The 58-year-old man who allegedly wanted to shoot Donald Trump is described as a disturbed man by the American media. Ryan Wesley Routh had another, confusing plan for him.
But who really is Ryan Wesley Routh, the 58-year-old independent home builder in Hawaii? Since he was arrested and identified as the man who pointed in the direction of Donald Trump in West Palm Beach, Florida, his profile is meticulously deciphered by the American media. According to CNN, the man has been convicted several times by the courts, notably for unauthorized carrying of heavy weapons. He was also the subject of a hunt in 2002, when he barricaded himself in a business in North Carolina after refusing to comply on the road.
But it is above all his profile that is surprising. His messages written in recent years on social networks, in which he sometimes criticizes Donald Trump, incoherent, tend to show that the man was troubled, megalomaniac and mythomaniac.
The Palm Beach County prosecutor said the man was unresponsive when he was arrested, and suggested the man knew why he was being arrested. Ryan Wesley Routh was interviewed by The New York Times in 2023 for an article about “Americans volunteering to help the war effort in Ukraine.” He said he had gone to the country after the Russian invasion to fight, but also intended to recruit Afghan soldiers to form a battalion to support Ukraine. Allegations that appear to be completely false.
In dozens of posts on X in 2022, he said he was willing to die fighting for Ukraine and that “we must burn the Kremlin to the ground.” Ryan Wesley Routh traveled to Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor more than two years ago, according to videos and images geotagged by CNN in Kiev’s Independence Square.
The man had also nurtured a very crazy project: as reported by Le Monde, which has gone through all his networks and correspondence posted online in recent years, he had written a message to Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, in 2020. He spoke of him in astonishing terms, calling him a “very smart.” Ryan Wesley Routh then offered him the position of “ambassador and liaison officer between North Korea and the United States” to put an end to disagreements and American sanctions on the Asian country.