• Suspect charged with illegal firearms possession
• Kyiv denies link to suspect after evidence of foreign fighters’ recruitment emerges

WEST BEACH: Donald Trump on Monday blamed his election rival Kamala Harris and US President Joe Biden after he was targeted in a second apparent assassination attempt, saying their “rhetoric” about him endangering democracy is to blame.

Trump’s rapid politicisation of Sunday’s incident, in which a man allegedly planned to fire on the Republican while he played golf in Florida, guaranteed that tensions ahead of the presidential election in seven weeks would continue to boil.

Both Biden and Harris have denounced the apparent assassination bid.

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The suspect, identified by police as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was arrested while hiding with a rifle at the edge of Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach.

On Monday, Routh appeared in court where he was informed he was being charged with illegal firearms possession. The FBI said it was also probing “what appears to be an attempted assassination”. This follows an attempt targeting Trump two months ago at a rally in Pennsylvania.

Trump, who was not hurt in Sunday’s event, told Fox News Digital that rhetoric from Biden and Harris “is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country”.

Trump, 78, referred to frequent comments that he poses a “threat to democracy”.

Biden and Harris have described Trump as a danger over his refusal to concede defeat to Biden in 2020 and his campaign to classify the mob of his supporters that stormed Congress in 2021 as political dissidents.

Trump — whose main election message against Harris is built on dark warnings about immigrant “invasion” and claims that the United States is a “failing nation” that only he can save — said his opponents “use highly inflammatory language. I can use it too — far better than they can — but I don’t,” he claimed.

At the White House earlier on Monday, Biden had told reporters “thank God the president is OK”. But the Secret Service “needs more help,” he said, “and I think Congress should respond to their needs”.

As a major party candidate and former president, Trump has a sizeable security detail but smaller than that of a sitting president.

Meanwhile, according to US media, the would-be attacker was obsessed with the Ukrainian cause. Evidence of his support for Ukraine emerged after Sunday’s incident, including footage of him in 2022 speaking to Newsweek Romania in Kyiv, where he had set up a tent with flags of countries representing volunteers who died in Ukraine. He said he had aimed to help recruit foreign fighters. “If the governments will not send their official military, then we, civilians, have to pick up the torch.”

The New York Times reported it had also interviewed Routh, in 2023, when Routh said he was trying to recruit former fighters from Afghanistan to bring them to Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials said they had nothing to do with him.

Earlier, Kremlin spokesman linked the apparent attempt to Washington’s support for Ukraine. “It is not us who should be thinking, it is the US intelligence services who should be thinking. In any case, playing with fire has its consequences,” Peskov said when asked about the assassination attempt.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2024