Category: Donald Trump

‘I Wouldn’t Call Him Crazy’

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Ryan Wesley Routh

The headline quote comes via the London Telegraph:

Chris Lutz, a humanitarian aid worker in Kyiv, told the BBC that Routh was known locally as a “recruitment cheerleader” but had no rights or powers to recruit for Ukraine’s international legion.
“I wouldn’t call him crazy. He was just hyper-focused. He was trying his best to help Ukraine. But it was getting to an unhealthy level,” Mr Lutz said.
“He asked me for advice on how to get Afghans into Ukraine. However, I had no experience of the Ukrainian legal system, so I declined the request. When he said he could bring over thousands of Afghan fighters, I started to get suspicious.”

Well, maybe you wouldn’t call him crazy, but I would. The guy who tried to assassinate Donald Trump was a middle-age misfit with an extensive criminal history who, in 2022, became so obsessed with the war in Ukraine that he went to Kyiv and bothered the locals with a lot of wild talk about recruiting Afghans to fight against Russia:

A former volunteer for Ukraine’s International Legion has branded Ryan Wesley Routh, the suspect in a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump, as “delusional” and a “liar” over his claims that he recruited for the Ukrainian organization.
Routh, 58, is in custody after an attempt was made on the life of Trump, 78, at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where shots were fired on Sunday.
Trump survived “what appears to be an assassination attempt” the FBI said. The former president was “safe following gunshots in his vicinity” at his golf club, the Trump campaign said. . . .
The suspected gunman claimed in a June 2022 interview with Newsweek Romania that he recruited volunteers for the International Legion Defense of Ukraine, a unit of Ukraine’s Ground Forces.
He also spoke with The New York Times in 2023, claiming to have attempted to recruit Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban to the Ukrainian army. …
But the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine said in a statement that Routh, a former construction worker from Greensboro, North Carolina, had “never been part of, associated with, or linked” to it “in any capacity.”
Evelyn Aschenbrenner, a U.S. citizen from Detroit, Michigan, who worked with the International Legion beginning in March 2022—first in administration, and then as a recruiter—for a total of two years, also told Newsweek on Monday from Kyiv that they had been in contact with Routh since 2022, and that he is “delusional and a liar.”
Aschenbrenner, who left the International Legion in mid-June of this year, had warned on social media since June that Routh is “not, and never has been, associated with the International Legion or the Ukrainian Armed Forces at all.”
Routh messaged Aschenbrenner between March 2022 and March 2024, sending details of potential recruits, including a list of some 6,000 Afghani citizens. He would then become “hostile” and “manipulative” when told to refrain from doing so.
“He said, ‘Oh you don’t really want to help Ukraine’. He was very emotionally, like, twisting like that, where if you refused to help or pushed back against him, he was very accusatory. He never listened to anything that I said, he didn’t register,” Aschenbrenner said.
“He sent me a PDF of, like, 6,000 Afghani citizens. They can’t legally enter Europe. He was combative. He was argumentative. He refused repeatedly to understand basic army policy,” Aschenbrenner said.
An encounter with Routh on August 24, 2022, Ukraine’s independence day, is when Aschenbrenner “first really realized [Routh] was not firing with all pistons up there.”
“There was an increased security alert [due to] strikes from Russia, and because of that, there was curfew. I think it was 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. in Kharkiv, and [he wanted] to get a foreign person over the border to join Legion. And I’m like, not today, dude,” Aschenbrenner said.
“I do think he seemed to be a little delusional, I don’t think he thought he was a real recruiter, but I thought he really he believed that he was helping Ukraine, and he was the only one who could help Ukraine doing what he did.”
Aschenbrenner was angered when Routh in February 2023 posted their personal details online, promising individuals the chance to fight in Ukraine.
“[He] started giving out my phone number, another person’s phone number, and after getting phone calls from soldiers from Uganda…I had several arguments with him on Signal to say, this is not a service that anyone wants or needs.”
“I don’t know if he’s ever been in Ukraine, but he seemed to have this…like he was the only one who could help save Ukraine — if you didn’t do exactly what he wanted when he wanted, somehow you were helping Russia win. I was like, that’s dramatic,” Aschenbrenner said.
Aschenbrenner added: “There seems to be a lot going on. There was delusions of grandeur and [he was] very disconnected from reality.”

