So where WAS he actually going?

Just to highlight the issue, we’re rerunning a post from last week that took a cop’s-eye look at what Donald Trump’s second would-be assassin, Ryan Routh, might have been planning for after the event.

Word comes now, thanks to today’s prosecutor’s filing, that in his car he had numerous phones, one of which showed a search for escaping into Mexico.

Note that from Mexico, you can fly pretty much anywhere… including to where we posit below.

Note also that while the letter he left with a friend is addressed to “Dear World,” he offered $150,000 to anyone who completes his mission to assassinate Donald Trump. Presumably, Routh would have to be alive to award that money.

Validated, too, is the idea that he likely engaged in heavy pre-event planning, in order to be positioned as he was vis-a-vis Trump. Routh reportedly arrived in Palm Beach a month before the event — time enough to get the ex-president’s pattern-of-life.

(Look at that smile…. Who would shoot at this man…?)

Look for Routh’s charges to be upgraded to this statute soon — the feds will have no interest in Ron DeSantis’s state prosecutor stealing an attempted murder case. (But good for Ron — he’s keeping the feds on their toes).

And as this writer has mentioned on-air, Ryan Routh WILL talk to us at some point. Crazy stunts like this are how Ryan Rouths talk to the world. In a way he’s already talking, through the letter he left. But he’ll have more to say at some point, I suspect — at trial, if not before.

But the questions remain: Where did he get the money for all this? Where did he get this gun? The car? How was he not on the feds’ radar?

And where the hell was he going?

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[Note: The below is a portion of a reprinted article from last week’s Ops Desk dispatch]

Where on earth was he going?

Did Routh have an escape plan?

So now it emerges that Ryan Routh, the man who likely attempted to carry out a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump, published in 2023 a book in which he urged Iran to kill Donald Trump.

In the book, Routh in fact apologized to Iran for Donald Trump and America’s leaving the Iran nuclear deal.

Now, we know Routh considered himself something of an international man of mystery. He had traveled to Ukraine, where he seems to have undertaken a harebrained scheme to enlist former Afghan fighters for the fight in Ukraine. (I guess the theory was that Afghans still harbored some resentment against Russia for the Soviet war of the 1980’s? Or that Afghans are angry over Russia’s treatment of the Chechens? Whatever).

Add to all this the fact that Routh had positioned two backpacks on the fence to shield him from Trump and the Secret Service — backpacks reportedly filled with “ceramic tiles,” of the sort that deflects bullets.

He also kept his car nearby so as to escape, and left the most incriminating evidence against him — an AK-47-style rifle — at the scene.

All this, under the facts we now know, appears to suggest this: a man who was not interested in “suicide-by-cop,” and in fact wanted to escape — even had he succeeded in his apparent plan to shoot the former president.

Which begs the question: Where did he think he could go?

(Ryan Routh — international man of mystery and crazy eyes)

But while most of the focus and speculation regarding the case has focused on what went before — we should also be thinking about what Routh was planning for after.

Did he have a plane ticket reserved? A train ticket? A lot of cash on him? Credit cards? His passport? Fake ID? A crypto account?

While I am skeptical he had foreign assistance — although the source of his money remains a mystery — I think there’s a good chance he was looking to leave the country. And a return to Ukraine — or even some crazy attempt to flee to Iran, arriving as a national hero for assassinating Trump — feels to me on the table.

Routh’s plans in Ukraine came to naught — and in fact he raised the concerns of a nurse working there, who reported him to the feds. Upon landing back in America, he was referred to DHS for investigation. How he fell off the radar remains to be seen.

Whatever the case, one thing remains certain: all these answers need to be provided to the American public — fast. We should be getting, at the least, weekly briefings. And they need to be substantive.

Otherwise, the public’s already low confidence in our federal agencies will take yet another hit. And that confidence can’t take too many more.

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Some Upcoming Travel…

Readers, your humble narrator will be heading back out this week to once again see and talk to the great people of Butler, PA. Word comes today that Donald Trump, too, will be heading out there soon.

If you live near Butler… come up and say hello!

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And finally…

So at the beginning here, a conservative candidate who happens to have the initials DJT, shows up for a scheduled debate.

He’s directed to the moderator, who he meets at the .43 mark.

Then at the 1:18 mark, our candidate, looking to engage in an actual ideological exchange of ideas, meets his opponent.

At the 3:50 mark, he meets a down-ballot candidate from his own party.

At at 4:00, he opposition media.

If this skit isn’t the perfect metaphor for the current campaign….

Fortunately, the cops show up at the end to ruin everyone’s fun.

Hey, it’s a living…!

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 Thanks for reading The Ops Desk. Stay Safe!