在特朗普高尔夫球场被捕的男子曾为各种事业而奋斗
【中美创新时报2024 年 9 月 17 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）周日，瑞安·W·鲁斯（Ryan W. Routh）这名男子在佛罗里达州的一个高尔夫球场策划暗杀前总统唐纳德·特朗普后被捕，他似乎在去年一本漫无边际的自费出版的书中告诉伊朗，“可以自由暗杀特朗普”。《纽约时报》记者Patricia Mazzei、Thomas Gibbons-Neff 和 Eduardo Medina对此作了下述报道。
这本自我吹嘘的书名为《乌克兰无法取胜的战争》，以及嫌疑人 Ryan W. Routh 的社交媒体帖子和其他公开声明，反映了他为乌克兰而战的强烈愿望。他还对特朗普持悲观看法，称他为“傻瓜”、“白痴”和“小丑”。
作为一名四处奔走的活动家和建筑承包商，有着大量犯罪记录，他是如何拥有一把半自动步枪、了解特朗普周末的行踪并在佛罗里达州西棕榈滩的特朗普国际高尔夫俱乐部边缘等待他的，目前仍不得而知。
但通过查阅公共记录和劳斯的著作，以及对认识他的人的采访，可以发现，他认为自己是重大世界事件中积极且有影响力的参与者，但在此过程中，他与至少部分家人疏远，几乎一贫如洗。
劳斯一直是大大小小的事业的连续斗士，至少可以追溯到 1996 年，当时他在北卡罗来纳州格林斯博罗市开展反对涂鸦的活动，他在那里生活了几十年。 7 月，他在社交平台 X 上敦促拜登总统和卡马拉·哈里斯副总统去探望宾夕法尼亚州巴特勒市特朗普遇刺事件的受害者，并写道“特朗普永远不会为他们做任何事情。”
“向世界展示同情和人性是什么，”鲁斯在 7 月 16 日写道。
在其他社交媒体帖子中，他标记了包括埃尔顿·约翰和埃隆·马斯克在内的世界领导人和名人，经常提供他的电话号码和电子邮件，好像期待得到回复。
鲁斯似乎一生大部分时间都在格林斯博罗度过，这是一个约 30 万人口的城市，尽管近年来他一直住在夏威夷。
根据刑事起诉书，2002 年 12 月，他因“拥有大规模杀伤性武器”被判重罪。据当地一家报纸和前格林斯博罗警察特雷西·福尔克 (Tracy Fulk) 称，那一年，他在格林斯博罗用全自动武器把自己关在一栋建筑内，随后被捕。福尔克说，她曾将他拦下，并在他逃跑前发现他的卡车里有一把枪。
“他表现得好像有某种精神健康问题，”她回忆道。
罗斯在北卡罗来纳州的其他刑事指控包括持有偷来的机动车、持有偷来的物品和几项驾驶违规行为。
然而，记录显示，他是一位关心当地事务的公民。
20 世纪 90 年代，他出现在当地一家报纸的版面上，以一位居家男人的身份装饰他 19 世纪 40 年代的小木屋迎接万圣节，以及一位因追捕邻居强奸犯而获得“执法奥斯卡奖”的好心人的身份出现。
1996 年，格林斯博罗的一家报纸刊登了 Routh 的一封信，谴责该市“越来越多的涂鸦”是“不断提醒我们美国道德的崩塌”。
二十年前，他支持他十几岁的儿子在北卡罗来纳州吉尔福德县（包括格林斯博罗）建立一个滑板公园的努力。Routh 帮助这些青少年获得了使用一家石油公司拥有的一块土地的许可。其中一名滑板运动员、现年 36 岁的 Will Milsun 在周一的一次采访中回忆说，Routh 曾向男孩们展示如何弯曲胶合板来建造四分之一管道。
Routh 的社交媒体帖子表明他在 2016 年是特朗普的支持者，但到 2020 年就反对他了。记录显示，他今年在北卡罗来纳州的民主党初选中投票。
Routh 在北卡罗来纳州和夏威夷的亲属没有回应置评请求。
帮助他的商业伙伴购买房产的房地产经纪人戴维·哈加曼 (David Hagaman) 说，今年，劳斯和他的女儿以大约 17.5 万美元的价格卖掉了他们位于格林斯博罗的“破旧”房屋。
鲁斯的这本书长达 291 页，其中许多页都充斥着各种冲突中士兵和平民的暴力和血腥画面。在一段令人费解的文字中，鲁斯向伊朗道歉，因为特朗普撕毁了奥巴马政府的核协议，然后写道“你可以自由地暗杀特朗普”。
美联社是第一个报道这本书的媒体。
2022 年俄罗斯全面入侵乌克兰几周后，鲁斯在社交媒体上发帖称，他愿意为这一事业献出生命，并在不久后前往乌克兰首都基辅。
去年，鲁斯告诉《纽约时报》，抵达后不久，他就被告知，由于年龄和缺乏军事经验，他将无法在前线发挥作用。于是他改变了主意，希望招募外国战士，并为在战斗中阵亡的人设立纪念碑。
鲁斯建立了一个名为“为乌克兰而战”的网站，在网站上他解释了如何前往那里并作为一名外国战士加入乌克兰军队。在一年中的大部分时间里，他的主要工作是让数百名在国家政府垮台后逃离的阿富汗士兵为乌克兰而战。
到 2023 年夏天，鲁斯对乌克兰的要求和繁文缛节感到沮丧，他的热情变成了幻灭和蔑视。
“他开始对乌克兰产生反感，”退役陆军游骑兵、“出埃及救援计划”创始人大卫·M·爱德华兹 (David M. Edwards Jr.) 说，该组织主张撤离受过美国训练的阿富汗军人。
爱德华兹让鲁斯与几名试图离开喀布尔的阿富汗战士取得了联系，但他注意到“有些不对劲”，他说。爱德华兹说，最终，劳斯让阿富汗战士在前往乌克兰的途中被困，没有得到任何支持或资金返回阿富汗。
