The media has forgotten or simply doesn’t care that Donald Trump was nearly killed on July 13. The former president escaped an assassin’s bullet during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. If Joe Biden had remained in the race, this moment, the defiant fist in the air, and his disastrous June 27 debate would have been noted as election killers—Biden would have likely suffered a blowout loss in the Electoral College.
Now, that’s all forgotten, at least for Politico, which caught a bit of amnesia with this piece about the increased security risks posed to Ms. Harris now that she’s the presumptive Democratic Party nominee (via Politico):
The Secret Service was already facing its biggest crisis in decades following the narrowly avoided assassination of Donald Trump. Now it has a major new task: protecting Kamala Harris not just as the sitting vice president, but as the likely Democratic presidential nominee.
And the security risks facing Harris are indeed greater simply because of who she is, as a woman and person of color — and the agency is almost certainly taking that into account.
That’s according to Jeff James, who worked in the Secret Service for 22 years and resigned in 2018 after rising to the rank of assistant special agent in charge. Over the course of his career at the agency, James served on President George W. Bush’s protective detail and pitched in from time to time to protect Trump while he was in office. James is now the president of Capitol Security Consultants, a firm that provides risk assessment and security training.
“I think you’d be surprised,” he said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine, “how many people in 2024 still have a very closed mindset and think the president should be a white Christian male, and anything outside of that is unacceptable.”
Trump was shot in the head, but Kamala Harris is the real victim.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) July 26, 2024
You absolute clowns. https://t.co/Oho9PGM3WM
Trump was shot by a bullet like two weeks ago https://t.co/kMrK577fuX
— Andrew Kerr (@AndrewKerrNC) July 25, 2024
Trump literally gets shot, and Politico is making stuff up about how being a woman puts Harris at greater risk. https://t.co/ogkIt6WbEJ
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) July 25, 2024
Until the Secret Service can explain why they left a rooftop that was less than 200 yards from the stage, with a clear line of sight on Mr. Trump, unprotected—I don’t want to hear about anything else that can provide good press to this agency that’s in total chaos. You don’t need to be a security expert to know that the structure should have been secured on the day of the rally.
What the hell happened behind the scenes? Why hasn’t anyone been disciplined? Was the would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, the lone gunman? All of these questions and more have yet to be answered by the Secret Service.