Category: Audio Posts: Selected Articles

In December, 1954, the United States Senate gathered for the purpose of censuring the junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy. During the preceding months, McCarthy, whose anti-Communist bromides had made him among the most feared and powerful figures in Congress, had suffered a calamitous decline in fortunes. He had been thoroughly humiliated in the nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings and endured lacerating criticism from the journalist Edward R. Murrow. The once potent brand of innuendo, fearmongering, and outright lying that brought the senator to prominence was now the central reason for his rebuke. The traditional narrative of McCarthy’s demise centers on the most visible and operatic moments, but there was also an underlying political logic that facilitated them. In 1950, when it was reported that McCarthy, a Republican, falsely claimed to have the names of two hundred and five Communists employed by the State Department, Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House. In 1954, when the Army-McCarthy hearings took place, Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate (narrowly) and the White House, under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was one thing to cast toxic conspiracies that made Democrats look bad, but quite another to spread falsehoods that made his own party look inept. In the end, twenty-two Republican senators voted in favor of censure.

Ever since Donald Trump emerged as a Presidential candidate, observers have compared him to McCarthy, not simply because of their demagogic commonalities and mutual ties to the attorney Roy Cohn but also for the hostile symbiosis they forged with the media outlets of their respective eras. The aftermath of last week’s midterm elections suggests an additional area of comparison: the narratives attached to their political declines. The G.O.P. has abided all manner of corrupt, dishonest, anti-democratic, and potentially illegal behavior from Trump, including his incitement of an armed insurrection against the United States Congress, but the lacklustre midterm performance of Republicans seems to suggest that, like McCarthy sixty-eight years ago, the former President has reached a point where his demagogy has become a liability for his own party.

Few are the demagogues noted for their superior emotional-regulation abilities, but even by that standard the reports that the former President Trump is alternately enraged and defensive over the results of the midterm elections are noteworthy. Not since his grudging exit from the White House in January, 2021, has he inspired such levels of Schadenfreude among his critics. This election—in which the Republicans picked up far fewer congressional seats than expected, the Senate remains in the hands of Democrats, and even those Trump-affiliated candidates who prevailed seemed to have done so against real political headwinds—is being read as a referendum on the dwindling viability of MAGA-style Republicanism, as well as on the former President’s prospects in 2024. Republicans are, tentatively, distancing themselves from the Trump brand, and media observers have noted the stream of criticism emanating from Rupert Murdoch-owned news properties. The cumulative effect of these developments is a barely concealed hope that the G.O.P. will jettison Trump like loose cargo on a storm-battered freighter, and that the most volatile and dangerous elements of American politics will sink along with him. But, for reasons that should be more than familiar to us by now, the path the MAGA movement takes toward irrelevance is likely not so simple—if, in fact, it is headed in that direction.

In the seven years since Trump took his ride down the gold-colored escalator in Trump Tower to declare his candidacy for President of the United States, the movement that coalesced around him has died a thousand deaths, only to climb out of its shallow grave before the first trowel of dirt hit the casket. The political landscape in front of Trump is different and far more formidable than it was even in 2016, when he was a political novice. Notable Presidents—Ulysses S. Grant and Eisenhower among them—had been elected without much political experience. But, in 2024, a prospective Trump would be attempting reëlection after having lost a Presidential election, a feat that only the Democrat Grover Cleveland achieved, in 1892, by defeating Benjamin Harrison, who was himself hobbled by divisions among Republicans. Moreover, in 2016, Trump sliced through a fairly unimpressive field of G.O.P. competitors in the primaries. This time, though, he could face a significant primary challenger, in the form of Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis. All this seemingly points to the diminished viability of one of the most disruptive political movements we’ve seen in modern American history. Yet it’s worth thinking about what exactly Trumpism is and how it came to be before penning another potentially premature eulogy on its behalf.

It would be easy at this point to saddle Trump with all the ills and the disastrous implications of what we’ve come to refer to as “Trumpism.” But the most significant parallel between Trump’s careers in business and in politics is his lack of standing as a creator. His talent lies not in organizational leadership or in shepherding a novel concept from its inception to a place of prominence but, rather, in marketing. Trump emerged as a political force in the middle of the first Black Presidency and adroitly played to racist and xenophobic fears that attended Barack Obama’s election. He lied prolifically about Obama’s birth certificate. In early 2011, Trump claimed to have people looking into the matter, “and they cannot believe what they’re finding.” As with Trump’s other canards, he never actually said what these people—if they existed at all—were finding.

