A long criminal record – from drug possession to driving without a license – and pro-Ukraine posts critical of Donald Trump. Ryan Wesley Routh, the 58-year-old from Hawaii suspected of trying to kill Donald Trump, was very active on social media.
Originally from North Carolina, Routh moved to Hawaii in 2018, where he opened a construction company to build shelters for the homeless. “He’s an honest, hard-working man. I don’t know what happened in Florida; from what I’ve heard, he doesn’t sound like the person I know,” said his son Oran. He also has a daughter; the car he was stopped in was registered to her. A longtime donor to Democratic candidates and causes, Routh is politically active on social media.. In the elections, “democracy is at stake and we cannot fail,” he wrote on X on April 22, using words often used by Joe Biden during the election campaign. On the same day, he advised the president, who was still a candidate at the time, to pivot his campaign around the idea of a “democratic and free America” because Trump “wants to make Americans slaves against the masters.”
After the attempted assassination of the former president in Butler, Pennsylvania, Routh invited Biden to visit the victims of Thomas Crooks’ shooting and attend the funeral of the slain firefighter. “Trump certainly won’t do it. Show the world what real leaders do,” he wrote on X, where he said he had visited Kiev and would, if allowed, fight on the front lines. Responding to a tweet by Elon Musk, he then doubled down on Ukraine: “I would like to buy one of your missiles and load it with a warhead for Putin’s Black Sea mansion to finish it off. If you can tell me the price please, it can be old and used.”