The New York Times penned another glowing profile of Trump would-be assassin Ryan Routh, portraying him as a “crusader for causes large and small.”
Just two days after Routh was arrested on two gun charges after he had been waiting in the bushes of Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course with a scope-mounted rifle and GoPro camera, the New York Times published a flattering editorial of the 58-year-old mercenary.
From The Times:
How Mr. Routh, a peripatetic activist and building contractor with an extensive criminal record, came to possess a semiautomatic rifle, learn of Mr. Trump’s weekend whereabouts and wait for him on the edge of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., remains unknown.
But a review of public records and Mr. Routh’s writings, as well as interviews with people who knew him, suggest that he saw himself as an active and influential participant in momentous world events, while becoming estranged from at least some of his family and nearly destitute in the process.
Mr. Routh has been a serial crusader for causes large and small dating back to at least 1996, when he campaigned against graffiti in Greensboro, N.C., where he lived for decades. In July, he urged President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the social media platform X to visit the victims of the assassination attempt against Mr. Trump in Butler, Pa., writing that “Trump will never do anything for them.”
“Show the world what compassion and humanity is all about,” Mr. Routh wrote on July 16.
In other social media posts, he tagged world leaders and celebrities like Elton John and Elon Musk, often providing his phone number and email as if expecting a response.
The paper described how Routh began recruiting for Ukraine after he was denied a place on the frontline due to his age and lack of experience.
“Mr. Routh had set up a website called ‘Fight for Ukraine,’ in which he explained how to travel there and join the Ukrainian army as a foreign fighter. For the better part of a year, his main focus was getting hundreds of Afghan soldiers, who had fled after their country’s government collapsed, to fight for Ukraine,” the Times wrote.
While The Times noted that some of his recruiting methods were illegal, the paper commended his tenacity.
“He was dogged in his approach, according to one soldier who fought with Ukraine and helped officially recruit foreign fighters for Ukraine’s foreign legion.”
After glossing over his extensive criminal record that included “possessing a weapon of mass death and destruction,” the NY Times insisted Routh was also a “concerned citizen interested in local causes,” such as advocating against graffiti, establishing a skate park in Greensboro, North Carolina, and building storage units for his neighbors.
In the 1990s, he appeared in the pages of a local newspaper as a family man decorating his 1840s log cabin home for Halloween, and as a good Samaritan who won a “Law Enforcement Oscar” for chasing a suspected rapist in his neighborhood.
In 1996, a Greensboro newspaper published a letter from Mr. Routh decrying “the ever increasing amount of graffiti” in the city as a “constant reminder of the moral disintegration of our America.”
And two decades ago, he supported his teenage son’s efforts to establish a skate park in Guilford County, N.C., which includes Greensboro. Mr. Routh helped the teenagers get permission to use a piece of property owned by an oil company. One of the skaters, Will Milsun, now 36, recalled in an interview on Monday that Mr. Routh had shown the boys how to bend plywood to construct quarter pipes.
As Infowars reported, Routh was a Biden-Harris supporter who was deeply sympathetic to the Ukraine war, having recruited soldiers on behalf of the Ukrainian government, including former members of the Taliban.
Amazingly, Routh also had numerous media connections because of his Ukraine recruiting efforts.
In fact, Routh was featured in a rosy New York Times profile in 2023.
He was also interviewed by Newsweek and Semafor in 2022 and was in contact with CBS reporter Holly Williams.
What are the chances that CBS News, The New York Times, Semafor, Newsweek, and several other media outlets—all known for their disdain for Donald Trump—were in contact with Trump’s attempted assassin, Ryan Routh?
— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) September 16, 2024
This is far from normal…
1) Routh was featured in The New York… pic.twitter.com/czh45uE9CI
Despite his clear political affiliations and connections, TIME Magazine insisted that Routh’s ideology was “unclear.”
It seems that the corporate media is running cover for Routh and trying to paint him as a sort of folk hero despite his attempt to assassinate Donald Trump — or perhaps because of it.