Donald Trump assassination attempt live updates: New details reveal how long Ryan Wesley Routh hid in golf course bushes

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Wesley Ryan Routh was perched outside of Donald Trump’s golf course for nearly 12 hours on Sunday before Secret Service shot at him.

Charging documents released on Monday reveal that the 58-year-old’s cellphone was tracked in the wooded around around the course starting at 1:59 a.m. on Sunday through 1:31 p.m. – when he was see fleeing the scene.

This new information suggests that Routh was staking out the location and somehow had advance knowledge that the former president would be golfing there on Sunday.

By Sarah Ewall-Wice, Senior U.S. Political Reporter:

President Biden departing the White House commented on the second assassination attempt made on Donald Trump.

Before departing on Marine One, Biden said ‘thank god the president is ok.’

He also said the one thing he wants to make clear is ‘the Secret Service needs more help’ and he thinks ‘Congress should respond to their needs.’

Biden said the Secret Service is deciding whether they need more personnel.

The comments were Biden’s first public remarks on the shooting.

In a statement on Sunday, the president commended the work of the Secret Service and law enforcement and said he was ‘relieved that the former President is unharmed.’

‘As I have said many times, there is no place for political violence or for any violence ever in our country,’ Biden continued in his statement.

Martin County Sheriff Will Snyder floated the possibility of a ‘conspiracy’ to try to assassinate Donald Trump, after describing in a press conference how authorities apprehended Ryan Wesley Routh.

His statement, which did not identify any people thought to be a potential accomplice, comes after neighbors called Routh ‘a little cookoo.’

‘How does a guy from not here get all the way to Trump International, realize that the president, former president of the United States, is golfing and is able to get a rifle in that vicinity? I think that’s a question the FBI and Secret Service are laser focused on today,’ he said.

‘Is this guy part of a conspiracy? Is he a lone gunman,’ Snyder asked.

‘If he’s a lone gunman, President Trump is that much safer. But if he’s part of a conspiracy then this whole thing takes on really an ominous tone,’ he added.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reiterated that his state’s investigation into Trump’s attempted assassination attempt Sunday during a morning press conference.

He also revealed that he has not talked to Trump yet.

I understand that the feds are involved but we do believe that there were multiple violations of state law. We also believe that there’s a need to make sure that the truth about all this comes out in a way, you know, that’s credible.

I mean I look at the federal government, with all due respect to them, those same agencies that are prosecuting Trump in that jurisdiction are now going to be investigating this?

By Nikki Schwab, Chief Campaign Correspondent in Washington, D.C.:

President Joe Biden is expected to host the creators and cast of The West Wing Friday for an event marking the show’s 25th anniversary.

Deadline first reported on the event, which will come after cast members reunited onstage Sunday night at the Emmys.

Last month, Biden hosted actor Martin Sheen, who played President Jed Bartlet, to the White House, as well as actresses Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack, who just penned a book about working on the series.

Actor Bradley Whitford, who played White House aide Josh Lyman, will miss the White House event due to shooting another political series about President James Garfield, Deadline said.

Former President Donald Trump directly blamed President Biden and Kamala Harris’ ‘rhetoric’ for a second failed assassination attempt.

The ex-president spoke with Fox News Digital on Monday, a day after the close attempt on his life at his golf course in Palm Beach, Florida.

He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it, Trump said of the gunman.

Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country — both from the inside and out.

The GOP presidential nominee pointed to Democrats’ comments accusing him of being a ‘threat to democracy.’

He accused his political opponents of wanting to ‘destroy our country.’

It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat,’ Trump said.

Former President Donald Trump posted to Truth Social ‘FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT’ after the failed assassination attempt.

It is what he said after the first assassination attempt in Butler, PA in July.

The former president included in his post a link to his website to raise money.

Ryan Wesley Routh, the man named as the suspect in a possible assassination attempt at Donald Trump’s Florida golf club, urged Iran to kill the former president in a book he self-published last year.

In ‘Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,’ he said he had made a terrible mistake in once voting for Trump, whom he described as a ‘buffoon.’

‘I must take part of the blame for the retarded child we elected for our next president that ended up being brainless, but I am man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake and Iran I apologize,’ he said, after berating the former president for abandoning the nuclear deal with Tehran.

‘You are free to assassinate Trump as well as me for that error in judgment and the dismantling of the deal.

The e-book is still available on Amazon for $2.99.

Charlie Spiering, Senior Political Reporter

Vice President Kamala Harris does not appear to be breaking stride on the campaign trail after the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump on Sunday.

Harris made the following post on social media on Monday, urging supporters to get back to work to elect her president.

’50 days,’ the account read, posting a picture of Harris and her running mate Gov. Tim Walz going onstage at a campaign rally. ‘Let’s make every moment count.’

It’s unclear whether we will hear from Harris on Monday.