It should be recalled, however, that Trump did not invent birtherism; he simply recognized the broader political potential of a ridiculous lie and ran with it. Similarly, the phenomenon known as “McCarthyism” had roots that preceded the 1946 election that sent McCarthy to the Senate. Notably, the House Un-American Activities Committee, chaired by Representative Martin Dies, Jr., the Democrat of Texas, was formed a full decade earlier, and its combative use of Red-baiting innuendo against the subjects of its inquiries provided a template for McCarthy’s approach. Yet the disparate elements of intolerance for dissent, including the suppression of First Amendment rights, and the broader currents of social paranoia might have remained just that but for McCarthy’s ability to synthesize them into a cohesive whole.

The persecution associated with anti-Communism survived McCarthy. It took a series of Supreme Court decisions in 1957 and 1958—most notably the Yates v. United States ruling, which overturned the convictions of several Communists prosecuted under the Smith Act—to curtail the most egregious excesses committed in the name of patriotism. Trump did not single-handedly inject the strains of intolerance, racism, nativism, belligerence, and a durable sympathy for anti-democratic behavior into the Republican Party, and there is no reason to believe that his absence would cause them to evaporate. Immigrants make up just under fourteen per cent of the population of the United States—almost triple their proportion in 1970. The age-old fears about racial and ethnic replacement that Trump so deftly manipulated in 2016 remain ambient. Moreover, the drive to curate the electorate via voter suppression has lost none of its resonance on the right. In fact, the razor-thin margins in last week’s elections point to the outsized effect that suppressing even a sliver of specific electorates can yield. And, paradoxically, the emerging audacity among right-wing media to criticize Trump points to how little has changed. Part of what has driven the Republican Party so far to the right has been the influence of these same conservative outlets, whose criticism can spark a primary challenge for Republicans deemed too moderate. They helped foster the environment in which Trumpism could not only emerge but thrive. If they play a role in undermining Trump, this serves to reinforce their role as the rudders of the G.O.P.

For critical observers, it has always been apparent that everything Trump offered the public came slathered in snake oil. That is either a statement about the willful blindness of the American public or a barometer of how many Americans view those dangerous liabilities as assets. In either case, the McCarthy example provides at least one other insight: fixating on the salesman misses the point. The problem is, and always has been, the size of the audience rushing to buy what he’s been selling. ♦

BEIRUT (AP) — Pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded near-simultaneously Tuesday in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least nine people, including an 8-year-old girl, and wounding several thousand, officials said. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for what appeared to be a sophisticated remote attack.

An American official said Israel briefed the United States on Tuesday after the conclusion of the operation, in which small amounts of explosive secreted in the pagers were detonated. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the information publicly.

The Israeli military declined to comment.

Among those wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon. The mysterious explosions came amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which have exchanged fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the war in Gaza.

The pagers that blew up were apparently acquired by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered members in February to stop using cellphones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand, but declined to say how long they had been in use.

Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said Wednesday that it authorized its brand on the AR-924 pagers used by the Hezbollah militant group, but the devices were produced and sold by a company called BAC.

At about 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, as people shopped for groceries, sat in cafes or drove cars and motorcycles in the afternoon traffic, the pagers in their hands or pockets started heating up and then exploding — leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicking bystanders.

It appeared that many of those hit were members of Hezbollah, but it was not immediately clear if non-Hezbollah members also carried any of the exploding pagers.

The blasts were mainly in areas where the group has a strong presence, particularly a southern Beirut suburb and in the Beqaa region of eastern Lebanon, as well as in Damascus, according to Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official. The Hezbollah official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

The explosions came hours after Israel’s internal security agency said it had foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to kill a former senior Israeli security official using a planted explosive device that could be remotely detonated.

The United States “was not aware of this incident in advance” and was not involved, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. “At this point, we’re gathering information.”

Experts said the pager explosions pointed to a long-planned operation, possibly carried out by infiltrating the supply chain and rigging the devices with explosives before they were delivered to Lebanon.

