It's "unfair" for politicians to "Monday morning quarterback" the actions of Secret Service agents after the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump last July in Butler, Pennsylvania, considering the funding issues for the agency that continue to this day, former agent Mike Matranga, the founder and CEO of M6 Global Defense, told Newsmax.
"These are not things that, you know, just happened within the last year," Matranga said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America Weekend" Sunday. "These are things that have been happening for the last decade.
"And now that we've had an incident, you know, these politicians, whether they be on the left or the right, want to Monday morning quarterback and point the fingers at the Secret Service, when in reality some of the onus is on them for failing to provide the funding that the agency has been asking for a very long time."
Matranga also had a lot to say about former President Joe Biden's administration and resources.
"I think if you look back at the political division within the United States at both, you know, on both sides of the aisle, I think that you'd be foolish not to recognize that there was some of what I would say is a lack of resources that were allotted to the former president," Matranga said.
He added that if one looks at the events of the day and the resources that were in Butler, "you will see that the individual who stopped that threat was a member of the counter assault team under our special operations division," he said.
"Candidates usually don't have that level of protection early on in this phase of the campaign. So to say that the Biden administration was who withheld the resources, I think that's unfair," Matranga added.
Meanwhile, other resources were committed to then-Vice President Kamala Harris and Biden events, but Matranga said what happened in Butler "was a culmination of decades of problems, from funding to resources to lack of communications, things that we identified when I was still on the job."
He agreed that the general public deserves to have better answers, and he thinks it is "unfortunate that this had to happen for these things to start occurring."
"But I think that there are a lot of hands here," Matranga said. "But when you start pointing the finger, I think it should be pointed in multiple different directions, to include multiple past administrations, Congress themselves, a lack of communication, a lack of leadership at the United States Secret Service for a very long time."
He added that he is happy to see that some of those who were responsible for the lack of leadership in the Secret Service have stepped down or have been asked to leave.
Matranga, looking back, said he also wonders why the Trump rally in Butler wasn't delayed or even canceled, as the local authorities knew there was a suspicious person on the grounds at the facility.
"I don't understand why a tactical pause was not appropriate," he said. "What would it have hurt to just delay the event for 30 minutes so that they could identify this person … there should have been a delay."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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