Ex-Trump Voter Attempts to Make Up for It

Police arrest another dissatisfied Trump customer who appears to have broken zero Florida laws

Sept. 16: Attempted Trump assassination attempt … Harris sit-down with Teamsters … NYPD shoot four (4) people … IDF killed three hostages with precision strike targeting terrorists only …

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Alleged non-shooter Ryan Wesley Routh after being transferred into a police vehicle without apparently “accidentally” bumping his head. (Martin County Sheriff’s Office photo.)

The FBI says a 58-year-old man was arrested yesterday in what’s being described as an apparent attempt to attempt to assassinate former Pres. Donald Trump.

Identified in multiple reports as Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspected non-shooter reportedly voted for Trump in 2016 and then spent the next four years gradually figuring out what he had done.

Routh registered in North Carolina as an unaffiliated voter in 2012, much to the relief of Democratic strategists in 2024.

In 2020, Routh reportedly wrote:

“While you were my choice in 2106¹, I and the world hoped that president Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment and it seems you are getting worse and devolving.”

Routh was arrested Sunday after the Secret Service spotted a rifle and opened fire on a man lying in the shrubs about 300 yards ahead of where Trump was campaigning playing golf at his Mar-a-Lago trauma abyss luxury resort. You’ll see in multiple reports that Routh was “pointing” his rifle…but not where he was pointing it.

Trump was playing golf with Steve Witkoff, a Michigan union leader Black food-bank volunteer Christian abortion foe evangelical anything adult woman JD Vance wealthy Manhattan landlord when the shots rang out. Not Routh’s shots, apparently, but Secret Service firing back at Routh.

With shots fired, Trump’s detail swung into action, chasing down the suspected non-shooter, shielding Trump, and instantly dispatching an emergency-response fundraising email.

From early reports, it’s not clear whether Routh was on Trump’s property, or merely “on the perimeter.” CNN reports that Secret Service spotted the rifle sticking through a fence. That could matter as, other than trespassing, there’s no suggestion that Routh violated any of Florida’s remaining, feeble gun laws. (Assuming the state hasn’t yet banned not firing.)

None of the reports indicate that Routh ever even squeezed the trigger. Authorities say the bullet came within just 500 yards of Trump’s ear while staying inside the rifle from which it wasn’t shot.

But Florida law allows armed people to stand their ground even if they’re lying in a shrub. And even though stand-your-ground laws are typically used as legal defense for committing violence against people of color, Routh’s lawyers could argue in court that he was in fear of Trump playing through.

Routh may have other defenses when he’s formally charged with the attempted attempted assassination of the former president.

He has dedicated much of his life to charity work. Specifically, Routh has spent many years, unpaid, constructing a solid mental-health defense for what he didn’t pull off yesterday. His absolutely batshit history includes inexplicable stunts such as barricading himself in a business in 2002, recruiting Afghan war veterans to fight in Ukraine last year, and voting for Donald Trump in 2016.

INSTANT SWIFT KARMA The non-violent not-attack on Trump came just a few hours after Trump launched a non-violent attack capable of inspiring real violent attacks on Taylor Swift, who I’m told is popular with the kids today, or “in.”

At 10:44 am yesterday, Trump posted, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” Less than four hours later, God Almighty sent Trump a warning in the form of a 58-year-old former Trump voter. The fire next time.

Trump incurred The Lord’s loving wrath after Swift endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president because duh. It’s worth noting that — given the potential for stochastic violence and also non-stochastic violence — for the world’s hugest pop star to endorse Harris took incredible courage.

BACK TO BUSINESS! Undeturd by yesterday’s attempted attempted assassination attempt, Trump will appear before a live audience tonight…remotely, on Twitter. His safe Space™!

And what’s the agenda for tonight, with less than two months until Election Day? He’s launching the new cryptocurrency founded fronted by two of his known sons!

The Eric and Don, Jr., joint will be called World Liberty Financial. Eighteen-year-old Barron is on board as “DeFi [decentralized finance] visionary,” which is hilarious because the Trump clan’s life’s work has been centralizing your finances into their finances.

We’re “leaving the slow and outdated big banks behind," Trump posted last week. His disparagement of big banks has some merit to it; many have actually loaned him money.

Meanwhile, Trump has been asking crypto bros for crypto money for his crypto-fascist campaign, and promising to deregulate the already deregulated “currency” that’s even more made-up than our existing currency and promises to increase exponentially our ability to torpedo the world’s economy.

Trump’s announcement of his not-currency will come just one day after his not-attempted assassination.

Harris Sits for Substantive Interview Today

Didja know that Vice Pres. Kamala Harris giving media interviews is the most important issue in this campaign according to the objective media that wants those interviews?