Whatever the means, it targeted an extraordinary breadth of people with hundreds of small explosions — wherever the pager carrier happened to be — that left some maimed.

One online video showed a man picking through produce at a grocery store when the bag he was carrying at his hip explodes, sending him sprawling to the ground and bystanders running.

At overwhelmed hospitals, wounded were rushed in on stretchers, some with missing hands, faces partly blown away or gaping holes at their hips and legs, according to AP photographers. On a main road in central Beirut, a car door was splattered with blood and the windshield cracked.

Lebanon Health Minister Firas Abiad told Qatar’s Al Jazeera network at least nine people were killed, including an 8-year-old girl, and some 2,750 were wounded — 200 of them critically — by the explosions. Most had injuries in the face, hand, or around the abdomen.

It appeared eight of the dead belonged to Hezbollah. The group issued a statement confirming at least two members were killed in the pager bombings. One of them was the son of a Hezbollah member in Parliament, according to the Hezbollah official who spoke anonymously. The group later issued announcements that six other members were killed Tuesday, though it did not specify how.

“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians,” Hezbollah said, adding that Israel will “for sure get its just punishment.”

Iranian state-run IRNA news agency said that the country’s ambassador, Mojtaba Amani, was superficially wounded by an exploding pager and was being treated at a hospital.

Previously, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had warned the group’s members not to carry cellphones, saying they could be used by Israel to track and target them.

Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordnance disposal expert, said videos of the blasts suggested a small explosive charge — as small as a pencil eraser — had been placed into the devices. They would have had to have been rigged prior to delivery, very likely by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, he said.

Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based senior political risk analyst, said he spoke with Hezbollah members who had examined pagers that failed to explode. What triggered the blasts, he said, appeared to be an error message sent to all the devices that caused them to vibrate, forcing the user to click on the buttons to stop the vibration. The combination detonated a small amount of explosives hidden inside and ensured that the user was present when the blast went off, he said.

Israel has a long history of carrying out deadly operations well beyond its borders. This year, separate Israeli airstrikes in Beirut killed senior Hamas official Saleh Arouri and a top Hezbollah commander. A mysterious explosion in Iran, also blamed on Israel, killed Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ supreme leader.

Israel has killed Hamas militants in the past with booby-trapped cellphones and it’s widely believed to have been behind the Stuxnet computer virus attack on Iran’s nuclear program in 2010.

The pager bombings are likely to stoke Hezbollah’s worries about vulnerabilities in security and communications as Israeli officials are threaten to escalate their monthslong conflict. The near-daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah have killed hundreds in Lebanon and several dozen in Israel, and have displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border.

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon, deplored the attack and warned that it marks “an extremely concerning escalation in what is an already unacceptably volatile context.”

On Tuesday, Israel said that halting Hezbollah’s attacks in the north to allow residents to return to their homes is now an official war goal. Israeli Defense Minister Gallant said the focus of the conflict is shifting from Gaza to Israel’s north and that time is running out for a diplomatic solution with Hezbollah.

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This story has been updated to correct the name of the Hezbollah lawmaker’s son killed by a pager blast.

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Associated Press writers Hussein Malla, Hassan Ammar, Fadi Tawil and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut; Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; Michael Biesecker in Washington; Josef Federman in Jerusalem; Zeke Miller in Washington; and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

CNN
 — 

Ex-President Donald Trump responded to a second apparent assassination attempt that he blames on incendiary political rhetoric by inflaming the situation even more.

When a bullet grazed his ear in a horrific shooting that killed a rally goer in July, Trump initially acted like a changed man, telling The Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito he had a chance to bring the country and the world together — although that aspiration did not last any longer than the opening paragraphs of his convention speech.

After the Secret Service thwarted a gunman who had apparently lain in wait for the ex-president at one of his Florida golf courses Sunday, Trump’s reaction was different. He accused President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of inviting assassins to target him when they warn that he is a threat to democracy.

He told Fox News Digital on Monday without evidence that the alleged would-be shooter “believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it.” Trump went on: “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.”

