The truth about the latest apparent Trump assassination attempt
No sooner had I learned about the incident at Donald Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club involving some lunatic rando and his AK-47, that I braced myself for a spate of conspiracy theories. I didn’t have long to wait. A particular favourite is a photo of Columbo asking, “Just one more thing sir. How did the shooter know you were going to be on the golf course if it was a last minute decision?”
The answer, of course, is he didn’t know. He was taking a chance that since Donald Trump was in town he might play golf at his favourite golf course. Not exactly Nostradamus stuff.
My question for “Columbo” and people who let memes do their thinking for them is, if the (alleged) shooter had known in advance when Trump was going to play golf through some special “inside information,” why did he show up 12 whole hours early? Why did he camp out on the golf course? Why did he bring food and water with him?
And who says Trump made a last minute decision to play golf anyway? I can’t find anything anywhere quoting Trump or anyone close to Trump saying that. I even asked posters of the “Columbo” meme to pretty please provide a link. Crickets. And even if it was a last minute decision, so what? For all we know that wasn’t the alleged shooter’s first foray to the golf club to hunt for Trump, or whatever the hell he was doing there.
But that doesn’t stop the conspiracy claque from posting breathless memes suggesting the whole thing was an inside job. Well, I don’t know what it was all about and neither do you. I can certainly speculate. Let’s see here. How about this? Where exactly is Melania, hmmm? And what was SHE doing when all this was going down? She certainly has a lot to gain from Trump’s death! And so on.
Just because you CAN speculate wildly — and even plausibly — doesn’t make it a good idea. And it certainly doesn’t make you Columbo, or somebody smart. It makes you yet another unhelpful contributor to a paranoid cult of endless speculation made entirely without evidence.
Of course, you can do what you want. But why on earth would you want to? Why would you want to look like just another Trump acolyte spouting accusations without a shred of evidence? What possesses people to do that? Isn’t Trump all by himself, and the horrific things he says and does bad enough? Why do some of us, who have at our fingertips a positive ocean of an embarrassment of riches of actual MAGA conspiracies, need to invent conspiracies? It weakens our position and makes us look like fools.
Here’s what we know. The man who was arrested for skulking around West Palm Beach Golf Club with an AK-4, Ryan Wesley Routh, is apparently a confused, unstable nobody with a gun. When discovered and fired upon by Secret Service agents he fled the scene. A drone or a woman who followed him or both (I’m unclear on which it was) apparently led authorities to Routh’s location where he was captured without a struggle.
Is there something sinister beyond that? I don’t know and neither do you. But if I were a betting man I would bet heavily against it. If the whole thing gains Trump five votes I’ll be surprised. And even if it turns out to be highly valuable to Trump that doesn’t make it a conspiracy, and, unless you want to be accused of something nefarious every time fortune smiles on you, you would be wise to dismiss it. After all, he who lives by the conspiracy ought to die by the conspiracy. Right?
Remember, we’re the party of the good guys. We’re the smart ones. We have actual truth with actual evidence on our side. Let’s be wise and concentrate on what’s important. There’s a high likelihood we are going to win, and if we keep our minds on our jobs that likelihood will turn into a certainty. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.