A Swing and a Miss

Another attempt on former president and current Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump’s life was made on September 15th 2024. Donald Trump is an infamous figure drenched in controversy, but even still, no one expected an attempt at his life, let alone two. The first attempt happened on July 13th at a President Trump rally, when Thomas Mathew Crook managed to sneak past Secret Security in order to set himself up right in front of Donald Trump and fire a rifle at him, grazing his ear.. However, that was not the only assassination attempt. Ryan Routh, a 58 year old florida citizen attempted to assassinate President Trump, while he was on his golf course. He was later discovered hiding in a bush with an automatic rifle. So, let’s take a dive deeper into the voting identity of these shooters, and potential motives they could have had.

On September 15th, Ryan Routh attempted to shoot Donald Trump at his Florida golf course. Routh missed, but he also managed to flee the scene, and he was later apprehended by the Secret Service. Strangely, 58-year-old Ryan Routh wasn’t affiliated with any political party, and didn’t seem to harbor strong partisan feelings, raising questions about his potential motive. After some research into Ryan’s social media profiles, authorities found many social media posts urging foreign soldiers to go fight in Ukraine- something that President Trump has very outspokenly urged people not to do in the past. This could be considered a motive for his attempted assassination of President Trump, but it also doesn’t really explain how a neutral voter turned into a potential assassin on his golf course waiting to shoot and kill the former President.

Thomas Crooks, on the other hand, is an even stranger case. Not only was he a 20 year old young adult, with his entire life ahead of him, but he was also an honors graduate who was very outspoken about his support of President Trump in the past. He wasn’t old enough to vote in previous elections, but once he came of age to vote in elections, he immediately registered to vote as a Republican.

Stranger yet neither of the attempted shooters had a very clear motive as to why they tried to assassinate President Trump.. Ryan Routh may have wanted to send troops into Ukraine, but that’s not enough of a reason to go from an unaffiliated voter to someone who attempted to assassinate the former president. It’s also odd that Thomas was a registered republican, giving him even less reason for the attempt on Trump's life. In a CNN article, reporters stated that “ It looked to me that he was taking a window that he saw a vulnerability in where he felt that he was so unobserved to the extent he could get off some critical shots”.

This collection of interesting factors have led to many different theories regarding the assassination attempts on Trump, but none of them have been backed by actual evidence. The part that the shooters seem to not understand is that they stand nothing to gain from attempted assassination attempts on Trump. Either way the Republican party ends up with a boost to their campaign, regardless of who’s running, as the failed assassinations have done nothing but make the Democratic party appear as a group of evil people who can’t win the election without murdering the opposing candidate –basically guaranteeing swing states to vote Republican. Even in the case that, god forbid, the assassination worked by some means, it still ends up painting the Democratic party into an evil group, which far outweighs the good that might have been gained from an assassination on former president Trump.