“It is called the enemy from within,” he said using a familiar trope of totalitarian leaders. Trump warned that “dangerous fools” like the suspect in Sunday’s incident listen to what Democratic leaders say and react to what he has claimed, falsely, is an orchestrated attempt by the White House to use the justice system to persecute him.

Trump’s running mate advanced an even blunter argument.

“The big difference between conservatives and liberals is that … no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months,” Ohio Sen. JD Vance said.

“I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out.”

The Republican vice-presidential nominee has recently denied he is guilty of incitement after his perpetuation of baseless claims that Haitian refugees have been eating pet dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, was followed by bomb threats to hospitals and schools.

Democratic Rep. Nikema Williams condemned Vance’s remarks about assassinations and the difference between liberals and conservatives.

“Would he want that? Why would you say that at a time when we’re talking about bringing down the temperature and changing the rhetoric and bringing the country together – unity – moving forward?” the Georgia Democrat said on “CNN This Morning” with Kasie Hunt. “We can disagree on policies, but we don’t want anyone to have an assassination attempt.”

Williams said it was “no secret” that she’s not a Trump supporter, but that she doesn’t want anyone to face a threat on their life. She added that she’s had to arrange personal security measures since becoming a member of Congress to protect herself and her family after facing threats.

The experience of being singled out for apparent attempted murder twice in two months would weigh on anyone. Trump is also facing an election, less than 50 days away, that is a dead heat between him and the vice president, according to most polls.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday that anyone who had been targeted for assassination “might be pretty sensitive, you might be pretty agitated, you might be pretty worried, so I think that is understandable.”

And seeking to decide an election by murdering a candidate for president ought to be repugnant to anyone that believes in democracy and the right of voters to choose their leaders. The exact motives of the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, are also not clear, although he was a longtime advocate for doing more to help Ukraine – a position that conflicts with Trump’s vow to end the war with Russia.

And the connection between a politician’s rhetoric and actions taken by isolated individuals is often hard to pin down even if the fear is always that a small minority of people might be motivated by a leader’s comments to provoke violence.

But Trump’s claims that Biden and Harris bear direct culpability underscore the extreme nature of his own political instincts.

His claim that their warnings about his supposed threat to democracy risk getting him killed is particularly stark. By implication, he’s saying that it is illegitimate for his opponents to point out the truth: that his past behavior — in seeking to steal the 2020 election and spreading false claims that this year’s voting will be corrupt — suggests that he poses a danger to America’s democratic system. His position, which looks like an attempt to stifle free speech, may also be a dark harbinger of how he would behave if he won a second term.

Trump played a similar political card at last week’s presidential debate when Harris raised his threat to terminate the Constitution and to weaponize the Justice Department against his political enemies. She said that since the Supreme Court and Vance wouldn’t stop Trump if he was back in the White House, “It’s up to the American people to stop him.” The vice president was clearly speaking in a political context, but Trump replied: “I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me.”

Despite the fierce political exchanges, there was one moment that recalled lost political normality on Monday. Biden and Trump had a telephone conversation, and the president conveyed his relief that his erstwhile rival was safe. The Republican nominee said in a statement to CNN that it was “a very nice call.”

Incitement and inflammatory rhetoric are often in the eye of the beholder. Republicans were angered, for instance, by Biden’s claim in August 2022 that the philosophical underpinning of the MAGA movement was like “semi-fascism.” (The charge did not become a staple of the president’s rhetoric). New York Rep. Daniel Goldman, a Democrat, said last year in an interview that Trump needed to be “eliminated” — a comment that Vance referenced on Monday. Goldman quickly apologized for his “poor choice of words” and said that he wished no harm to Trump.

But if Democrats are to blame for sometimes going over the top, Trump has made a political brand out of the most outlandish rhetoric uttered by a president or ex-president in the modern history of the United States. The scale and intensity of his invective dwarf anything that the Democrats have flung at him. He calls Harris a “fascist” in almost every public appearance — for instance, he said on August 26 in Virginia that “we have a fascist person running who’s incompetent.” He used similar rhetoric on August 23, August 17, and August 3 in campaign appearances.

Earlier this year, he claimed Biden was running a “Gestapo administration” referring to the genocidal Nazi secret police. He parroted the language of some of history’s worst tyrants by calling his political opponents “vermin” and by warning that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the United States.

