Donald Trump says the “rhetoric” of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris led to a gunman showing up at his Florida golf course Sunday in an incident that authorities are treating as a second assassination attempt.
Trump was not harmed in the incident and the alleged gunman—identified as Ryan Wesley Routh—was engaged by the Secret Service at the course where Trump was playing in West Palm Beach before he was later arrested. “He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Trump said of the gunman in an interview with Fox News Digital.
“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 former president continued.
It’s not yet clear if the gunman on Sunday opened fire at the former president, but he may have been referring to Thomas Matthew Crooks—the 20-year-old shooter who wounded Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
In his interview with Fox News, Trump cited comments in which Biden and Harris slammed Trump as a “threat to democracy” while describing themselves as “unity” leaders. Trump claimed they “are the opposite” and are in fact “people that want to destroy our country.”
“It is called the enemy from within,” he said. “They are the real threat.”
He later cautioned Democrats to be careful with their rhetoric. “They use highly inflammatory language,” Trump said. “I can use it too—far better than they can—but I don’t.”
