This past Sunday, U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was playing at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida when shots were fired nearby. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said that Trump was unharmed.
According to the White House, President Joe Biden and Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris have also been briefed. They each issued statements condemning the act.
Trump survived a previous assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 13, suffering only a minor injury to his right ear. Since this second attempt on his life, he is once again blaming Biden and Harris, who he claims have been using “inflammatory language.”
The gunman, a 58-year-old man named Ryan Wesley Routh, was hiding in the bushes outside of the boundary fence holding a rifle with a scope. He managed to get within a few hundred yards of Trump before Secret Service agents spotted him and shot at him, which caused him to abandon his weapon and flee the scene. Routh was arrested shortly after and on Monday he was charged with violating federal gun laws, with further charges likely to follow.
Routh appears to have a mixed political background and a history of legal issues. U.S. media sources say he has a criminal record including several misdemeanor charges and that while he claimed to have previously voted for Trump in 2016, he voted Democratic in the 2024 primary election in his home state of North Carolina.