但一名前阿富汗士兵一直与他保持联系，他是劳斯试图帮助的第一批难民之一，直到周日劳斯在佛罗里达被捕前几天。这名士兵因害怕报复而不愿透露姓名，他说劳斯住在他的车后座上。在给这名士兵的 WhatsApp 消息中，劳斯发了一张他后备箱里装满衣服和睡眠用品的照片，并配文“我的房子”。
他还给这名士兵发了一张他的银行账户照片：里面只剩下 68 美元。
不过，这名士兵说，就在他被捕前几天，劳斯还在给一个朋友寄钱，这名朋友是一名阿富汗突击队员，被困在肯尼亚，正试图前往乌克兰。
本文最初发表于《纽约时报》。
题图：Ryan Wesley Routh 于 2022 年在基辅独立广场悬挂了帮助乌克兰的国家国旗。SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images
附原英文报道：
Man arrested at Trump golf course had a history of crusading for causes
By Patricia Mazzei, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Eduardo Medina New York Times,Updated September 17, 2024
Ryan Wesley Routh put up national flags of the countries helping Ukraine in Independence Square in Kyiv in 2022.SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images
MIAMI — The man arrested after apparently plotting to assassinate former president Donald Trump at one of his Florida golf courses Sunday appeared to tell Iran in a rambling self-published book last year that it was “free to assassinate Trump.”
The self-aggrandizing book, titled “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” along with social media posts and other public statements from the suspect, Ryan W. Routh, reflected his intense desire to fight for Ukraine. He also took a dim view of Trump, referring to him as a “fool,” “idiot,” and “buffoon.”
How Routh, a peripatetic activist and building contractor with an extensive criminal record, came to possess a semiautomatic rifle, learn of Trump’s weekend whereabouts, and wait for him on the edge of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., remains unknown.
But a review of public records and Routh’s writings, as well as interviews with people who knew him, suggest that he saw himself as an active and influential participant in momentous world events, while becoming estranged from at least some of his family and nearly destitute in the process.
Routh has been a serial crusader for causes large and small dating to at least 1996, when he campaigned against graffiti in Greensboro, N.C., where he lived for decades. In July, he urged President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the social platform X to visit the victims of the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pa., writing that “Trump will never do anything for them.”