Routh was bonkers, berserk, daft, demented, deranged, wacky, off his rocker, non compos mentis, nuttier than squirrel farts, a few fries short of a Happy Meal and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Which is to say, he was a typical Joe Biden voter. “Stochastic terrorism,” they call it, when hateful rhetoric is used to incite crazy people to violence. Somehow, the media have decided that Trump is to blame because (a) the media are utterly lacking in self-awareness and (b) they blame Trump for everything.

Of the many strange aspects of Ryan Routh’s history, none is stranger than this: In 2002, Routh barricaded himself inside a roofing business and had a three-hour armed standoff with police in Guilford County, North Carolina. Routh was charged with possession of a fully automatic machine gun in connection with that incident and yet, for some reason, received only probation. What the hell is going on in Guilford County? If you can’t send somebody to prison for that, exactly what can you imprison them for? Instead you turn him loose and, two decades later, he tries to assassinate a former president because . . . Ukraine?

Must I repeat myself? Crazy People Are Dangerous.



 

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Trump: I Won, No More Debates

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This is a bold move, and can only be explained by Duane Patterson’s question: “If Kamala Won the Debate, Why Is Trump Gaining Ground?” Counter-intuitive as it may seem — because Trump had a lousy debate performance — it appears that many undecided voters moved in favor of Trump as a result. Or, to put it another way, these voters didn’t see from Kamala Harris whatever it was they had needed to see in order to vote for her. If you have ever actually talked to a “swing” voter, you know that they are, shall we say, idiosyncratic. So while it may seem inexplicable how Trump could have “won” that debate, in terms of persuading undecided voters, we’ll find out on November 5 — or in the wee hours of the morning of November 6 — whether Trump’s hunch is right. Obviously, he thinks he’s got this thing in the bag. His gut tells him that most people don’t want to vote for Kamala, no more than they wanted to vote for Hillary. For the sake of America, let’s hope he’s right.



 

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Yes, Kamala ‘Won’ That Debate (and Why It Probably Won’t Matter in November)

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If any of your Democrat friends try to provoke you into an argument about who won Tuesday night’s debate, avoid the provocation by agreeing that Kamala “won,” and end the conversation immediately.

“Never smarten up a chump” — don’t let them in on the secret that Harris’s debate “victory” is unlikely to make any difference.

This is why Democrats were caught by surprise in 2016. They were paying attention to the media and didn’t understand that Trump voters were not deterred by any of his scandals or “gaffes.” This was a mistake that I myself made. After the “Access Hollywood” tapes went public, I declared in early October 2016 that there was no way Trump could win — how could anyone survive that? On Election Day, I went out and voted for Trump, then came home to watch the results on TV and was amazed to see state after state turn red on the map. Incredible!

Was any voter really undecided before Tuesday? I suppose that all the regular readers here had made up their mind to vote for Trump long ago. Your choice was not in the least changed, was it? Ditto all the Harris voters — they were never going to be persuaded to vote for Trump, no matter what. They’d vote for a turnip if it had a “D” next to it. Who were the “undecided” voters, and why were they undecided? I have trouble imagining such people exist, and can’t begin to explain the motives for their indecision. But if they were leaning toward voting for Trump, why would they change their minds simply because he was extra-Trumpish during the debate? The man is a known quantity, for good or ill.

Like a lot of other Trump voters, I was disappointed by his performance, but not really surprised, and certainly was not persuaded to vote for Kamala. I am against the Democratic Party, period, and my chief regret is that not every one of the 74,000,000 Trump voters are as staunchly anti-Democrat as I am. I voted for Trump despite Trump being Trump, and will do it again, and am therefore not an accurate bellwether of how an “undecided” voter might react to Trump being Trump.