The vice president has a scheduled meeting with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters on Monday afternoon, as she seeks their endorsement, but the event is closed to the press.

On Sunday, Harris condemned the attempt on Trump’s life and ‘political violence.’

‘We all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more to violence,’ she added, noting she was ‘thankful’ that Trump was safe.

Kamala Harris may be 2.5 points ahead in the national polls in the race against Donald Trump, but averaging out the polls in seven key battleground states shows her barely beating the ex-president.

CNN crunched the numbers and found her up just 0.3 points in the battlegrounds.

That gives her a 70 percent chance of winning the popular vote but only a 50 percent chance of winning the Electoral Cllege and the presidency with 50 days to go.

Moscow is never slow to spot an opportunity to make mischief in American politics, and on Monday the Kremlin played up Ryan Routh’s links to the war in Ukraine and said it showed the consequences of ‘playing with fire.’

Routh had been interviewed by multiple news organizations about a harebrained scheme to fly former Afghan soldiers to Ukraine to fight against Russia.

But he had no military experience and no real idea how to secure the travel permits and passports needed.

Asked about what the FBI called an apparent assassination attempt on Trump, Reuters reported that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said:

It is not us who should be thinking, it is the U.S. intelligence services who should be thinking. In any case, playing with fire has its consequences

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday revealed some of his private interactions with Donald Trump just moments after a gunman aimed a high-powered rifle at the former president while he was golfing on his Florida golf course.

Johnson, who was en route to Mar-a-Lago at the time agents opened fire and posted a photo with Trump after the stunning assassination attempt, said he and wife Kelly spoke with Trump about what he called ‘Providence’ and Trump’s life being spared.

‘He was in very good spirits, as you might suspect, that’s who he is. He is so resilient and really grateful to see him,’ Johnson said.

‘There is no leader in the history of America that has been so attacked and remained so strong and so resilient,’ Johnson told Fox News Monday morning. ‘He is one of a kind. Is he not going to stop fighting for the American people. It was really encouraging for us to sit and visit with him right after that happened.’

The son of Ryan Wesley Routh, the man named as the suspect in a possible assassination attempt near Donald Trump‘s Florida golf club on Sunday, has said his father is not a violent person and did not even believe him to own a gun.

Routh’s son, Oran Routh, reached by DailyMail.com shortly after Sunday’s shooting, said this was the first he’d heard of the alleged assassination attempt.

‘This was the first I heard about it,’ the 35-year-old exclusively told DailyMail.com. ‘Was my father shot or injured?’

He said his father hates Trump as ‘every reasonable person does.

‘I don’t like Trump either,’ the son added.

But he said his dad is not a violent person and couldn’t believe his father would target the president.

An MSNBC analyst has suggested Donald Trump stop playing golf after a suspected second assassination attempt in less than two months.

The would-be assassin allegedly pointed a AK-47 at the former president while he was on the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach on Sunday afternoon.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe will conduct a walkthrough on Monday of Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach.

He will remaining in Florida ‘indefinitely,’ according to a spokesperson for the agency.

Rowe traveled to West Palm Beach, Florida after the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump in just two months.

The acting director has briefings with USSS team on Monday morning and will also meeting with local law enforcement partners that responded to the incident on Sunday.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is directing state-level authorities to conduct an investigation into the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

The incident took place on Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida on Sunday.

Trump’s former GOP primary rival wrote on X:

The people deserve the truth about the would be assassin and how he was able to get within 500 yards of the former president and current GOP nominee.

It is one of the several ensuing probes into the events on Sunday that saw a suspect with an AK-47 rifle, GoPro Camera and bulletproof body armor get in the bushlines of Trump’s course while he was golfing.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

As multiple investigations open into the second assassination bid on Donald Trump’s life in just two months, one major question is lingering: How did the shooter know the former president was playing golf?

It’s not shocking that Trump, an avid golfer, was on his course in West Palm Beach, Florida on Sunday.

But it has raised eyebrows that the gunman knew the time and place where the Republican 2024 presidential nominee would be.

Law enforcement have suspect Wesley Ryan Routh, 58, in custody after he fled the scene when a Secret Service agent opened fire when they spotted the barrel of his AK-47 style rifle poking out of the shrubbery of Trump International Golf Club on Sunday.

Some analysts note it’s obvious when Trump is present at his golf club, which is only five miles from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach. The president will travel to the course via motorcade and security presence is massively ramped up when he is on site.

Routh moved from North Carolina to Hawaii a few years ago and is a construction worker.

It’s unclear how long Routh was in Florida before he went to Trump’s golf course with a rifle, backpack, GoPro camera and bulletproof ceramic-layered body armor – all left behind at the scene when he fled from the security detail’s gunfire.

A truck in the driveway of Routh’s home in Hawaii has a Biden-Harris bumper sticker