Tangle - A second Trump assassination attempt.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 11 minutes.

Heads up.

On Friday, we published a members-only piece on how polls actually work, how they relate to election forecasting, and how you can follow all the election happenings like a pro. You can read the piece here (with a free preview for non-members).

Quick hits.

1. A North Dakota judge struck down the state's abortion ban, saying it violates the state constitution. (The ruling)
2. New York City Police Commissioner Edward Caban resigned amid ongoing federal investigations into Democratic Mayor Eric Adams and high-ranking members of his team. (The resignation)
3. Former President Trump also said on Thursday that there would be no third debate. (The comments)
4. Venezuela detained three U.S. citizens and three other foreigners, accusing them of a CIA plot to assassinate President Nicolás Maduro. U.S. officials denied the allegations. (The arrests)
5. Yemen's Houthi militia claimed responsibility for successfully landing a surface-to-surface missile attack in Israel from Yemen for the first time. No injuries were reported, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to respond. (The attack)

Today's topic.

The second Trump assassination attempt. On Sunday, former President Donald Trump was targeted in what the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has deemed an assassination attempt at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Trump was not harmed, and police arrested the suspected gunman shortly after he fled the scene. The incident comes two months after Trump survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

We covered the attempted assassination in July and the ensuing fallout within the Secret Service here.

According to investigators, Secret Service personnel sweeping the course in front of Trump as he played golf spotted a rifle barrel sticking out of a fence near the golf club’s property line, at which point agents fired at least four shots toward the gunman. Investigators have not confirmed whether the suspect, identified as 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, fired any shots during the encounter. A rifle with a scope, two backpacks containing ceramic tile, and a GoPro camera were recovered from the bushes where Routh was said to be hiding. A witness spotted Routh fleeing the scene in a black Nissan, which helped law enforcement locate and arrest him in a traffic stop on the interstate north of the golf club. On Monday, the Justice Department charged Routh with two federal gun charges.

In an email to his fundraising list on Sunday, the former president wrote, “There were gunshots in my vicinity, but before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first: I AM SAFE AND WELL!,” adding, “Nothing will slow me down. I will NEVER SURRENDER!" On Truth Social, Trump thanked the Secret Service for an “incredible job.”

President Biden said he had been briefed on the incident and expressed relief that Trump was not harmed. “As I have said many times, there is no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country, and I have directed my team to continue to ensure that Secret Service has every resource, capability and protective measure necessary to ensure the former President's continued safety,” Biden said. 

Details about the alleged gunman paint a complex picture of someone with a history of extreme rhetoric and varied political allegiances. In recent months, Routh frequently criticized Trump on social media and seemed to support President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, writing, “DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose” in an April post. He has also donated exclusively to Democratic candidates and causes since 2019.

However, he appears to have supported Trump in 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at one point during the 2020 Democratic primary, and Republicans Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley during the 2024 Republican primary. Broadly, Routh has been a fervent advocate for Ukraine in its war against Russia, reportedly spending time in the country during the war and attempting to recruit conscripts from Afghanistan to fight on the front lines. Routh was interviewed by several news organizations, including The New York Times, about his efforts to aid Ukraine. NBC News also found more than 100 criminal counts against a man named Ryan Routh, including convictions for carrying a concealed weapon, possession of stolen property, and hit-and-run.

The FBI is leading the investigation into the incident, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said the state would conduct its own investigation into the assassination attempt. 

Today, we’ll share perspectives about the incident from the left and right. Then, my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left is concerned by the assassination attempt, with many saying it sends a dark message about the state of our politics.
• Some argue Democrats and Republicans must redouble their efforts to tamp down on political violence. 
• Others say the attempt will again shake up the election. 

In The Atlantic, Juliette Kayyem called the incident “a horrifying new attempt on Trump’s life.”

“Trump should be outraged; all Americans should be. No former president or current presidential candidate should be so vulnerable during both public and private events. And the choices facing voters should not be left to the whim of gunmen,” Kayyem wrote. “This latest act of violence is a lot, indeed too much. Violence sits heavily on our politics now. Much is unsettling about this attack: Trump’s schedule was not public; the assassin got dangerously close to the former president with an AK-47-style gun with a long-range scope; he appears to have worn defensive ‘ceramic tiles’ as an ad hoc bulletproof vest, as if anticipating engagement.”

“If politics is in large measure a type of theater, then this assassination attempt was an answer in kind. To seek to livestream or document for posterity the death of a former president, and presumably also an attempt to evade capture or death, shows a certain type of planning, and a desire for a real-time audience,” Kayyem said. “Though the temperature of our politics desperately needs to be reduced, this moment is unlikely to lower the heat. That didn’t happen in July after the Butler, Pennsylvania, attack, and our politics are not likely to demand it now.”