My point is that I don’t think any Trump supporter should feel discouraged about the election because of Tuesday’s debate. If you have liberal friends who are whooping it up in celebration, the thing to do is to pretend you don’t notice. Don’t start any arguments, and don’t let yourself be baited into any arguments. Democrats are going to be Democrats, and why waste time arguing with fools?

Here’s Reagan Reese reporting at the Daily Caller:

Former President Donald Trump came out hot during his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, while ABC’s moderators fact-checked just one side of the stage.
Trump and Harris met for the first time in their political careers on ABC News’s debate stage in a 90 minute contest that featured no live audience, muted mics and moderators that left many conservative viewers frustrated. As ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis continuously corrected Trump and left Harris un-checked, the vice president baited the former president into fiery moments by teasing him about rally crowd size and his 2020 loss. . . .
Though Harris dodged questions on her numerous policy flip-flops and whether Americans are better off under her administration than Trump’s, pundits and media personalities suggested that the vice president presented herself better than her opponent. A CNN flash poll of debate watchers found that 63% said Harris had won the debate, compared to 37% for Trump. The same sample of individuals said pre-debate they were split 50-50 on who they expected to win.
Her campaign apparently thought so too, because minutes after the forum ended, they began calling for a second debate in October.
Trump, meanwhile, was noticeably louder and more aggressive than in his debate against President Joe Biden, where the Republican nominee largely stood quietly by while his opponent imploded.
“She conveyed the calm. Did she answer all the questions about the switches? No. But I thought he would’ve raised that,” former congressman Harold Ford said in Fox News’ post show.
“She came out ahead of him in my opinion, no doubt,” Brit Hume, Fox News political analyst, responded to Ford. “She was calm, she was prepared.”

So there’s the “objective” take, such as it is.



 

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Debate Night: America in the Balance

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The first presidential debate this year was such a huge Trump victory that Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid a few weeks later, resulting in Kamala Harris being anointed as the Democrat nominee. What are the chances that Kamala Harris will do better than Joe did against Trump? We’ll see. Feel free to use the comments as a sort of open thread. While I don’t expect to live-blog the debate, I will try to throw some new stuff in periodically. Maybe the topic of Haitians eating cats will come up.

UPDATE 9:13 p.m. ET: So what they decided to do was, first, ask Kamala about the Biden economic agenda. She doesn’t say anything in defense of Bidenomics, but instead talks about what various things she’s promising to do if elected. Then it’s Trump’s turn, and then they just keep going back and forth — Harris, Trump, Harris, Trump. I don’t know who’s winning this, but it’s annoying the hell out of me.

UPDATE 9:21 p.m. ET: One-liner of the night: “Run, Spot, run!”

UPDATE 10:09 p.m. ET: Wow, this is an awful, awful TV show. I suppose Kamala Harris’s supporters think she’s winning, while Trump has to not only debate his opponent, but also the ABC “moderators” who (a) keep telling lies while “fact-checking” him, and (b) never fact-check any of Kamala’s lies. Trump supporters are probably unhappy, but I don’t imagine they think their guy is losing. Probably the net impact of this whole thing is a wash, but my hunch is that a lot of viewers just tuned out after 30 or 45 minutes of squabbling.

UPDATE 10:28 p.m. ET: Folks, I’ve had as much of this as I can stand. Maybe tomorrow, after three or four cups of coffee, I’ll do a roundup of post-debate reaction, but I’m heading to bed now. Good night!



