Once again, Donald Trump appears to have been the target of an assassination attempt. More than four decades elapsed between the shootings of Ronald Reagan in 1981 and Donald Trump in July of this year. Now, in the span of just two months, there have been two attempts on a presidential life. Such is the political polarization and social decline in the United States—a country that could once boast being the most stable haven of world capitalism.
Details are still emerging, but reports suggest the 58-year-old gunman, Ryan Wesley Routh, laid in wait for 12 hours at the Trump International Golf Club, just 15 minutes from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. But the would-be assassin was unable to get a shot off from his AK-47-style rifle. Secret Service agents spotted him and shot first, prompting him to flee the scene before being arrested and charged for two federal gun crimes.
Afterwards, Trump played the tough guy, joking about being unable to finish what he claimed was a pretty good round of golf with his real-estate billionaire buddies.
Afterwards, Trump played the tough guy, joking about being unable to finish what he claimed was a pretty good round of golf / Image: The White House
A delusional crusader for Ukraine
We will surely find out more about the suspect’s motive in the coming days, but his story is already shaping up to be a bizarre one. Routh appeared obsessed with the war in Ukraine, and saw himself as a crusader for “human rights, freedom, and democracy.”
When hostilities with Russia broke out in 2022, he posted violent ramblings on social media, “We need to burn the Kremlin to the ground” and “I AM WILLING TO FLY TO KRAKOW AND GO TO THE BORDER OF UKRAINE TO VOLUNTEER AND FIGHT AND DIE.” He subsequently went to Ukraine with a delusional plan to supply fake passports to Afghan fighters and fly them into Ukraine to fight on the front lines.
Routh was even interviewed by the New York Times last year in a piece exposing so-called US “volunteers” to Ukraine’s “International Legion” and other such groups. In the words of the Times, the exposé focused on:
People who were not qualified to be allowed anywhere near the battlefield in a US-led war, and yet were fighting on the front against Russia, with access to weapons and military equipment.
This, from a newspaper that has, from day one of the war, acted as a mouthpiece of American imperialism and an unashamed cheerleader for NATO and Ukraine, filling its pages with lies and portraying the neo-Nazis of the Azov battalion as heroes.
As Alan Woods explained in his most recent article, “Are We Facing World War III?”
These ladies and gentlemen [US imperialism and its lackeys] are eager to fight to the last drop of Ukrainian blood. They are determined to continue the war, irrespective of the terrible price being paid by the Ukrainian people whose interests they falsely claim to represent.
Frantic negotiations are taking place in Washington, where, as we have seen, serious doubts exist concerning the whole business. The warmongers are in a hurry because they fear that, if Trump wins the election in November, he may well decide to ditch Ukraine altogether, and even, possibly, to walk out of NATO.
Did the same worry cross Routh’s mind? Did he decide to take matters into his own hands to prevent poor Ukraine from being left defenseless? It’s impossible to say for sure at this stage.
He was clearly a troubled individual with an obsession. Routh is from North Carolina but had recently moved to Hawaii, where he is a self-employed “affordable housing” builder. He had several run-ins with the law, including an arrest after barricading himself inside a Greensboro, NC building, armed with a fully automatic weapon.
He was registered unaffiliated in North Carolina and claimed to have voted for Trump in 2016, but had become disillusioned with him by 2020. More recently, he donated $140 to the Democrat’s “Act Blue” fundraising platform and voted in this year’s Democratic primary. He also parrotted the Democratic campaign slogan, “DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose.”
Routh appeared obsessed with the war in Ukraine, and saw himself as a crusader for “human rights, freedom, and democracy” / Image: Martin County Sheriffs Office, Wikimedia Commons
Blame games and platitudes
Trump is blaming the attempts on his life on the Democrats and their campaign rhetoric, saying in a Fox News interview: “He [Routh] believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it … Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at.” He went on to present himself as the victim of “deep-state” persecution “with a combination of rhetoric and lawsuits,” saying that “they [Biden and Harris] are the ones that are destroying the country … It is called the enemy from within.”
For their part, Biden, Harris, and co. are repeating the same vapid statements as last time. They are “deeply disturbed” by what is happening and condemn “political violence.” Above all, they are appealing for Americans to bridge the nation’s political divide and resolve conflicts peacefully at the ballot box.
As we pointed out after the first assassination attempt, the hypocrisy on both sides is nauseating. American capitalist politicians and billionaires preside over the most violent and ruthless imperialist power in human history, directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Ukraine and Gaza alone—not to speak of the centuries-long history of genocide, slavery, and imperialist war that marked the rise of American capitalism.
Despite complaining about the liberals’ rhetoric, Trump and co. are happy to give credence to absurd racist claims of Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets in Ohio or Q-Anon conspiracy theories, as long as it helps their political careers. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who was trounced by Trump in the Republican primaries earlier this year, seized the opportunity to ingratiate himself with Trump’s conspiracy-minded base, hinting that federal authorities cannot be trusted with the investigation: “Those same agencies that are prosecuting Trump … are now going to be investigating this?”
Both parties play the same political games, stoking the culture war, pointing fingers, and calling each other liars on the debate stage. And they are both right. They lie and cynically blame each other—or scapegoat immigrants and other super-oppressed layers—in an attempt to divert legitimate discontent over the state of the economy, inflation, poverty, attacks on women’s rights, racism, etc. Far from real change, they merely offer more of the same as they stump for their rotten capitalist parties, doing everything they can to distract from the real culprits: the capitalist system and the capitalist class that exploits and oppresses all workers.
As we wrote in July:
The decline of US capitalism is accelerating, and the degree of social turmoil will continue to grow along with it in the months and years ahead. Yesterday’s events were yet another step—a significant one—in the direction we’ve already been heading: one of instability, political crises, and growing political violence. This ultimately reflects the historic impasse of the capitalist system. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have any solution or means of cutting across this process. This is the perspective we must keep clearly in view …
As we head toward what could be the most turbulent presidential election in generations, we need to inject a class war perspective clearly and boldly. Now, more than ever, a mass communist party is urgently needed to rally the forces that can show how to fight both Biden and Trump, to unite the working-class majority around its own revolutionary program, and to aim the vast discontent in society toward its real source—the capitalist system itself.
[Originally published on communistusa.org on 17 September 2024]