A journalist who interviewed would-be Trump assassin Ryan Wesley Routh last year has said it was obvious that he was crazy.
Tanya Lukyanova had interviewed the 58-year-old for a Semafor article on American-trained Afghan commandos who wanted to fight for Ukraine.
Routh had started a group called the International Volunteer Center which helped foreigners looking to assist the Ukrainian war effort.
Speaking with The Free Press, Lukyanova described the registered Democrat who opened fire on the former president on Sunday as being both zealous and crazy.
She said: He was this zealous guy, an American who really wanted to volunteer to help Ukraine.
You can tell right away that he’s crazy, but I think people thought "Who cares, he’s supporting the right cause".
Routh, seen here, had started a group called the International Volunteer Center which allegedly helped foreigners looking to assist the Ukrainian war effort
Tanya Lukyanova, seen here, had interviewed the 58-year-old for a Semafor article on American-trained Afghan commandos who wanted to fight for Ukraine
She added: Everyone knew him as a little zealous, a bit much. But nobody really cared about that too much because he was on the side of good. He was helping Ukraine.
Speaking with Lukyanova last year, Routh said he was frustrated with the Ukrainian government and said they were being too rigid about admitting foreign soldiers.
He said: Ukraine is very often hard to work with. Many foreign soldiers leave after a week in Ukraine or must move from unit to unit to find a place they are respected and appreciated. They’re afraid that anybody and everybody is a Russian spy.
Routh told the outlet that he had spent five months in Ukraine working on his center and had been trying to find accommodation in Pakistan to house Afghans looking to fight in Ukraine.
Lukyanova describes him as being a harmless loon, who didnt do anything too crazy.
She even compared him to Brad Pitts character Chad Feldheimer in the Cohen Brothers film Burn After Reading.
Pitt plays a dim-witted personal trainer who attempts to blackmail a CIA analyst in the 2008 black comedy.
Lukyanova added: A guy who is overzealous and goes a little overboard on the conspiratorial side of things. But until he does something terribly wrong, nobody quite thinks of him that way.”
Ryan Routh wasn’t a story, until he allegedly went to Trump’s golf course with a gun.
The recent attempt on his life comes after a bullet struck Trumps right ear during an assassination attempt on July 13 at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania
Now-deleted Facebook profile of Ryan Routh, who allegedly tried to shoot Donald Trump at one of his Florida golf courses on Sept. 15, 2024
The former president was playing at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday when the incident unfolded just after 1pm.
Officials said U.S. Secret Service agents spotted a rifle barrel sticking out of the bushes two holes ahead of where Trump was, prompting the agents to fire at the suspect.
The gunman dropped the rifle and fled in an SUV, with images revealing he left a backpack, GoPro camera, and an AK-47 style rifle. He was later stopped by law enforcement in a neighboring county.
The suspect was able to get within 300 to 500 years of Trump and was posted up outside the club around the 5th and 6th hole, which is confirmed to be a more vulnerable area of the course because it is closest to the road.
Trump confirmed in a statement about an hour after the shots were reported that he is safe and well and didnt want rumors to start spiraling out of control.
Despite Rouths plight to help Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has condemned the apparent assassination attempt, expressing that there is no place for political violence.
Images revealed the backpack, GoPro camera and AK-47 style rifle that the gunman left behind
Routh is now in custody after aiming following the incident, and was described as being relatively calm
I am glad to hear that Donald Trump is safe and unharmed. My best wishes to him and his family. Its good that the suspect in the assassination attempt was apprehended quickly.
This is our principle: the rule of law is paramount and political violence has no place anywhere in the world, the Ukrainian leader said on X.
Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told reporters at a press conference that the Secret Service had a limited ability to protect Trump at the golf course.
The golf course is surrounded by shrubbery, so when somebody gets into the shrubbery, theyre pretty much out of sight, all right, and at this level that he is at right now, hes not the sitting president, Bradshaw said.
If he was, we would have had this entire golf course surrounded. But because hes not, security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible.
So, I would imagine that the next time he comes to the golf course, therell probably be a little bit more people around the perimeter. But the Secret Service did exactly what they should have done.
Martin County Sherriff William D. Snyder said Routh was not displaying a lot of emotions when police arrested him.
Snyder added that the suspected shooter was relatively calm and never asked why he was being detained.
The incident took place exactly two months after a separate assassination attempt against Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The FBI described it as an apparent attempted assassination on the GOP nominee.
Routh had voted for Trump in 2016 over his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, but in 2019 he began making small donations to Democratic candidates.