 

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RFK Jr. Endorses Trump

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This happened while I was on the road — my wife and I are carrying our youngest daughter back to college this weekend — and the two main points to be emphasized are these:

  • First, this changes the conversation. The Sunday shows, which would have been all about Kamala’s “joyful” convention, will now be focused on how Kennedy’s endorsement affects the race.
  • Second, it’s easily worth a net two points to Trump. For the past few weeks, polls have shown RFK Jr. somewhere in the neighborhood of 5%, and if half of Kennedy’s supporters switch to Trump, that will boost Trump by two points. Considering that the Real Clear Politics average has Harris +1.5, the race is now reset at a dead heat, or perhaps with Trump leading by a point or so nationally. The effect in the various “battleground” states may be somewhat less noticeable, but still this is a clear boost for Trump’s overall chances of winning.

Ace of Spades transcribed much of the announcement. After Kamala’s nothing-burger convention, which alternated between defaming Trump and celebrating the “joy” of Democrats, the endorsement by RFK Jr. will help focus public attention on the anti-democratic tendencies of the 21st-century Democratic Party. It’s the exact kind of shift Trump needed, at the exact time he needed it most. Smells like . . . #winning.



 

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Trump Derangement Syndrome and the Media’s ‘Misinformation’ Obsession

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Have you forgotten? In case you don’t remember how traumatized liberals were by Donald Trump winning the 2016 election, you can click here for an ABC News video of Hillary Clinton’s supporters, gathered for a planned victory celebration at the Javits Center in New York, crying on the evening of November 8, 2016. It was a beautiful sight.

Insofar as Democrats were not already crazy — because anyone who votes Democrat cannot be entirely sane — the trauma of the 2016 election drove them completely bonkers and they’ve never recovered. It was on the night of November 8, 2016, apparently, that Team Hillary settled on their excuse for defeat: “RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!”

Hillary Clinton herself accused Russia of “interfering” in the election: “This is not just an attack on me and my campaign, although that may have added fuel to it. This is an attack against our country. We are well beyond normal political concerns here. This is about the integrity of our democracy and the security of our nation.” But who was actually threatening “the integrity of our democracy”? In July 2016, while the campaign was still going, the FBI began spying on the Trump campaign in “Operation Crossfire Hurricane.” The origin, justification and legality of this project, led by the notorious Peter Strzok, have all been extensively scrutinized. The investigation began after (but was not necessarily caused by) the alleged hacking of Democratic National Committee emails. The official justification for the investigation had to do with conversations between Trump policy adviser George Papadopoulos and an obscure academic named Joseph Mifsud, which Mifsud subsequently relayed to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer. This gossip then got mixed in with spurious allegations from the infamous “Steele dossier” to create the myth of “collusion” between Russia and the Trump campaign which, after Trump’s 2016 victory, became the basis of phantasmagoric delusions on the part of Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself).

All the insanity since November 2016, you must understand, can be traced to two simple facts: Trump won and Hillary lost, and these facts were never accepted by Democrats, least of all Hillary herself. To this day, we’re still dealing with the consequences of the resulting delusion — Trump Derangment Syndrome — and one symptomatic manifestation is the media’s obsession with “misinformation.”

Ed Driscoll on Wednesday called attention to this item:

During a White House press briefing [Monday], the Washington Post’s Cleve Wootson asked if the government has a “role” in tackling “misinformation” and if President Joe Biden planned to “intervene” in Trump’s X Space.

An alleged journalist demanding that the federal government “intervene” to prevent the Republican candidate from speaking publicly? You see how this connects back to the 2016 campaign, because Russian “interference” in the election was alleged to include “misinformation” spread by social media — how else to explain why Hillary Clinton lost? Democrats believed Trump could not have won the election legitimately, and from this certainty arose their vigilance against “misinformation.”

All of this is preamble to the question I found myself asking Saturday: “Why did so many people hate Susan Wojcicki?”