And when he refused to concede that he lost the 2020 election, Trump called supporters to Washington, DC, and told them to “fight like hell” or they wouldn’t have a country anymore. Then his supporters smashed their way into the US Capitol, to try to thwart the certification of Biden’s victory. Trump has since called those arrested over the events of January 6, 2021, political prisoners and said he’d look at pardoning them if he wins back the White House in November.

Even now Trump is warning he will only accept the result of this year’s election if he deems it fair and has warned he will seek to jail officials and political opponents if he wins back power.

“He plays to people’s fear, he plays to people’s anxiety. He defines us with hate and fear,” Michigan Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell said Monday at a canvassing event for Harris. “This violence has to stop, but we also need to understand who and what he is and how much he is contributing to it,” she said, adding, “He has not said he’ll accept the election results.”

Social media has often helped Trump inject bile into political life. After Sunday’s incident, one of his most prominent supporters — Elon Musk, who owns X — questioned why Trump had faced two apparent assassination attempts and his rivals had not encountered any. “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” Musk wrote in the post that he later deleted. He later argued the post had been a joke, although given America’s violent political history and assassinations of four US presidents, it’s hard to see how people might find such quips funny.

The rhetoric of Trump and his allies has also made life dangerous for others. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s former infectious diseases expert, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins this year that when he is assailed, for instance, by Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in congressional hearings, the pace of death threats against him rises. “(There is) a segment of the population out there that believe that kind of nonsense,” Fauci said.

Media organizations and election workers have also faced threats when on the wrong end of Trump’s baseless attacks. Prosecutors and judges need extra security while assigned to Trump cases and targeted by his daily screeds.

And even as the shocking aftermath of another apparent attempt on Trump’s life plays out, the impact of his and Vance’s rhetoric is evident in Springfield, Ohio.

After Trump amplified the false claims in the debate, Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine deployed the state highway patrol to monitor city schools that faced bomb threats. Elsewhere in Springfield, classes at Wittenberg University were held remotely Monday while campus police and local law enforcement assessed emailed threats of a bombing and a campus shooting that targeted “members of the Haitian community,” the university said.

In his interview on “State of the Union,” Vance said that any suggestion that he or Trump had acted in a way that caused such threats was “disgusting.”

It’s also disgusting that anyone would consider assassinating a former president running in a democratic election. Yet the historical record shows that while Trump has become a victim of a toxic political culture, he’s also one of its primary instigators.

London
CNN
 — 

It is exactly the kind of attention Ukraine did not need. Since the start of clashes with Russia over its future in 2003, Ukraine has carefully avoided the sort of political violence Ryan Wesley Routh is accused of.

Yet now, at arguably the most crucial point of the conflict, Routh’s vocal support for Kyiv has somehow been seized upon by Russian echo chambers after he was detained Sunday in connection with an apparent assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump.

Someone like Routh was quite easy to meet in Ukraine in the opening months of Russia’s full-scale war in 2022. Border crossings and railway stations were often haunted by whispering, unshaven expatriates of questionable military provenance, trying to conjure the idea that the very real and painful struggle of Ukraine was something they had a pivotal role in. As the conflict has dragged on, the fantasists have faded, and the resumes of dozens of Western volunteers been vetted, or become less relevant as their alleged experience has been tested in combat. The most brutal fighting Europe has seen since the 1940s, the Ukrainian front line has never been less of a place for amateur thrill-seekers.

Yet Routh tried his best to associate himself with the fight against Russia, expressing support for Ukraine in dozens of X posts that year, saying he was willing to die in the fight and that “we need to burn the Kremlin to the ground.”

He protested in Kyiv after Russia invaded, and even tried to enlist, but, aged 56 with no military experience, was turned away. He tried to help recruit foreigners to fight but seems to have failed. The New York Times even interviewed him about a plan to obtain fake passports so Afghan veterans could come from Pakistan or Iran to Ukraine to help resist Russia’s onslaught. His offers to recruit large numbers to fight for Ukraine from across the world “were not realistic” said Oleksandr Shaguri, an officer of the Foreigners Coordination Department of the Land Forces Command. He told CNN, “The best way to describe [Routh’s] messages is – delusional ideas.” Routh never worked with them – a common refrain from across Ukraine’s military heard Monday.

