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When news broke Sunday that someone had a gun near the golf course where Donald Trump was playing in Florida, it didn’t take long for the world to discover another potential assassin was probably coming for the former president. But the conspiracy theories started almost immediately, with one idea becoming extremely popular on far-right social media sites like X. Conspiracy theorists are convinced the guy who brought an AK-style gun to the golf course must have been tipped off about Trump’s location from someone within the federal government.
“How does someone who’s from North Carolina and lives in Hawaii know where to be in Florida, at the exact location, at the exact golf course, where Trump made a last minute decision to play golf?” a right-wing influencer named Phillip Buchanan, more commonly known as Catturd, tweeted on Monday.
How does someone who's from North Carolina and lives in Hawaii know where to be in Florida, at the exact location, at the exact golf course, where Trump made a last minute decision to play golf?
— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) September 16, 2024
Buchanan is referring to the alleged attempted assassin Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old who lived in North Carolina throughout most of his life until moving to Kaaawa, Hawaii in 2018, according to the Associated Press. Routh allegedly had a gun near the golf course before he was spotted by a Secret Service agent who fired on him. There’s no indication Routh ever fired a shot at Trump, and he was apprehended later while allegedly fleeing in an SUV. Local law enforcement posted bodycam footage of the arrest on Facebook, which happened about 45 minutes after he first fled the Trump golf course.
Routh was charged Monday morning with two gun crimes, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number, according to the Washington Post. It’s unclear what he may have been charged with if he wasn’t already a felon and had allegedly scratched off the serial number. Just having a gun near a golf course isn’t necessarily a crime in Florida if you didn’t fire it.
The idea that it might be difficult for anyone to find Trump’s location is kind of funny if you think about it on just the most basic level. Trump was playing at a golf course with his name on it, Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, as he infamously does that all the time. It was also made public on Monday that Routh was in the area for about 12 hours before he was confronted by the Secret Service, according to the AP. One can deduce that Routh was staking out the place, just as the shooter in Butler, Pennsylvania, who took a shot at Trump did back in July.
Mike Adams, the founder of the fringe health site Natural News, tweeted about the conspiracy theory on Sunday as well. Adams, who has appeared on Alex Jones’ show and goes by “the Health Ranger,” even claimed to have a “source” with special knowledge of what happened.
“A source tells me the leak of Trump’s whereabouts is coming from Homeland Security, not USSS. Homeland Security is leaking location details to FBI, and FBI is running the assassins. The entire top leadership of the FBI is desperately trying to figure out how to eliminate Trump, while the loyal elements of US Secret Service are trying to stop it,” Adams wrote.
There’s a lot to unpack there, including the fact that USSS (the U.S. Secret Service) is under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. But it’s also interesting to see someone argue that the FBI, an agency that has literally never had a director who was anything but a registered Republican, was actually a secret left-wing organization trying to kill Trump. But Adams didn’t stop there.
“Homeland Security and US State Dept are full-on treasonous criminal ops at this point. If Homeland can’t eliminate Trump soon, State Dept will make sure a war begins with Russia. If they fail, hundreds of top people within FBI and Homeland are going to either flee the country or be criminally prosecuted under a Trump presidency. This is what’s at stake,” Adams continued.
A source tells me the leak of Trump's whereabouts is coming from Homeland Security, not USSS. Homeland Security is leaking location details to FBI, and FBI is running the assassins. The entire top leadership of the FBI is desperately trying to figure out how to eliminate Trump,…
— HealthRanger (@HealthRanger) September 16, 2024
Laura Loomer, who was recently spotted exiting Trump’s plane before the recent presidential debate in Philadelphia and attending a 9/11 memorial with the former president, also stoked the flames of conspiracy theories by heavily suggesting the potential shooter had secret information about where Trump would be on Sunday. But unlike Adams, she didn’t claim to have a source this time. Loomer frequently claims to have sources for her ridiculous claims, like when she tried to say an explosion at the U.S.-Canada border back in 2023 was actually the work of radical Islamic terrorists.
“Really makes you wonder how the shooter knew where President Trump would be!” Loomer tweeted on Sunday. But there’s no evidence Routh had any kind of inside information, no matter what people like Loomer are trying to say.
Really makes you wonder how the shooter knew where President Trump would be! pic.twitter.com/t7NsDcUJZc
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) September 16, 2024
Natalie Winters, co-host of Steve Bannon’s podcast War Room, tweeted suggestively about the potential assassin as well. “How did he know Trump’s golf schedule?” Winters wrote on Sunday.