The Miami Herald editorial board wrote “we can’t let political violence steer elections.”

“Details of the incident were only beginning to emerge Sunday evening, but we were glad to learn quickly that Trump remained unhurt. We were also glad that those currently in the White House — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris weighed in,” the board said. “For a democracy to work, all of us — even bitter political rivals — can and will come together to combat political violence. That has never been more critical than in this highly contentious election, where democracy truly may be at stake. We cannot let those who would commit such violence influence our elections by dividing us further.”

“There’s a lot we still need to know about what occurred Sunday on the golf course, but if it is indeed another episode of political violence, or an attempt, this will turn up the heat in the presidential election and push us further apart,” the board added. “This is not something that Americans can or should accept as inevitable. Political violence undermines democracy, and we can’t allow ourselves to become numb to it. An AK-47 in the bushes near a presidential candidate should chill us to the bone. Violence, or the threat of it, cannot become a force in American politics.”

The Economist suggested the attempt “will shake up the election.”

“The arrest will again shake up a presidential campaign that has in recent months endured one shock after another. The momentum and media focus that Vice President Kamala Harris has enjoyed following her strong debate against Mr Trump on September 10th will compete now with wall-to-wall coverage of the suspect’s background and the confounding question of how another rifleman could have approached within several hundred yards of the former president without being detected,” the writers said. “The Secret Service has been under intense scrutiny since its agents failed on July 13th to prevent Thomas Crooks from shooting Mr Trump in the ear with an assault rifle as he spoke at a rally in Pennsylvania. Now the service and the Biden administration’s overall supervision of the former president’s security will again be under a microscope.”

“Until this year, it was possible to think that massive investments in the Secret Service and aggressive, preemptive policing had contained America’s vulnerability to presidential assassinations… as well as serious attempts against presidents and candidates (too many to list). But just as January 6th shattered complacency about the durability of America’s constitutional norms, the assassination attempts on Mr. Trump have made plain that America’s gun violence respects no borders.”

What the right is saying.

• The right is outraged that Trump appears to have had a second close call with an assassination attempt.
• Some argue the left’s rhetoric is to blame for repeated attempts on Trump’s life.
• Others question why Trump’s Secret Service protection hasn’t been greatly enhanced. 

The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote about “Trump in the cross-hairs again.”

The suspect was caught due to “an alert witness and good police work. But it’s still alarming that the potential assassin could get so close to what could have been a clear line of sight on the former President… All of this suggests considerable planning, as does his location at the golf course that afforded him some foliage as cover,” the board said. “The country is fortunate the Secret Service agent spotted the man, while other agents moved Mr. Trump to safety. The trauma of a successful assassination would make our current political distemper seem mild.”

“The risk level is too high these days to take chances. This will probably require Mr. Trump to change some of his habits, such as golfing only on courses where a shooter can’t get access. But the risks aren’t only from a lone gunman, if that is what Mr. Routh is,” the board wrote. “Especially after Butler and now West Palm Beach, the Secret Service cannot be seen as failing to protect the candidates. Any harm that comes to either nominee, but especially to Mr. Trump after two failed attempts, would lead to conspiracy theories that could lead to further violence. The country, and President Biden, can’t afford to tempt fate again.”

In The Federalist, Jordan Boyd said “Democrats did the opposite of ‘lower the temperature’ between Trump assassination attempts.”

“When an assassin first attempted to take Trump’s life at a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally in July, Democrats and media everywhere overlooked their roles in stoking the flames of hatred against Trump and his supporters to insist that Americans must ‘lower the temperature,’” Boyd wrote. “Instead of abandoning the assassination prep campaign that put Trump in danger in the first place, Democrats used the days following his fatal campaign event to further smear the potential future president as the next Hitler, a ‘threat to democracy,’ primary spreader of ‘fascism,’ and an ‘existential danger’ to the nation.”

“If Democrats and the media who took their calls for partisan peace at face value meant what they said, they would have called out and corrected the inflammatory behavior plaguing the party. Instead, they continued their campaign to trick Americans into believing Trump shouldn’t be allowed to hold office,” Boyd said. “This second assassination attempt may be yet another example of the stunning failures and corruption plaguing the current regime, but it’s no surprise considering Democrats’ commitment to fanning the political flames.”

The New York Post editorial board asked “why hasn’t the Secret Service given Trump the security he PLAINLY merits?”