Kyiv has enough on its plate now, other than explaining how little it had to do with the author of “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the Global Citizen – Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea and the end of Humanity.” This – Routh’s title for his self-published book – does not demand its author’s ideas are taken too seriously.

But already, Moscow’s prolific echo chambers have begun to fashion a narrative in which US support for Ukraine is somehow extremist. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov, asked what he thought about the assassination bid, said, according to Reuters: “It is not us who should be thinking, it is the US intelligence services who should be thinking. In any case, playing with fire has its consequences.”

<a href=”http://RT.com” rel=”nofollow”>RT.com</a>, a Kremlin-run English news outlet, also highlighted Routh’s interest in Ukraine, writing that “Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene stated that if the suspect’s identity is confirmed, it is clear he is ‘obsessed with the Ukraine war, which is funded by the US.’”

Do not expect any majorly new or intelligent arguments to surface about the war in Ukraine in the weeks ahead. But instead, anticipate a slow drip of some new voices, and some of the usual, suggesting the war in Ukraine cannot be won, that Putin must be given a chance to negotiate a deal (even one that lets him keep the chunk of Ukraine he has stolen), and that there is an unhealthy infection of extremists in the ranks of those who feel they must – as Routh once said – “fight and die” for Ukraine.

None of this helps Ukrainians who genuinely must fight and die to protect their homes and families. It particularly hampers Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, days before he is set to present a victory plan to the Biden administration. The clamor of support for Ukraine to receive US permission to fire longer-range US-supplied missiles at targets deeper inside Russian territory had been growing. It seemed likely last week that President Joe Biden would follow the course he’s taken when past decisions on arming Ukraine were presented to him, and consent – albeit very, very late – after public pressure from allies.

But now Zelensky’s press appearances may be dogged by questions about Routh, however absurdly distant from Kyiv’s agenda his apparent attack on a Florida golf course was. It will feed into the ultimate paranoia of US isolationists: that actions overseas which appear to benefit America’s global interests carry with them the risk of fomenting violence back home.

Routh’s political leanings and worldview were far from consistent, if not delusional. But in the breathy forum of random gibberish that is social media, they contribute to a narrative, for those who seek it, of support for Ukraine causing chaos in America. That the United States should just stay out of Putin’s war.

None of it connects with the savage reality Ukrainians face every night, shaken awake by Russian missiles, or losing loved ones to the ghastly attrition of the front lines.

Washington’s support for Kyiv is weighty and consequential when it lumbers into play, yet horrifyingly fragile when subjected to US electoral politics and the Republican party’s fickle grip on geopolitics. The sudden insertion of a wayward extremist like Routh is a loud, confusing wild card, at a time when support for Ukraine urgently needed a calm and balanced voice.

“During today’s meeting, I expressed my gratitude to my colleague for the historic decision to support the UN Resolution on the return of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region. This decision will further strengthen the ties between our countries,” stated Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze at a joint briefing with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

The Prime Minister emphasized the importance of the Armenian delegation’s visit to Georgia, noting that the signing of a strategic partnership agreement would enhance Georgia-Armenia relations.

Irakli Kobakhidze conveyed his honour in hosting a representative delegation from Armenia. He recalled his visit to Armenia in March and thanked his Armenian counterparts for their warm hospitality.

“The relationship between Georgia and Armenia is founded on centuries of friendship and mutual respect between our peoples. I am pleased that this has now evolved into a strategic partnership that will foster the deepening of our relations.

I believe that the signing of a strategic partnership agreement has played a crucial role in enhancing our bilateral ties and has yielded tangible, practical outcomes.

Once again, during today’s meeting, I expressed my appreciation to my colleague for the historic decision to support the UN Resolution on the return of IDPs from Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region. This pivotal decision will undoubtedly further fortify the relationship between our nations,” he concluded.

Dear Prime Minister, I truly believe that we have a historic opportunity to end the conflicts in the South Caucasus and create sustainable peace in our region – we highly appreciate the efforts of the Georgian government – the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan told the Prime Minister of Georgia at the press conference.

According to him, Georgia’s policy is aimed at contributing to regional and international stability and peace.

