Trump blames Biden/Harris for not protecting him and he was ‘forced to take a bullet for Democracy’
Donald Trump is now blaming President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for “not properly protecting” him during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania where a gunman fired at the former president and killed an attendee.
Trump’s allies have floated baseless and dangerous conspiracy theories about an assassination plot orchestrated by the administration, or debunked claims the Biden administration had rejected pleas from the former president for extra security.
On his Truth Social, Trump revived those claims by directly placing the blame on the president and his likely Democratic rival for the presidency for the threat to his life.
“The Biden/Harris Administration did not properly protect me, and I was forced to take a bullet for Democracy,” he said on Tuesday. “IT WAS MY GREAT HONOR TO DO SO!”
His post comes as Kimberly Cheatle resigned from her role as director of the US Secret Service after widespread demands for her exit in the wake of the shooting.
She stepped down one day after she testified to a congressional committee about law enforcement failures at the July 13 rally in Pennsylvania, where one rally attendee was killed and at least two other people were critically injured.
“She never gave me proper protection, so I ended up having to take a bullet for democracy,” Trump told Fox News Digital after her resignation on Tuesday.
“Many requests were made by on-site Secret Service for more people, always with a turn down or no response,” he added. “I have the biggest crowds in history, and they should be treated accordingly.”
Trump’s claims are “absolutely false,” Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said hours after the shooting.
“In fact, we added protective resources and technology and capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo,” he said.
But a week after the shooting, the Secret Service ackowledged it had turned back some requests to increase security around the former president, raising fresh questions about the state of Trump’s security protections.
“In some instances where specific Secret Service specialized units or resources were not provided, the agency made modifications to ensure the security of the protectee,” Secret Services spokesman Anthony Gugliemi said on Saturday. “This may include utilizing state or local partners to provide specialized functions or otherwise identifying alternatives to reduce public exposure of a protectee.”
Trump, whose first televised interview after the shooting aired on Fox News on Monday, said he did not receive any warning of a “problem” from Secret Service agents after some rallygoers said they saw a gunman on a nearby roof and tried to warn law enforcement.
“No, nobody mentioned it, nobody said there was a problem,” he said in the interview, which was recorded on Saturday. “They could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes, something.’ Nobody said. I think that was a mistake.”
He also appeared to float a conspiracy theory that the 20-year-old gunman who fired at him “had some encrypted phone numbers and to foreign countries.”
“You hear all different stories,” Trump told Fox News. “I would say probably he was a loner, but you don’t know that. You have to check out the phone numbers, you have to check out the phone.”
During Monday’s House Oversight Committee hearing, where Cheatle was grilled by members of both parties, Trump-allied congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene demanded to know whether the Secret Service was engaged in a “conspiracy to kill President Trump.”
“Was there a stand-down order, Ms Cheatle? Was there a conspiracy to kill President Trump?” she asked.
Far-right congresswoman Lauren Boebert also revived a conspiracy theory that the Secret Service sniper who fatally shot the gunman was “given an order to hold fire.”
Members of Congress have warned Cheatle that her agency’s failure to publicly provide more details about the events surrounding the attack are likely to fuel more conspiracy-mongering.
During Monday’s hearing, Democratic congresswoman Jasmine Crockett told Cheatle that if people are led to believe that the shooting was the result of a far-fetched government conspiracy, “that potentially incites the next level of violence at the next event, in retaliation for this.”
“So long as these conspiracy theories continue to fester, it is going to make your job that much harder,” she said.
