The Secret Service agent and I stood staring at the tree line for the third time. The year was 1988. In a few days, President Ronald Reagan would arrive for an open-air campaign rally for Vice President George H.W. Bush. I was on the White House advance team. Together, we were responsible for creating a secure, photogenic, and rousing rally.
The agent and I disagreed over how best to block a sniper from using the trees for cover. Reagan would speak from a podium that was covered from the rear. Surrounding buildings would be posted with guards. The crowd would be screened with magnetometers. Dogs would sniff out bombs. Reagan would only be exposed from the trees on arrival and departure from the event. They would be brief glimpses, and I thought posting some guards in the trees was sufficient.
So far, our discussions had been calmly rational. They took an emotional turn when the agent suddenly confided he was having nightmares about a second assassination attempt on Reagan. He looked like he’d had a sleepless night and was clearly troubled. Seeing the depth of his conviction, I relented. We installed an industrial-looking high fence hundreds of feet long to block any view of the president. The rally, complete with a brass band and skydivers holding flares, went off without a hitch.
After viewing only a few seconds of video showing the Secret Service’s response as shots struck former President Donald Trump and several rallygoers in Butler, Pennsylvania, I was outraged. My initial reaction was incredulity that the Secret Service let a sniper get within shooting distance of Trump. The more details became available as the night wore on, the more livid I became at the incompetence of the Secret Service. I told my wife the director would be under fire and that heads should roll.
Now it has happened again. A would-be assassin got close enough to Trump to take up a firing position with a scoped, high-powered rifle. Reports place him within 300-500 yards of the former president.
Although an alert Secret Service agent spotted the rifle barrel protruding from bushes and fired toward the shooter, thereby preventing him from wounding or killing Trump, the Secret Service can take no comfort from that lucky break. The shooter should never have been able to get into position to take aim at Trump. The explanation the Secret Service has provided for the lapse is that Trump is not afforded the same level of protection as a sitting president because he is a former president. While that bureaucratic nicety may explain why “bubble” protection was used instead of perimeter control, it doesn’t answer any of the relevant questions.
Why, given the recent assassination attempt in Butler, wasn’t Trump accorded a higher level of protection? Who decided he should not be given that security? Is the Secret Service so hidebound by its own protocols that it cannot adjust them to what is clearly a higher level of threat? Or is the failure an indication that higher-ups in the Biden administration don’t take Trump’s safety seriously?
Let’s put aside, for a moment, credible intelligence that Iran seeks to assassinate Trump and focus just on domestic threats. Since Trump’s 2016 election, there have been numerous attacks on conservative Republicans by violent leftist extremists. Among the more prominent was when Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and three others were shot in 2017 by a disgruntled Democrat during a practice before the Congressional Baseball Game.
Beginning with comedian Kathy Griffin holding up a sundered head of Trump in 2017, the political left has held a special animus for Trump and Republicans in general. Democratic officials have also fanned the flames of extremism. Who can forget Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) threatening in 2020 that Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh would “reap the whirlwind” and “pay the price” if they voted to overturn Roe v. Wade? It was a dog’s whistle to left-wing extremists. Is it any wonder that a pro-abortion activist from California was arrested in 2022 for attempting to kill Kavanaugh?
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, has continued the overheated rhetoric about Trump and conservatives. She repeats the Joe Biden-Nancy Pelosi mantra that Trump is a unique threat to American democracy, all but inviting extremists to defend democracy by eliminating him.
There is growing suspicion that the Secret Service headquarters leadership, which reports to the president, has been deliberately hamstrung in protecting Trump. To begin restoring public confidence in the Secret Service and the election, Biden should immediately order the service to provide the same level of protection that a sitting president receives.
Secondly, the Secret Service and the FBI should promptly disclose the information they possess about the Butler assassination attempt to Congress and the public. Continued silence invites suspicion that they are covering up until the election is over. Transparency is urgently required.
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Harris can do her part too.
She should retract charges that Trump is a threat to democracy and call on her supporters to disavow political violence in any form. That includes pro-Palestinian protesters who harass or assault Jews on our campuses and on the streets.
John B. Roberts II is a former political strategist who worked closely with the Secret Service on international and domestic presidential events. He is the author of Reagan’s Cowboys: Inside the 1984 Reelection Campaign’s Secret Operation Against Geraldine Ferraro.