Former President Donald Trump said Monday that the man who allegedly tried to assassinate him while he was golfing on Sunday was motivated by “comments” made by President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“He believed Biden and Harris' rhetoric and acted on it,” the Republican presidential candidate, 78, said. He told Fox News.
“I am being shot at because of what they say and do. I am the one who is saving this country and they are the ones destroying it from the inside and the outside.”
President Trump cited suspect Ryan Wesley Routh (58) as an example, saying that if Routh were to retake the White House, he would pose a threat to American democracy, using almost the same words as Biden and Harris.
Routh was found hiding in bushes near a golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump was playing, and authorities found a tactical rifle, a 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 from within. They're the real threat.”
Routh has posted a variety of political comments on social media and has been interviewed by major news outlets in recent years about efforts to recruit Afghans to help Ukraine against Russian aggression.
“Democracy is on the ballot and we cannot lose,” Rouse wrote in April.
Biden, 81, repeatedly used the phrase “democracy depends on voting” before ending his campaign for a second term on July 21 and endorsing Harris as his successor.
Harris, 59, has also claimed Trump is a threat to democracy both before and after Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, grazed Harris with a bullet in an attack whose motive has yet to be determined.
“Donald Trump is trying to turn our democracy into a dictatorship,” Harris said in Las Vegas on July 9, four days before the first assassination attempt on Trump.
Less than a month later, Harris said again, “Our fundamental freedoms are on the ballot and so is our democracy,” repeating the statement a second time on July 31.
Democrats point to President Trump's refusal to acknowledge his loss in the 2020 election, which led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Biden and Harris have come under fire for taking Trump's comments out of context to make their case, such as when they said earlier this year that Trump was threatening a “carnage” if he lost, when in fact he was referring to the election's possible impact on the auto industry.
Spokespeople for Biden and Harris have not commented on Routh's use of similar language.
Rouse supported the populist conservative Trump in 2016 but in 2020 he claimed to be a disillusioned former Trump supporter in various online posts.
Also this year, he wrote that former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-South Carolina) and Republican businessman Vivek Ramaswami should run together as independent presidential candidates.
