It's been just over a week since there was a second assassination attempt against former and potentially future President Donald Trump. As Townhall has been covering, plenty has been happening in those few days, especially since the suspected would-be-assassin, Ryan Wesley Routh, was caught alive, has faced firearm charges, and is expected to face more serious ones. Something of a stunning update happened on Monday, with the Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) deciding to release Routh's letter.
Leah covered the release of such a letter at the time when it was released on Monday morning. Such a letter made it abundantly clear that this was an assassination attempt, spelling it out. Perhaps now mainstream media outlets who were referring to the events of September 15 as being a "possible" or "apparent" assassination attempt will finally have reason enough to stop doing so?
The release of the letter was a trending topic over X for Monday, with many people outraged that releasing the letter could incite more violence against Trump. Routh's alleged letter not only apologized for not being able to take out Trump, but also offered a $150,000 bounty for someone who could. It's also worth reminding of the issues to release the manifesto of Audrey Hale, a woman who claimed to be a "transgender man," went on a shooting rampage at The Covenant School in Nashville, a private Christian school, in 2023. She murdered six people, including three children.
Among those outraged about the release of Routh's letter included former Attorney General Bill Barr, who served in such a role during the Trump and George H.W. Bush administrations.
As a Fox News report mentioned:
EXCLUSIVE - Former Attorney General William Barr says he is "dumbfounded" that the Justice Department released a chilling letter penned by would-be assassin Ryan Wesley Routh on Monday, calling the decision "rash" and serving no purpose "other than to risk inciting further violence."
Routh is the suspect in former President Donald Trump's second foiled assassination attempt. The DOJ obtained the letter from a witness who says they received it inside a box delivered to them by Routh several months prior to the assassination attempt.
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"I was dumbfounded that the DOJ made public this morning the contents of the letter that, Ryan Routh, left with an acquaintance prior to the attempted assassination of former President Trump," Barr said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
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Barr, who served during both the Trump and George H. W. Bush administrations, says that "DOJ had more than enough evidence to have Routh detained pending trial, without publicizing these details."
"Even if DOJ thought it important to provide the letter to the court, it could have redacted inflammatory material or arranged to have the letter submitted under seal. It was rash to put out this letter in the midst of an election during which two attempts on the life of President Trump had been made," Barr said.
"It served no purpose other than to risk inciting further violence," he added.
As Nicholas Fondacaro at NewsBusters covered, CNN reported on the letter on air, including the $150,000 bounty. The network even shared the letter on the screen during the noon hour of "Inside Politics." In commenting on the letter that they had just decided to show on the screen, host Dana Bash threw in an unhelpfully obvious line of "boy, is that chilling."
Meanwhile, on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports," they decided to not show the letter. "There’s a call to action and other things in the letter, which we're not going to share because there so no reason to encourage any sort of potential violence, Andrea, but that's at least the focus on this letter," Tom Winter shared.
MSNBC has made some noteworthy decisions following the assassination attempts against Trump. Not only did they not share the letter in this most recent incident, but the network decided not to air "Morning Joe" on July 15, the Monday after the first attempt on Trump's life, when he was actually struck in the ear.
Then again, the network's hosts and guests do frequently speak out against the Republican nominee, with Larry touching upon this in his Tuesday episode. Noting that Routh's social media posts created a paper trail that "all point to, well, talking points that you would see everyday from MSNBC about why Donald Trump needs to be 'eliminated' or 'stopped at all costs,'" with Routh's narratives also "stealing MSNBC and Democrat Party talking points."
When it comes to the mainstream media coverage mentioned above, POLITICO's headline for their Monday Playbook PM was on "Chilling new details on the Trump assassination plot."
In mentioning Routh's letter, the Playbook PM mentions in part:
If true, the new details cast Routh’s motives as clearly political and ideological, unlike the murkier backstory for previous would-be assassin THOMAS CROOKS — though both share a sometimes erratic history and interest in violence. And they lend chilling new texture to the worst paroxysm of political violence to afflict the top echelons of American politics in decades.
As we covered at the time last week, POLITICO had a particularly shameful take in not only referring to Routh's alleged actions as a "possible assassination attempt," but put the focus on Republicans, with a headline detailing "Republicans outraged."
Then there's an Axios report also worth mentioning, with a headline from Sunday, a week after the second attempt, pointing out that "Trump holding far fewer rallies than in past runs." Amy Curtis at our sister site of Twitchy highlighted some of the best reactions of users reminding that people keep trying to shoot and kill Trump.
It turns out that Ryan Wesley Routh isn't the only disturbing individual in that family. As Larry also covered for Tuesday's episode, Oran Routh, the son of the suspected would-be assassin, has been arrested in North Carolina for federal sex crime charges. "Oran Routh" is also trending over X.
As Larry pointed out about the Routh family, "this story gets weirder, and weirder, and weirder." Showing coverage from ABC News, Larry pointed out that Oran Routh is allegedly involved in child pornography and "had hundreds of files of illicit photos of minors."
"And of course he probably wasn't even on anybody's radar or being investigated until his father attempt to assassinate President Trump, we think," Larry continued. He's been taken into custody for federal charges.
The search and find from Saturday wasn't even related to child pornography, however. "In other words, it was probably a search related to his father's arrest, right," Larry continued. "So, they're going to investigate all the people who are connected to his father, maybe there was some piece of evidence that connected his son to this plot, so they go and search the son's house, and then they find all of this child, uh, smut. That could be it, but it could be another reason this is coming out too," Larry offered.
Larry also reminded that we already know about Oran Routh because he shared with the Daily Mail less than 24-hours after his father's arrest that his father "hates Trump like all reasonable people." It turned out he wasn't the best "character witness," though, as Larry pointed out, with Oran trying to downplay his father's issues, and now also with the child pornography he's been reportedly found with.
Larry also blasted the media "in repeating this guy's denials," speaking about Oran's claims about his father, referring to stories about Oran as a "stupid distraction," and highlighting how Oran's claims, especially about how he said his father didn't own a gun, "nothing makes sense."
Later in the episode, Larry also addressed the letter as well, referring to it as "a debacle... that's being roundly criticized and condemned for basically buying into the would-be killer's manifesto to--to further amplify the fever swamp that wants to kill Donald Trump!"
"I think it stinks to high heaven," Larry emphasized, especially on the timing of all of the developments. "The story is strange, the story is weird, the story makes no sense, the story defies logic, and by the way the behavior of everybody involved, including the investigators, don't make any sense."
BREAKING: Trump Assassin's Son ARRESTED! Cardinal CALLS OUT KAMALA! | Larry Live! https://t.co/zfGVWAzxqx
— L A R R Y (@LarryOConnor) September 24, 2024