“How many assassination attempts will it take for the Secret Service to provide adequate security for Donald Trump,” the board wrote. “The would-be shooter got as close as 300 yards — almost as near as the Pennsylvania assassin, who would have succeeded if Trump hadn’t happened to turn his head at just the right moment. And that was after Trump’s security supposedly got upgraded in the wake of information that Iran is actively gunning for him.”

“Yet this perp got caught because a civilian spotted the suspect fleeing the scene and got a photo of the vehicle, license plate included. If President Biden were golfing, the whole course would’ve been ‘surrounded’ with protection, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said. Yet Trump’s ‘not the sitting president,’ so ‘security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible.’ Huh,” the board said. “The White House and Kamala Harris campaign were all violence has no place in our politics once again on Sunday, but it sure looks like they have yet to install Secret Service leadership that agrees.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• As a country, we absolutely should be taking this event (and the last one!) more seriously.
• What we know about the shooter so far makes it hard for us to fit him into a type, but the whole situation is troubling.
• We must address the ease with which an armed shooter could get close to Trump as well as the extreme rhetoric that foments political violence.

First and foremost: I'm glad the former president is safe.

I said this after the first assassination attempt on Trump (I can't believe I'm even writing those words), but we need to walk away from the abyss. As a country. And I don't think we are doing a very good job. Instead, in the wake of the first assassination attempt, I saw friends, family, and prominent social media accounts who hate Trump joke about how they wished the shooter had better aim, or how Trump got "nicked" in the ear and should get over it, or even posit that the whole thing was staged. 

I've been trying to beat this drum since the Pennsylvania shooting; I also brought it up last week in our newsletter about the debate and I said it again on the Sunday podcast with Tangle Managing Editor Ari Weitzman: It seems very dangerous and shocking to me that we moved on from Trump nearly being killed so quickly. I had hoped that the disturbing images of him being shot in the head would wake this country from its stupor — on political violence, on gun violence, on our inflammatory rhetoric — yet it didn't appear to. It passed over us just like any other "wow, I can't believe that happened" political news cycle, and before I knew what happened we were talking about JD Vance and Kamala Harris and immigrants eating pets.

Maybe it isn't all that important that there wasn't a single question about the attempt on Trump’s life at the ABC News debate; maybe it isn't all that important that so many online influencers minimize or mock attempted assassinations; maybe it doesn't matter that the political rhetoric has remained unchanged since July. Maybe I am just a rube holding onto a version of the country that doesn’t exist or never did; but I happen to think all of this is important.

Imagine a neighbor of yours gets mugged as they get out of their car. News of the mugging spreads. Now imagine if this is the response: A quarter of the neighborhood is scared and sympathetic, warning that the attack is a dangerous development that should be condemned by everyone and addressed as a group. Another quarter of the neighborhood blames other neighbors for creating an environment where muggings like this could take place. Another quarter of the neighborhood makes fun of the neighbor, and downplays the severity of the attack. Then the remaining quarter of the neighborhood says they wish the person got beat up worse, and claims the attack was karma for how the neighbor had treated other people on the block.

Now imagine — in an alternative world — the entire neighborhood came together to condemn the act of violence, showed some sympathy for the neighbor, and demanded changes to prevent a mugging like that from happening again. Do you think the difference in response could potentially change the future outcomes? 

I certainly do.

The details of this attempt so far are disturbing. Police said the man behind the attack was armed with a popular SKS-style rifle with a scope, had makeshift body armor, and a GoPro with him. He managed to get within shooting range of Trump, and apparently hoped to record himself killing him. He had been interviewed by news organizations for recruiting people to go fight on the front lines of the war in Ukraine.

He did not seem well. A source of mine who monitors foreign influence operations contacted me this morning to say that warnings about Routh had circulated in the Ukraine war volunteer community for many months. Some warnings were made publicly: He was grifting in Ukraine, misrepresenting himself, and not genuinely invested in the war. In one screenshotted conversation, after someone asked Routh to stop encouraging Afghans to go fight in Ukraine, Routh allegedly responded that he lives in Hawaii "on a beautiful sandy beach with beautiful girls in bikinis all day" and was really "not worried" about Ukraine. 

His politics — like the Pennsylvania shooter's — were not very typical or obvious. He supported Trump in 2016, yet donated exclusively to Democrats since then. He expressed support for a Vivek Ramaswamy-Nikki Haley ticket, yet parroted Democratic talking points and ultimately backed Biden and Harris. He appears to have a lengthy criminal record, including an incident where he barricaded himself inside a roofing business while armed with a machine gun.