As liberal influencer Ron Filipkowski joked, he probably knew Trump’s golf schedule because, “it was a day that ends in ‘y.'” Trump is rather well known for constantly golfing. The former president does own a number of golf clubs with his name on them, after all, and frequently played golf while he was in office. In fact, he’s estimated to have played about 261 rounds of golf while president, according to the Washington Post.
It was a day that ends in ‘y.’ pic.twitter.com/3MTUQgKdqU
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 15, 2024
Newsweek, which was a respected magazine in the 20th century before regularly platforming right-wing propaganda, helped fuel the conspiracy theories on Monday by interviewing Chris Swecker.
“The biggest question to answer is: ‘How did the would-be assassin know to be at that location at that time?'” Swecker reportedly told Newsweek. “There are only three possible answers: He guessed and got very lucky; he conducted surveillance on Trump and followed him to the golf course or he had inside information about Trump’s schedule.”
Swecker continued, “The last answer is scary and has implications that another person was involved.”
Who’s Chris Swecker? He’s the former assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division from 2004 to 2006 who has more recently turned into a talking head who frequently appears on Fox News.
It wasn’t just conspiracy theories around the potential shooter’s location that have been spreading since Sunday. Ian Carroll, a right wing influencer and conspiracy theorist, tweeted a video speculating that Routh was a “CIA asset.”
“Is this evidence the Trump assassin was a CIA asset? It’s still early, don’t jump to any conclusions. I’m just out here doing the FBIs [sic] job for them because we all know Chris Ray busy prepping the cover up as we speak,” Carroll wrote, misspelling the last name of FBI director Christopher Wray.
Conspiracy theorists always insist the CIA is somehow involved, like when they insisted the first attempted assassin was brainwashed by the CIA using techniques from MK Ultra, the notorious experiments from the 20th century. The CIA denied those rather weird allegations.
Then there were people like Matt Wallace, a right-wing personality on X who’s a big fan of posting open-ended questions that make the reader guess the significance of what he’s posting.
PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THIS IMAGE TIME MAGAZINE POSTED 4 DAYS AGO ON 9/11 ⚠️ pic.twitter.com/Jw3NOJO68t
— Matt Wallace (@MattWallace888) September 15, 2024
The implication here appears to be that Time magazine knew ahead of time that someone would try to assassinate Trump on the golf course. Or something. Shouting in all-caps that you need to “pay close attention” without actually stating what you mean explicitly, allows people to just read whatever they want into the tweet. The point of these conspiracy theories isn’t to present a logical case or a coherent overall worldview. The point is to stir the pot online and get people riled up.
That tweet from Wallace has over 8 million views at the time of this writing, likely thanks in no small part to the fact that Wallace buys “verification” on X, a service that used to be free to fight the impersonation of users. But Elon Musk started offering the blue checkmark for $8 per month, allowing the opportunity for anyone to get boosted by the X algorithm and seen by more people if they forked over some money.
Guys like Musk were particularly sensitive about the tone of the political discourse leading up to Sunday, blaming the shooting on Democrats.
“The incitement to hatred and violence against President Trump by the media and leading Democrats needs to stop,” Musk wrote while quote-tweeting Donald Trump Jr.
The incitement to hatred and violence against President Trump by the media and leading Democrats needs to stop. https://t.co/3gMWEk1pku
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 16, 2024
Musk’s pearl-clutching is particularly amusing when you remember that the billionaire openly wondered why Joe Biden and Kamala Harris hadn’t been assassinated yet. Musk deleted his tweet later on Sunday, posting a couple of tweets trying to suggest he was “joking.”
For his part, Trump himself dialed up the heated rhetoric on Monday while writing on Truth Social that “terrorists” were crossing the border illegally and that “the bullets are flying” due to “Communist Left Rhetoric.” It should be noted, of course, that the only bullets flying on Sunday were coming from a gun owned by the Secret Service and the potential assassin never got a shot off, as far as we know.
“Allowing millions of people, from places unknown, to INVADE and take over our Country, is an unpardonable sin,” Trump wrote before going into all-caps mode.
“OUR BORDERS MUST BE CLOSED, AND THE TERRORISTS, CRIMINALS, AND MENTALLY INSANE, IMMEDIATELY REMOVED FROM AMERICAN CITIES AND TOWNS, DEPORTED BACK TO THEIR COUNTIES OF ORIGIN. WE WANT PEOPLE TO COME INTO OUR COUNTRY, BUT THEY MUST LOVE OUR NATION, AND COME IN LEGALLY AND THROUGH A SYSTEM OF MERIT. THE WORLD IS LAUGHING AT US AS FOOLS, THEY ARE STEALING OUR JOBS AND OUR WEALTH. WE CANNOT LET THEM LAUGH ANY LONGER. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” he wrote.
There are 50 days until Election Day.