As Pashinyan notes, the beneficiaries of the peace achieved in the South Caucasus are not only Armenia and Azerbaijan, but also Georgia, Turkey and Iran.

“I am glad that I have come to friendly Georgia once again. Thank you very much for the traditional warm welcome and hospitality that my delegation received during the last period. We managed to expand the comprehensive cooperation between our countries in all fields. The best indicator of this is that in January of this year, the cooperation between Georgia and Armenia rose to the level of a higher strategic partnership. We have thus managed to establish an effective and viable mechanism of periodic contacts based on mutual interests as well as principles and democratic values ​​accepted by the wise peoples of our countries.

I must emphasize that Georgia and Armenia unconditionally recognized the territorial integrity and sovereignty of each country. I consider this fact one of the important factors to achieve stability and long lasting peace in the South Caucasus.

Dear colleagues, we had the opportunity to discuss a number of issues related to achieving lasting peace and stability in our region. I presented to my colleague the latest development information in the process of Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization. I must mention that during the difficult negotiations, within the framework of the delimitation-demarcation process with Azerbaijan, we managed to achieve some progress. Armenia and Azerbaijan reached an agreement to operate within the framework of the delimitation process based on the provisions of the 1991 Almaty Declaration. Which means that the basis for this process will be the definition of administrative borders between the former Soviet republics. We expect that in the near future we will achieve practical progress in the delimitation of the Armenia-Georgia border. We have expressed common positions in this regard. I think you know that as a result of almost 2 years of negotiations, Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed on 80% of the treaty establishing peace and interstate relations. We proposed that Azerbaijan sign up to the provisions that had already been agreed upon. It was also proposed to establish diplomatic relations and resolve all other important issues that are of mutual interest. Unblocking and full operation of all economic, infrastructure and communications is the topic of stability and economic development of the region, which we consider a priority of our government. Our idea on this issue is best reflected in the Crossroads of Peace project, which was created by the Armenian government and which I first shared with our international partners during the conference in Tbilisi.

Dear Prime Minister, I truly believe that we have a historic opportunity to end the conflicts in the South Caucasus and create lasting peace in our region. I am also sure that the beneficiaries of this peace are not only Armenia and Azerbaijan, but also Georgia and Turkey. Iran will also benefit. That is why, despite all the difficulties, our government will steadily and unyieldingly continue to make all efforts to make peace in the region possible. We highly appreciate the efforts of the Government of Georgia, that your contribution was also made. Your policy is aimed at contributing to regional and international stability and peace,” Pashinyan said.

CNN
 — 

Ryan Wesley Routh put his enmity toward Donald Trump – the man he once supported but then dismissed as an “idiot,” a “buffoon” and a “fool” – at the center of a rambling and fanciful worldview that also fixated on Ukraine, Taiwan, North Korea, and what he called the “end of humanity.”

The 58-year-old, who was detained Sunday in connection with an apparent assassination attempt on the former president, protested in Kyiv after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and committed his ideas to paper in a self-published 291-page book.

Authorities suspect Routh, who owns a small construction company in Hawaii, was planning to attack the former President as he played a round of golf on Sunday, with US Secret Service agents firing at a man with a rifle in the bushes near the golf club. He was later apprehended after being stopped on a nearby highway.

Routh appeared in federal court Monday and was charged with two counts, possession of a firearm while a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Kristy Militello, the federal public defender assigned to Routh’s case, declined to comment after the hearing.

For years, he criticized not only Trump but himself, describing Trump as “my choice” in the 2016 presidential election but later writing that he is “man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake.”

Here’s what we know about Routh so far.

Routh’s thoughts and fixations on global politics appeared idealistic to some who came across him, but his writings show how he became increasingly militant about the geopolitical forces he railed against.

His business pursuits, by contrast, appear relatively unremarkable. On Routh’s LinkedIn page, he said he started a company in 2018 called Camp Box Honolulu in Hawaii, which builds storage units and tiny houses. A story in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser said he donated a structure for homeless people.

During his court appearance on Monday, Routh said he was making $3,000 a month before his arrest, had “zero funds” in savings and had no assets beyond two trucks in Hawaii.