Yet this is the country we live in, where both sides are using increasingly dire, violent, and distinct rhetoric: Democrats insist we need to "eliminate" Trump or compare him to Hitler; Republicans shoot at Democrat-themed targets in campaign ads or mock a violent attack on the spouse of a Democratic leader; and citizens can easily and heavily arm themselves, drive to a golf course, and come within a few hundred yards of plunging the nation into a cycle of political violence.

We, the neighborhood, now need to decide. We can ignore what is in front of us — the metaphorical and literal bullets dodged. We can make jokes about it or mock Trump. We could focus all the blame on the dangerous things he's said or done. Or we could look around and decide that this isn't the neighborhood, the country, the world we want to live in and act accordingly. We could take these threats and their root causes — unhinged campaign rhetoric, mental instability, access to firearms, the glorification of war and death and violence — and attack those.

It's up to us. And it's up to you.

Take the survey: Who do you think is to blame for the recent attempt on Donald Trump’s life? Let us know!

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Your questions, answered.

Q: I'm hearing a lot of concern about large cryptocurrency PACs donating huge amounts to Trump's campaign. Why is this a bigger concern than other PACs making large donations to a campaign?

— Ann from Douglassville, PA

Tangle: For those playing catchup, the Trump campaign announced in May that it would start accepting crypto donations. Those donations made headlines in July, when Trump raked in $3 million in crypto from all kinds of people from the Winklevoss twins to a Michigan pizzeria owner.

In a vacuum this is not a big deal, but it does tell a different story about shifting political loyalties. Whether it’s crypto or USD, donations show which candidate is aligned with different special interest groups. Trump wasn’t a big proponent of crypto at first, but he’s changed his tune — and I think it shows a new alignment of the tech-right towards Republicans, who traditionally lean away from regulation. While California in general obviously tends liberal, Silicon Valley is at the intersection of left-wing culture, free market entrepreneurs, big-money venture capitalists, and supporters of new tech like AI and cryptocurrency that is fighting against regulatory sentiment. Losing any of the “coastal elite” block that typically supports Democrats may be a concern for them, but it shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone.

To me, the bigger story here is the trail of donations to members of Congress from crypto companies lobbying for deregulation. I’m bullish on this technology, and I personally own cryptocurrency; but as it exists today it’s undeniably ripe for exploitation and scam, so the high potential for corruption shown by this kind of obvious paper trail is a worry for people like me who are long on crypto.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

Erika Lee — the woman behind a viral social media post that her neighbor's cat was kidnapped, killed and eaten by Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio — has deleted her post and apologized. Lee said she "messed up royally," adding that she had no firsthand knowledge of any such event and had misinterpreted a neighbor's story. Separately, the Ohio Division of Wildlife told TMZ that a viral photo of a black man holding two geese in Columbus, Ohio, was taken after the geese were struck by a vehicle. NBC News has the story on the post, TMZ has the story on the Ohio man, and we covered the Springfield story last week. 

Numbers.

• 65. The number of days between the first and second attempted assassinations of former President Donald Trump. 
• 45. The approximate number of miles north of Trump International Golf Club that the suspect in the assassination attempt was arrested. 
• 300-500. The estimated distance, in yards, that the suspect was from Trump when Secret Service agents opened fire on his position, according to Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw.
• $140. The total amount that the suspect donated to Democratic candidates and causes since 2019.
• 45%. The percentage of Americans who say political violence is a “major problem,” according to a June 2024 survey from States United Action.
• 66%. The percentage of Americans who say they think political violence in the U.S. has increased over the past few years. 
• 10%. The percentage of Americans who said the “use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president” in a June 2024 poll from Robert Pape at the University of Chicago.
• 7%. The percentage of Americans who said they “support force to restore Trump to the presidency.”

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just written a piece on the New Mexico gun ban.
• The most clicked link in Thursday’s newsletter was the potential government shutdown looming over a spending bill faceoff.
• Nothing to do with politics: How a YouTuber secretly lost 250 pounds for a “social experiment.”
• Thursday’s survey: 1,928 readers responded to our survey on Springfield, Ohio, with 57% saying small-town immigration is for the better. “We have a large Haitian population in Florida. Some are friends, some my neighbors, and as far as I can tell, hard working, honest people trying to survive like the rest of us,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

On August 23rd, a Sumatran tiger cub was born at the San Diego Zoo. This occasion marked an important moment in the preservation of the Sumatran subspecies, of which only about 600 remain in the wild. Lisa Peterson, senior vice president and executive director of the park, commented that the birth of the cubs adds “incredibly important genes into the pool of the population, furthering the genetic diversity and health of the Sumatran tiger subspecies.” Good News Network has the story. 

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