OPINION:
Former President Donald Trump’s golf game was interrupted Sunday when a man tried to take his life. According to authorities, the supposed shooter took aim with a Russian-designed SKS rifle through a fence line near the edge of the Trump International Golf Club. This time, agents intervened before the former president could be harmed.
This is the second attempted assassination of the GOP nominee in as many months, and Democrats are desperate to change the topic. Just last week, the ABC News presidential debate moderators interrupted Mr. Trump when he raised the issue of the left’s dangerous rhetoric.
“I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me,” Mr. Trump said. “They talk about democracy. I’m a threat to democracy. They’re the threat to democracy — With the fake Russia, Russia, Russia investigation that went nowhere.”
Moderator David Muir was having none of it. “We have a lot to get to,” he said, moving to another topic. Perhaps it would have been worth pausing to reflect on Mr. Trump’s words. The most recent aspiring assassin appears to have been an ideologically driven man obsessed with Ukraine who hates Mr. Trump because he believes the Russia collusion hoax the mainstream media helped spread.
In an April post on X, the suspect identified as Ryan Routh wrote: “DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose.” He also made small-money donations to Democrats through ActBlue — much like Butler, Pa. shooter Thomas Crooks.
Donald Trump Jr. responded to the messages from the man who may have tried to kill his father by writing, “Sounds like this psychopath spends a lot of time watching leftwing propaganda.”
Facebook and X quickly deleted the suspect’s social media accounts, preventing the public from taking note of the ideas that animated his alleged actions. We have even less information about the motivations of Crooks because the Secret Service and FBI refuse to release the evidence the agencies have collected to date.
Even though the July 13 assassination attempt came within a fraction of an inch of succeeding, the top brass at the Secret Service continue to display deliberate indifference to the former president’s security needs.
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw explained in a press conference Sunday that, “He’s not the sitting president. If he was, we would’ve had the entire golf course surrounded. Because he’s not, the security is limited to areas the Secret Service deems possible.”
That has to change. Moreover, the investigation of this assassination attempt should not be left in the hands of the same federal agencies that let it advance as far as it did.
Fortunately, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is exercising his authority to direct his own state-level inquiry. “The people deserve the truth about the would-be assassin and how he was able to get within 500 yards of the former president and current GOP nominee,” he wrote on X.
The events of this weekend demonstrate the Secret Service and FBI have failed to address the management failures that allow gaping holes in security. While it’s far too early to draw conclusions about something that happened so recently, the extreme rhetoric on the part of Democrats certainly isn’t helping.
Leftists seek to change the topic away from assassination because they need to keep portraying Mr. Trump as an existential threat to motivate their voters.
They are playing a reckless game that needs to stop.
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