An admission from the U.S. Secret Service about the protective detail for former President Donald Trump bolstered the GOP leader’s take on divine intervention.
“For all of you non-believers…”
(Video: U.S. Secret Service)
While the agency charged with the safety of the leader of the free world and other high profile figures had yet to provide an explanation as to how a would-be assassin had managed to come within centimeters of killing Trump, they did manage to increase concerns that a decision-maker may have been playing fast and loose with regard to protecting the Republican nominee.
During a lengthy press conference Friday, acting U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe revealed that, prior to the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, no agency counter-snipers had been utilized as a part of his post-White House protection.
“It was the first time Secret Service counter-snipers were deployed to support the former president’s detail,” he told the media. “With respect to why they were there in Butler, listen, we evaluate our threat landscape every day, we calibrate based on that threat, we evaluated a threat stream that we have, and we put our Secret Service counter-sniper personnel out there.”
“And looking back, it was very fortunate that we did,” indicated Rowe as one of the counter-snipers was credited with neutralizing the threat. “But the former president [and his running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance] will have counter-sniper coverage moving forward.”
For his part, while speaking during a rally in Atlanta, Georgia Saturday, Trump continued lauding the specific agents who had rushed to protect him when the gunfire started and credited God for keeping him alive and relatively unharmed.
“The Secret Service, they were very brave. They were very brave, I can say,” contended the GOP leader. “They were very brave. They were running at me and they knew the bullets were going right over my head at that point. The first one was not a good situation; not a good situation.”
“That was really something incredible. That was from God. That was from God,” Trump went on before adding, “For all of you non-believers, that one was for God, right?”
“That was from God”: President Trump speaks out about surviving assassination attempt during speech in Atlanta pic.twitter.com/QL6qvSMpFP
— RSBN (@RSBNetwork) August 3, 2024
The New York Post indicated that prior to the July 13 rally, Trump’s detail “had been covered by state and local counter-sniper teams, which for the Butler Farm show site had been comprised of Beaver County Emergency Services Unit personnel.”
Since the attempt on his life, the president had made clear that had he not turned his head when he did during the rally that ended in tragedy, the injuries likely would have been fatal. As such, earlier in the week he had invited the woman responsible for displaying a chart on the monitor up on stage to publicly thank her. He had turned to look at the screen before the bullet struck his ear.
According to Rowe, at the same time, shots were being fired, a member of Trump’s security detail was on the phone with the USSS Pittsburgh field office trying to find out more information about the suspect that reports revealed law enforcement had been aware of more than an hour-and-a-half prior to the president’s speech beginning.
“Hey, what do you know about this?” the acting director said was being asked. “Right in the middle of that phone conversation, the shots began firing.”
Meanwhile, as only now-former USSS Director Kimberly Cheatle had resigned amid mounting pressure, an agency whistleblower had come forward demanding his supervisors be let go as he warned “We all should expect another assassination attempt to happen before November. We’ve exposed our inability to protect our leaders due to our leadership.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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