The text message came from a friend: “Vaccine induced turbo cancer?” It included a link to the notice that former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki was dead.
What did this message mean? Quick research determined that the cause of Wojcicki’s death at age 56 was lung cancer, which her husband said was first diagnosed in 2022:

Wojcicki – who was one of the most prominent women in Silicon Valley – had been involved with YouTube’s parent company Google from its earliest days, when its two founders worked out of her garage in California to build a search engine. …
Wojcicki had served as YouTube’s CEO for nine years before announcing last year in a blog post that she would be “stepping back” from her leadership role to focus on her family, health and personal projects that she was passionate about, CNN previously reported.
She oversaw YouTube during the web’s pivotal transition toward social media, but also as online platforms came under increasing scrutiny for spreading misinformation, hate speech and other harmful content.
“I’m so proud of everything we’ve achieved,” Wojcicki wrote when announcing she was stepping down in 2023. “It’s been exhilarating, meaningful, and all-consuming.”

The ancient Latin adage, De mortuis nil nisi bonum (“Speak no ill of the dead”) is wise advice, but anyone who searched social media for Susan Wojcicki’s name on Saturday morning could discover how widely disregarded this advice was in her case. Many thousands of people were expressing their happiness that Wojcicki was dead, as she had been identified as “Censorship Voldermort” for her suppression of dissenting viewpoints on YouTube, especially in regard to the COVID-19 pandemic. . . .

You can read the rest of my latest Substack post and, while you’re at it, please sign up for a free subscription. Thanks.



 

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Mystified Why Trump Keeps Criticizing Georgia Republicans? Here’s the Answer

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Was the 2020 election stolen? That’s a yes or no question.

Were I called to testify under oath, I’d have to answer yes.

I’ve talked to friends in Georgia who tell stories of “ballot harvesting” there, and this is completely apart from the arguably unconstitutional rule change that allowed universal vote-by-mail in my native state. (The Constitution gives state legislatures the authority to establish election procedures. The Georgia legislature never changed the law; instead, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger implemented universal vote-by-mail on his own authority, without legislative approval.) We know for a fact that Mark Zuckerberg poured millions into Georgia election activism, specifically in the metro Atlanta area — Clayton, DeKalb, Douglas, Fulton and Gwinnett counties — and every Republican who watched the way the official results were reported on Election Night said, “Shenanigans!”

So, yes, I sincerely believe Democrats stole the 2020 election, but that doesn’t make me a “conspiracy theorist,” because I don’t claim to have any detailed proof of how Democrats stole the election. There are people who do make such claims, however, and I have neither the time nor interest to investigate their claims. The media is quick to label any such claim as having been “debunked,” and I don’t care to investigate the alleged “debunking,” either, since it’s neither here nor there in terms of my own general belief about Democratic shenanigans in 2020.

While I have the luxury of being agnostic toward any specific detailed claims regarding 2020 election fraud, others are less fortunate. You see, the whole “J6 insurrection” controversy, including the federal prosecution of Capitol riot participants, as well as legal proceedings against Trump and his allies, are premised on two basic propositions: (a) that the 2020 election was entirely legitimate, and (b) that no reasonable person could believe otherwise. Whereas Trump’s supporters claim they were victims of a political crime, the prosecution of Trump’s supporters portrays them as perpetrators of such a crime, and it is crucial to the defense of anyone so accused to establish that they were acting on a sincere belief that the 2020 election was stolen.

All of this is necessary to understanding why, in his Atlanta rally Saturday, “Trump assailed [Gov. Brian] Kemp in a roughly 10-minute tirade,” as the Associated Press described it. Kemp denies that there is any reason to doubt Joe Biden won Georgia four years ago, and in doing so, effectively sides with Fani Willis in her argument that Trump and his allies were guilty of a crime in trying to prevent certification of that alleged Democratic victory. Some of my conservative friends are perplexed by Trump’s public criticisms of Kemp (and Raffensperger), and certainly it can be argued that airing such intra-party conflicts in the late stages of a crucial election campaign is, uh . . . less than optimal, strategically speaking. (I’m sure my friend Dianna Deeley in Valdosta can speak of less-than-optimal intra-party conflicts locally.)

