Ryan Wesley Routh, the man suspected of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump for the second time, has evolving political beliefs that are not defined by partisan politics.

Although documents show the 58-year-old former roofer has made small financial donations to Democratic candidates in recent years, Routh has admitted he voted for Trump in the 2016 election but has since embarked on an ideological odyssey whose goals appear disjointed and confusing.

He firmly distanced himself from his previous support for Trump after finding a valid reason in his efforts to recruit former Afghan fighters to fight alongside Ukraine.

In a 2023 self-published book, a man going by Routh’s name laid out his views on Ukraine and other topics, including the collapse of the West’s nuclear deal with Iran, for which he blamed himself for helping elect a “brainless” president and invited Iran “to kill Trump and me for that error in judgment and dismantling of the deal.”

But that alone doesn’t capture the full spectrum of Routh’s political flip-flopping. In a series of 2020 Twitter posts, he endorsed the presidential candidacy of Tulsi Gabbard, then a Democratic congresswoman and now an outspoken Trump supporter and ally who helped the former president prepare for the recent presidential debate against Kamala Harris. Gabbard, he wrote, “will work tirelessly to negotiate peace agreements in Syria, Afghanistan and all troubled areas.”

He apparently voted for Joe Biden in the subsequent election, and on Sunday a bumper sticker read Biden-Harris on his car outside his Hawaii home, though there’s no indication when in the last four years it was added. In January 2024, however, he was a champion of the idea of ​​a Nikki Haley-Vivek Ramaswamy Republican ticket to oust Trump.

Routh’s political gadfly traits were further on display in a 2020 invitation to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un — whom he described as “very smart and well-educated” — to vacation in Hawaii and offer to serve as an “ambassador and liaison” in his country’s dispute with the U.S. He also invited pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, who were demonstrating against mainland China’s hardline rule, to visit Hawaii and offered them free accommodations.

Somewhat contradictorily, his WhatsApp profile read: “Each of us must contribute every day, in the smallest steps, to support human rights, freedom and democracy; we must all help the Chinese.”

Routh’s unstable political views seem to be mirrored by a turbulent personal past.

Shortly after the Russian invasion in 2022, he traveled to Ukraine to apply for the “international brigade” of foreign fighters. He told a Guardian journalist at the time that he expected to be rejected because he had no military experience – which indeed appeared to be the case. Instead, he announced that he planned to hang national flags from around the world in the center of Kiev, forming a human chain around them and declaring: “Putin, here I am,” calculating that if Russia bombed this international protest, it would provoke global action.

Routh has also been arrested at least eight times, CNN reported. In 2002, he was charged with possession of a weapon of mass destruction in Greensboro, his hometown of North Carolina, after he was pulled over by highway patrolmen who found a concealed weapon in his vehicle.

He fled the scene and drove to his roofing company, according to local media, where he barricaded himself in for three hours. He was subsequently charged with possession of a fully automatic machine gun — referred to in court documents as a “weapon of mass destruction” — possession of a concealed weapon, driving without a valid license and resisting, delaying and obstructing law enforcement.

Tracy Fulk, the prosecutor, told Wired that Routh was known to police at the time of his arrest, adding that she thought he “would be dead or in jail by now.” She added: “I had no idea he had moved on and continued his escapades.”

Describing the night of his arrest in 2002, she continued: “One night I recognized him in his vehicle. I knew he didn’t have a driver’s license, so I pulled him over in front of his roofing company. He pulled over and as I approached his truck, he pulled a bag out of the middle of the seat and I saw a gun.

“So of course I pulled out my gun and started saying, ‘Hey! Show me your hands, show me your hands.’ And he just pulled into his driveway and ran to his house. So we ended up having a call from the (Special Response Team) and a big standoff for a couple of hours before they went in and we arrested him.”

Routh did not have to go to jail for the incident after a judge gave him a suspended sentence and probation.

Tina Cooper, 58, a former employee at Routh’s roofing company, told the Independent her former boss had a reputation in the area for doing “stupid things”.

“He had threatened to blow up the entire Greensboro police station, that was all in the police files,” Cooper said.

Routh wasn’t always on the wrong side of the law. In 1991, at age 25, he was named a “super citizen” by the Greensboro chapter of the International Union of Police Associations and given an Oscar for law enforcement after helping defend a woman from an alleged rapist, the Washington Post reported.

In the 2022 interview on the Ukrainian border, Routh said he left his construction company in Hawaii to “tie up all the loose ends to get out of town.” He said of his wife and three children, then in their 20s, “They can take care of themselves; they don’t need a father anymore.” He declared his trip to Ukraine a “one-way ticket” — but he later returned to the U.S.

He was clear about one loyalty, though, when he explained to the Guardian why he always seemed to carry an American flag when he was in Ukraine. “I want to make sure that if the Russians kill me, they know who they’re killing,” he said.

“I am an American.”