Didja know that Harris sat down with a local Pennsylvania station Friday night for her first solo interview as the Democratic presidential nominee? It got covered by other outlets, but didja notice no one seems to really care?

Well, today Harris has an interview that’s really gonna matter. But you’ll never see it.

Harris will be sitting down today for an endorsement interview with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, led by Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien. You may remember O’Brien from his address at the Republican National Convention in June, when he spoke glowingly of Republican lawmakers.

Democrats declined to give O’Brien a speaking slot at their convention. Former Pres. Donald Trump sat for his endorsement interview with the Teamsters back in January.

Historically, the Teamsters have gone with the pro-labor Democratic Party over the crush-labor Republican Party. And after Trump engaged in some fun worker-bashing with serial job-destroyer Elon Musk — contemplating a federal role for Musk…firing people — O’Brien accused Trump of “economic terrorism.”

The Teamsters endorsement could be incredibly important, not so much for the potential votes of its 1.3 million members, who likely already know who they support, but because of the impact the union’s get-out-the-vote organizing could have. That said, there’s less than two months, so, uh, y’know, break’s over!

IDF Announces Death of Hostages by IDF

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced yesterday that three of the terrorists it purposely and precisely killed in a November airstrike were hostages it accidentally and mistakenly killed in a November airstrike.

The IDF said the mission had been targeting Ahmed al-Ghandour, Hamas’s military commander in northern Gaza, who was not a hostage, except to his feelings. The three not-at-all-murdered hostages were Cpl. Nik Beizer, Sgt. Ron Sherman, and Elia Toledano.

The IDF said an internal investigation showed that the three were killed “as a result of a byproduct” of the November airstrike. Nutritionists have warned for years that consumers should maintain a diet free of airstrike byproducts.

It took the IDF ten months to figure all this out.

NYPD Shoot Four People

New York police yesterday opened fire at a Brooklyn subway station, shooting four people in a heroic effort to protect them from someone who did not shoot them.

One of the shooting victims recipients was a police officer, who is expected to recover from being shot rescued by his fellow officers. Another one of the lucky subway passengers saved from the guy who didn’t shoot anyone got his rescue bullet in his head and was in critical condition last night.

A 26-year-old woman fortunate enough to get saved by the police shooting was grazed by a police bullet and was in stable condition.

The terrorist was also shot, multiple times, and is in stable condition despite being shot multiple times, which oughtta say something about the marksmanpersonship here even if we didn’t already know that three other people were shot.

Police confronted the terrorist after he terrorized the city by not paying the subway fare of $2.90. The brazen fare evasion occurred just four days after the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Two officers spotted the man and followed him into the station. When police asked him to take his hands out of his pockets, they discovered he was armed with a tactical nuclear “dirty” bomb knife. He told them, “You’re going to have to shoot me,” which the officers refused to do until he advanced on them, at which point they further de-escalated the situation by shooting him, one of their own, and the two bystanders.

Springfield Gets Stochastic

If you missed it, subscribers to the Jonathan Larsen Substack saw my story yesterday about the un- and under-reported past remarks of Springfield, OH, Mayor Rob Rue in recent months.

At a City Commission meeting this summer, Rue revealed that a city panel — working with federal and state agencies — is investigating how a secret effort by local companies brought Haitian immigrants there by the thousands, without giving the city time to prepare.

In other words, Haitians might not be the problem. And Pres. Joe Biden and Vice Pres. Kamala Harris might not be the problem for granting Haitians Temporary Protected Status (TPS), making them legal immigrants because their country is being overrun by criminal gangs, unlike civilized countries overrun by legal gangs.

Corporations might be the problem. And Rue didn’t stop with job recruiters. He and other City Commission members and city officials in past meetings discussed how the housing crisis also isn’t the fault of Haitians.

Rue discussed the “greed” of “opportunistic landlords” who have tossed out longtime residents because they can charge more rent illegally packing in Haitian tenants by the Haitian-load. According to Rue, he has asked the city’s Legal Department to explore ways the city can fight back against out-of-town limited liability corporations that have been gobbling up residential properties and then jacking up the rents.

We have met the enemy and it is LLCs.

And Springfield is paying a price. Schools, public offices, and hospitals have been shut down in response to threats. Two area colleges will be online only this week.

Where your dedicated TFN gets lost is, if you’re pissed at Haitians or even Biden for inflicting an “invasion” of Haitians on a city, overwhelming their schools and health facilities, what the fuck motivates you to threaten schools and health facilities? What’s next, airstriking hostaging?

I realize logic isn’t a strong point among these anti-Springfield, pro-USA patriots, but I’m gonna need to see this done up Boolean style.

TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES One of the Telephone Game amateur-league players who provided the fodder for former Pres. Donald Trump and future historical footnote Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) said this weekend that she made an oopsie-doodle when passing along a false account of pet cuisine. 

The woman is now expected to participate in Olympic-level Telephone Game competition as the Raygun of her sport. And it doesn’t matter that she’s recanted. Right-wing media have been at work for months churning up “evidence” of…whatever evidence is needed of.

Meanwhile, two of Springfield’s three Republican county commissioners reportedly now say they don’t know whether they’ll vote for Trump after he and Vance rhetorically nuked their city.

BOTH-SIDESISM! That’s right, TFN is gonna both-sides the shit out of this. Is it equal? No. Morally equivalent. No. But it’s worth calling out, because it matters and because no one else will.

Because Vance had a media moment yesterday that went viral on the left for all the wrong reasons. Factually wrong.

A former Harris advisor Tweeted out a clip of Vance giving CNN’s Dana Bash what the former advisor called a “shocking admission” about the Haitian cat-eating claims:

Vance: …The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes.

Bash: But it wasn’t just a meme, sir.

Vance: If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do, Dana. Because you guys [sic] are completely letting Kamala Harris coast. You had one interview with her. You talk about pushing back against me, Dana. You didn't push back against the fact that she cast the deciding vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which is why [sic] a lot of Americans can't afford food and housing. We ought to be talking about public policy.

Bash: You just said that you're creating a story.

Vance: What's that, Dana?

Bash: You just said this is a story that you created.

Vance: Yes.

Bash: So the eating dogs and cats thing is not accurate.

Vance: We are creating — we are, Dana. It comes from first-hand accounts from my constituents. I say that we're creating a story; meaning, we're creating the American media focusing on it.

Now, I can understand why this looked like an admission. Vance’s language was imprecise; he went to Yale Law School, after all.

But “story” can mean different things. It can mean “a thing that happened.” But it can also mean “a thing media are talking about.”

Given that Vance already has a history of saying he and Trump have made this a thing media are talking about, it makes sense to infer that’s what he meant again.

But the left, even journalists, are rejecting his instant clarification to insist that he accidentally revealed making up something he has consistently insisted is true. And this comes just one day after CNN published a devastating report on false claims made by Harris’s “official rapid response page,” @KamalaHQ.

Among the lies: portraying Trump as confused about where he is, when he’s speaking in one place and refers to voters elsewhere. Like, I’m in New Jersey, but if I say, “California, you’ve got more TFN subscribers than any other state!” that doesn’t mean I think I’m in California. Unless you take me out of context, which true Newsfuckers have far too much integrity to do.

And the @KamalaHQ account simply stated as fact that Trump “forgot” where he was, even though the full video shows that’s not the case.

Then there was pronoun trouble. Like Trump claiming he did nothing wrong in his comments about the deadly 2017 Charlottesville rally, and @KamalaHQ editing it to make it seem like Trump was saying the neo-Nazis did nothing wrong.

These falsehoods might whip up Democratic fervor, but they also exacerbate mistrust. And they vindicate Republican claims of Democratic dishonesty.

As a journalist, voter, or other human, the question ought not to be “Did they mean X?” but “What did they mean?” Be curious, not judgmental!

The fact that Trump poses such an extraordinary threat, and is so dishonest himself, does not justify sloppiness about what he says, it makes that sloppiness worse. The rationale that anything is justified out of fear of the enemy isn’t only an immoral rationale, it’s their rationale.

TCB

If you missed it, I emailed all you Newsfuckers with some housekeeping last night. It was an email only, there’s no online post, which means it’s now a collector’s item.

In short, I’m focusing TFN almost exclusively on the weekday morning newsletter². Original reporting and analysis/commentary will from now on appear at the Jonathan Larsen Substack. Why? (1) So Big Important People are more likely to share it with its family-friendly, child-safe, tamper-proof URL and (2) so I can get a better idea of whether to prioritize wacka-wacka or original reporting.

And for this week only if you become a paid TFN subscriber, you’ll get a free paid subscription to the JL Substack, too. Which means you’ll be a paid subscriber to both once the two are fully severed by professional conjoined-twin-severer Dr. Ben Carson.

Of course, you will always be able to support both Substacks with a donation or paid subscription. You’re welcome!

And come say Hi on Threads, Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, Spoutible, or Twitter.

Go get ‘em, kids. And don’t forget to subscribe to the JL Substack!

1. Routh either meant to write 2016 or this is how we find out that time travelers really did try to save us.

2. Maybe I’ll do the occasional longer attempt at humor or vulgarity, but that’s likely to be as rare as hen’s teeth, voter fraud, or immigrant crime.