The man arrested after apparently plotting to assassinate former President Donald J. Trump at his Florida golf course on Sunday was listed as the author of a rambling, self-aggrandizing, self-published 2023 book in which he told readers that they were “free to assassinate Trump.”
The book credited to the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh — “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War” — aligns closely with Mr. Routh’s social media posts and public statements reflecting his desire to fight and possibly die for Ukraine, and his searing hatred for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Many of the book’s 291 pages contain graphic and bloody images of soldiers and civilians from conflicts around the world. The prose is written by someone who seems to fashion himself an expert on world events, and not as a peripatetic pro-Ukraine activist and building contractor with a criminal record.
Mr. Routh, 58, took a particularly dim view of Mr. Trump, referring to him as a “fool,” an “idiot” and a “buffoon,” while comparing him unfavorably to a generation of despotic world leaders that included Mr. Putin and Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil.
“Democracy has dissolved quickly under our watch,” Mr. Routh wrote, describing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol as a catastrophe “perpetrated by Donald Trump and his undemocratic posse.”
In one convoluted passage, Mr. Routh vented his anger at Mr. Trump’s dismantling of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, telling readers, “you are free to assassinate Trump.”
But at other points, he suggests that he did not always feel so negatively about Mr. Trump — and goes on to say that readers should also feel free to kill him for some of his own prior positions.
Mr. Routh’s connection to the book was first reported by The Associated Press.
In the book, Mr. Routh is critical of President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, though he praises “frail, old Biden” for having the “backbone” to support Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion.
His most vitriolic language is directed at Mr. Putin.
In Chapter 18 — titled “Why has Putin not been assassinated?” — he writes, “We all ponder as to why our great minds did not simply kill Hitler early on, and now why have we not taken steps to kill Putin at all costs.”
Mr. Routh does not appear to deplore all autocrats equally. He offers a relatively positive assessment of Kim Jong-un of North Korea, describing him as reasonable, and a Western-educated leader who can be swayed with diplomacy and politesse.
And Mr. Routh viewed himself as just the man who could do it.
“I will gladly go many months or years to build a relationship with North Korea,” he wrote. “If an NBA basketball star like Dennis Rodman can make a peaceful friendship with Kim then perhaps he and I should be ambassadors to North Korea.”
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