Versatile activist, idealist or crank? Ryan Routh seems to be a bit of all three, if we examine his journey leading up to his arrest Sunday in Florida, where authorities suspect him of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump.
A photo released by the Martin County Sheriff’s Office shows the 58-year-old American, with tousled blond hair, handcuffed behind his back.
In another shot, he is seen with his wrinkled T-shirt pulled up to his chest, his sunglasses having slipped down the end of his nose. He is thin and squinting.
This former construction worker, who seemed to be driven by an urgent desire to act, went to Ukraine in 2022 after the Russian invasion.
AFP interviewed him there by chance, at a rally in solidarity with Ukrainians in the capital, kyiv. “Putin is a terrorist,” he declared, the colours of the Ukrainian flag painted on his cheek. “All the people around the world need to stop their activities and come here to support the Ukrainians.”
From Hawaii to Ukraine
Ryan Wesley Routh was charged Monday in Florida, so far only with unlawful possession of a firearm. He is suspected of trying to shoot Donald Trump with a scoped assault rifle from a bush on the edge of his golf course on Sunday.
These are not his first problems with the authorities. He was arrested in 2002 after a traffic stop followed by a hit-and-run. Armed, he barricaded himself in a room.
Also sued by plaintiffs in various cases in which he was convicted since the 1990s, he has failed to pay his taxes year after year.
Frequently speaking out on social media, the American posted a message on Twitter in June 2020, in which he appeared to regret having voted for Trump in 2016 and confided his “great disappointment”. “I will be happy when you are no longer here,” he wrote.
At the same time, in a 300-page self-published book entitled “The Unwinnable War”, he sets out his ideas on the following major themes: “the fatal flaw of democracy”, “the abandonment of the world and the global citizen”, “The Third World War and the end of humanity”. He talks about Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea.
To a New York Times reporter who interviewed him in March 2023, he confided that he had an unusual plan to help kyiv. It consisted of recruiting Afghan recruits, of whom he had compiled a list of hundreds of names, and sending these former soldiers who had fled the Taliban to fight in Ukraine.
Homeless hut
In an undated selfie, possibly from that time, he appears with a three-day white beard, worried eyes beneath furrowed bushy eyebrows. He has an American flag rolled up in a bandana around his neck and appears to be wearing a bulletproof vest.
This American flag can be found sewn onto other items of clothing: a label on his jacket or on a sweater, next to another label representing the Ukrainian flag.
He worked in construction in North Carolina but settled in the middle of the Pacific, in Hawaii. There, on the island of Oahu, he founded a small business he called “Camp Box Honolulu,” which specialized in building cabins and storage boxes.
THE Star-Advertiserthe local newspaper, reported in a November 2019 article that he offered one of these cabins to homeless people.