Those of us who can afford to be agnostic about the specifics of election fraud in 2020 may be tempted to cast aspersions on those who are not so fortunately situated: Why are they so obsessed with this topic? Well, if a prosecutor was trying to put you in prison, you might be “obsessed,” too. And it’s not just Trump. His former spokeswoman and longtime “War Room” contributor Liz Harrington called attention to the ongoing battle between Trump’s supporters and the Georgia Election Board.

You can read the entire complaint, alleging “under the penalty of perjury that the evidence and records are conclusive — Fulton County’s 2020 General Election Recount was intentionally and fraudulently manipulated.” As I say, I don’t have any interest in such details — my eyes glaze over — but then again, no one is trying to put me in prison for my beliefs about election shenanigans. At least not yet, but if Democrats steal the next election, too, maybe we’ll all get locked up. Then we’ll have plenty of time, sitting in jail awaiting trial, to be “obsessed” about it.



 

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Donald Trump Had an Agreement to Debate Joe Biden, Not to Debate ‘Whoever Democrats Pick to Replace Joe Biden’

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Hey, remember when it was a “right-wing conspiracy theory” if you thought Democrats were going to pull a Torricelli-Lautenberg switch and run some other presidential candidate instead of Joe Biden?

Republicans float a quiet conspiracy theory
that Biden won’t be on the ballot
— NBC News, Oct. 26, 2023

Get Used to It: Biden Isn’t Going Anywhere
— Politico, Feb. 13, 2024

It’s time to end the conspiracy theories
about Biden being replaced as a candidate
— Washington Examiner, May 16, 2024

It’s important not to forget this recent history, which is being memory-holed by the same media voices who told you that you were crazy for thinking Democrats would do what, in fact, they have now done.

And why did Democrats dump Biden? Because the befuddled incumbent got his ass kicked in an early debate that Team Biden demanded. Remember that ridiculous “make my day” video from Joe?

So what happened? Many people were surprised when Trump immediately accepted the debates (first on CNN, then on ABC) with rules dictated by Team Biden. Lots of us right-wingers thought this was a bad idea. CNN was blatantly in the tank for Biden, but Trump didn’t seem to care. With the benefit of hindsight, we now see that Trump was smarter than all of us — he knew Biden couldn’t handle a debate, no matter how in-the-tank the moderators might be. (To be more anti-Trump than Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, you’d have to be Thomas Crooks).

Biden’s cognitively impaired performance in the June 27 debate proved to be a fatal wound to his reelection campaign, and Joe announced he was quitting 24 days later, designating Kamala Harris as his chosen replacement. This was ratified by a “virtual roll call” of DNC delegates — because thus does Our Democracy™ proceed — and Team Biden was thereby magically transformed into Team Harris. Despite the utterly unprecedented nature of this process, Team Harris seemed to assume that Trump was obligated to debate Harris under the same agreement he’d made when Biden was the candidate. Why? How is it that Democrats think they can pull such shenanigans and never experience any negative consequences as a result? Now Trump is playing hardball.

Trump offers to debate Sept. 4 on Fox in front of a live audience in Pennsylvania, and Team Harris perversely claims Trump is breaching his prior agreement with ABC when, in fact, it is Democrats who have rendered that agreement void by switching candidates.

And you know something? Harris needs the debate more than Trump does. He is a known commodity, with a solid grassroots base, so why should he do her any favors? It was one thing, when Biden was an incumbent seeking reelection, and Trump needed to counter the weight of the “bully pulpit.” But Kamala Harris? What has she got?

Recall that Trump did not deign to debate the Republican rivals who challenged him for the nomination. He let them debate amongst themselves, then beat them all in the primaries, without much effort. It may seem crazy to think that Trump has made a similar calculation about Harris, but his previous hunch proved accurate, didn’t it?

So, Trump decides that having no debate at all would be better than debating on ABC, and makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer for the Fox debate. And what if Team Harris says “no”? Fine with me, says Trump, and then turns all her complaints into an opportunity to talk about the shenanigans by which Democrats switched candidates.

“It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off.”



 

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