he able to hang out and set up a sniper’s nest without detection?

We mentioned this yesterday on Al’s Afternoon Tea, but it bears repeating. How did he know Trump would be there, since going golfing was a last-minute decision and an off-the-record event? Was he just lucky? Or as former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino asked on his radio show, is there a mole in the Secret Service or Department of Homeland Security?

The first assassination attempt in July raised all sorts of yellow flags. Does this second attack so soon afterward raise any of those flags to red?

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Meanwhile, Routh went to Washington, D.C., in 2023 to meet with the Helsinki Commission for Ukraine, which is staffed by bipartisan pro-Ukraine members of Congress. Who exactly did he meet with? And who else did he meet with while in town?

Meanwhile, a Second Consecutive Day of Silliness from the Media

We talked about the media’s immediate reaction to the assassination attempt on yesterday’s Tea, but a night’s sleep didn’t help them shake the ridiculous ideas from their brains.

Here’s a Politico headline: “Republicans Outraged Over Possible Assassination Attempt.” It’s never the misdeed that matters to Politico; it’s always the Republican reaction. How much do you want to bet someone in the media will use the expression “Republicans pounce” when describing the latest Trump assassination attempt?

This one from the Washington Post is just bizarre. Routh has a “quixotic past”? That makes him sound like a colorful figure for an HBO documentary.

Meanwhile, the Cincinnati Enquirer sounds like the murderous women in the Broadway play Chicago: “He had it coming! He had it coming!” They say Trump “brings it on himself” when leftists try to blow his brains out.

Here’s a beauty from NBC News: They call it a “golf club incident.”

Umm, sorry. Tiger Woods’s wife taking an iron to his car or Britney Spears smashing her own windshield and headlights after shaving her head is a “golf club incident.” This was an assassination attempt on the current Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. president. What was the JFK assassination? A traffic altercation? What was Lincoln’s assassination? An actor’s miscue?

My favorite headline of the day came from Daily Caller: “Trump has survived more assassination attempts than Harris has campaign interviews.”

One More Word on the Assassination Attempt from FRC President Tony Perkins

Finally, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council has offered this reflection to The Stream.

What are we to make of another attempt on the life of Donald Trump?

Proverbs 28:2 “Because of the transgression of the land many are its princes; but by a man of understanding and knowledge right will be prolonged.”

This results from a nation, a people, that have lost their way. The warning lights are flashing; America will become increasingly unstable and violent until there is a return to truth. That return begins with repentance among the people of God and an awakening of those who are yet to know Him.

Along The Stream

At 8 a.m. Eastern time, Stream senior editor and food connoisseur John Z. declares, with Seussian vigor and rhyme, “I Will Not Eat Grilled Haitian Cat.”

Meanwhile, frequent contributor Jules Gomes offers some cogent thoughts on Pope Francis’s latest outlandish statements in “Move Over, Jesus.”

 

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.

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