“Show the world what compassion and humanity is all about,” Routh wrote July 16.
In other social media posts, he tagged world leaders and celebrities including Elton John and Elon Musk, often providing his phone number and email as if expecting a response.
Routh appears to have spent much of his life in Greensboro, a city of about 300,000, though in recent years he had lived in Hawaii.
In December 2002, he was convicted of a felony for “possessing a weapon of mass death and destruction,” according to the criminal complaint. That year, he was arrested in Greensboro after barricading himself inside a building with a fully automatic weapon, according to a local newspaper and Tracy Fulk, a former Greensboro police officer who said she had pulled him over and spotted a gun in his truck before he fled.
“He acted like he had some sort of mental health issues,” she recalled.
Routh’s other criminal charges in North Carolina include possession of a stolen motor vehicle, possession of stolen goods, and several driving violations.
Yet records show that he was a concerned citizen interested in local causes.
In the 1990s, he appeared in the pages of a local newspaper as a family man decorating his 1840s log cabin home for Halloween, and as a good Samaritan who won a “Law Enforcement Oscar” for chasing a suspected rapist in his neighborhood.
In 1996, a Greensboro newspaper published a letter from Routh decrying “the ever increasing amount of graffiti” in the city as a “constant reminder of the moral disintegration of our America.”
And two decades ago, he supported his teenage son’s efforts to establish a skate park in Guilford County, N.C., which includes Greensboro. Routh helped the teenagers get permission to use a piece of property owned by an oil company. One of the skaters, Will Milsun, now 36, recalled in an interview Monday that Routh had shown the boys how to bend plywood to construct quarter pipes.
Routh’s social media posts suggest that he was a Trump supporter in 2016 but had turned against him by 2020. He voted in North Carolina’s Democratic primary this year, records show.
Relatives of Routh in North Carolina and Hawaii did not respond to requests for comment.
This year, Routh and his daughter sold their “dilapidated” home in Greensboro for about $175,000, said David Hagaman, a real estate agent who helped his business associate buy the property.
Many of the 291 pages of Routh’s book are filled with graphically violent and bloody images of soldiers and civilians from a range of conflicts. In one convoluted passage, Routh apologized to Iran for Trump’s dismantling of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal, and then wrote “you are free to assassinate Trump.”
The Associated Press was the first to report on the book.
Weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Routh posted on social media that he was willing to die for the cause and headed to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, shortly after.
Not long after his arrival, Routh was told that he would be of no use on the front line because of his age and lack of military experience, he told The New York Times last year. So he pivoted, hoping to recruit foreign fighters and set up tributes to those killed in battle.
Routh had set up a website called “Fight for Ukraine,” in which he explained how to travel there and join the Ukrainian army as a foreign fighter. For the better part of a year, his main focus was getting hundreds of Afghan soldiers, who had fled after their country’s government collapsed, to fight for Ukraine.
By the summer of 2023, Routh had become frustrated with Ukrainian demands and red tape, and his zeal turned into disillusionment and contempt.
“He started getting a bad taste in his mouth for Ukraine,” said David M. Edwards Jr., a retired Army ranger and founder of Project Exodus Relief, a group advocating the evacuation of US-trained Afghan military members.
Edwards connected Routh with several Afghan fighters who were trying to leave Kabul but noticed that “something was off,” he said. Ultimately, Routh left the Afghan fighters stranded halfway on their journey to Ukraine, with no support or money to return to Afghanistan, Edwards said.
But one former Afghan soldier, who was one of the first refugees that Routh had tried to help, stayed in touch until just days before Routh’s arrest in Florida on Sunday. The soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was afraid of reprisals, said Routh was living out of the back of his car. In a WhatsApp message to the soldier, Routh sent a picture of his trunk filled with clothes and sleeping items, with the caption “my house.”
He also sent the soldier a picture of his bank account: It only had $68 left.
Still, the soldier said that just days before he was arrested, Routh was still sending money to a friend, an Afghan commando, who was stuck in Kenya and trying to get to Ukraine.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