Routh also has ties to North Carolina, where public records show he registered as an “unaffiliated” voter without a party in 2012. He voted in that state’s Democratic primary in March of this year, according to public records.

Records from the state dating back decades also show Routh has had previous scrapes with the law – including being arrested in 2002 after he was pulled over by police and allegedly put his hand on a firearm, and then drove off and barricaded himself in a business premises.

He has also been involved in several court cases since the 1990s, with authorities repeatedly accusing him of failing to pay his taxes on time. Separately, judges have ordered him to pay tens of thousands of dollars to plaintiffs in various civil suits.

Routh became animated when writing about Trump, and he frequently weighed in on US and global current events on social media.

In June 2020, Routh appeared to say that he had voted for Trump in 2016, but that he had since withdrawn his support of the former president.

“I and the world hoped that president Trump would be different and better than the candidate, but we all were greatly disappointment and it seems you are getting worse and devolving,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “I will be glad when you gone.”

Routh also mentioned Trump in his book, which appears on Amazon without a publisher listed, and is titled “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the Global Citizen-Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea and the end of Humanity.”

In that publication, he described the former US president’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 as a “tremendous blunder” that drove Tehran closer to Moscow, which it then supplied with drones that have caused devastation across Ukraine.

He even commented on the first assassination attempt on Trump, when the former president was wounded by a gunshot during a rally in Pennsylvania in July. Routh encouraged President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to visit those wounded in the incident, saying: “Trump will never do anything.”

Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s 2022 invasion also became central to Routh’s philosophy; he expressed support for Ukraine in dozens of X posts that year, saying he was willing to die in the fight and that “we need to burn the Kremlin to the ground.”

He also visited Ukraine in 2022, according to video and photos geolocated by CNN and interviews he gave to international media during his time there. In a flurry of Facebook posts last year, he tried to enlist Afghan conscripts to fight in the war, presenting himself as an off-the-books liaison for the Ukrainian government.

A representative from Ukraine’s foreign legion confirmed with CNN that Routh had contacted them several times but said he was never part of the military unit in which overseas volunteers fight.

Oleksandr Shaguri, an officer of the Foreigners Coordination Department of the Land Forces Command, told CNN over the phone that “the best way to describe his messages is – delusional ideas.”

“He was offering us large numbers of recruits from different countries but it was obvious to us his offers were not realistic. We didn’t even answer, there was nothing to answer to. He was never part of the Legion and didn’t cooperate with us in any way.”

Newsweek Romania journalist Remus Cernea first met Routh in Kyiv’s Independence Square in June 2022, where the American was rallying people to join the foreign legion or to help Ukraine through various humanitarian aid organizations.

“For me, it’s a surprise because I viewed him as an idealistic innocent genuine person, without any murderous instinct,” Cernea told CNN following news of Routh’s detention in the United States.

According to Cernea, Routh described Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as a “black and white… good versus evil” conflict.

In an interview with AFP news agency from Kyiv in April 2022, Routh said: “Putin is a terrorist, and he needs to be ended, so we need everybody from around the globe to stop what they’re doing and come here now and support the Ukrainians to end this war.”

He also weighed in on the political situations in Afghanistan, Taiwan and North Korea in his book. Routh has repeatedly voiced support for Taiwan and previously called for international intervention to protect the island against potential Chinese encroachment.

Routh’s eldest son, Oran, told CNN via text that Routh was “a loving and caring father, and honest hardworking man.”

“I don’t know what’s happened in Florida, and I hope things have just been blown out of proportion, because from the little I’ve heard it doesn’t sound like the man I know to do anything crazy, much less violent,” Oran wrote.

But other people have shared testimonies of tense interactions with Routh.

Hawaiian business owner Saili Levi told CNN he had paid Routh $3,800 up front to build a trailer for his business. But when Levi came to Routh’s shop to review his work, it was shoddy, he said.

Levi said when he asked Routh to improve the work via email, Routh ranted at him.

“He just kind of started ranting about, you know, ‘You think because you have money, you’re better than me?’” Levi said, adding that Routh also mentioned having gone to Ukraine to fight against Russia.

“I kind of decided maybe I should just let it go for the sake of my family,” Levi recalled.

Curt Devine, Isabelle Chapman and Daniel Medina contributed to this report.