Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle should have been fired "within an hour" for having allowed a would-be assassin take a shot at him, but President Joe Biden "doesn't fire anybody for anything," Donald Trump told Newsmax in an exclusive interview Tuesday night.
"It should have happened, I would say, within an hour — not nine days, 10 days," Trump told "Rob Schmitt Tonight" guest host Sebastian Gorka of Cheatle's ouster earlier Tuesday, which he called "inevitable."
"She left, probably she left, because Biden doesn't ever fire anybody," he said. "He didn't fire anybody for Afghanistan. He doesn't fire anybody for anything which is one of his problems. So that was a rough time."
Also, Trump alleged, Cheatle, who resigned for her "failure," had been rejecting Trump campaign requests for more resources before the assassination attempt, leaving both the White House's political rival and his rallygoers in the line of fire.
"Now, they have really beefed it up; they should have beefed it up before," Trump told Gorka in a 15-minute phone interview. "I know that we've been asking for them to beef it up.
"You know, we have crowds of 40-50,000, 60,000 people. In New Jersey, we had 107,000 people, and when you have crowds like that, you need more people for the crowd — forget about me — and for me, too, as president, for any president.
"But you have to have more people. And I know that our people have been asking for more people consistently and not getting them."
For the first time since taking a shot to the ear, Trump early Tuesday came out to blame Biden and presumptive Democrat nominee Kamala Harris for being complicit in leaving him in the line of fire.
"The Biden/Harris Administration did not properly protect me, and I was forced to take a bullet for Democracy," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday.
"IT WAS MY GREAT HONOR TO DO SO!"
Trump also told Gorka he does feel safe to campaign against Harris going forward.
"Do I feel safe? Yeah, I have to feel safe; otherwise I guess I wouldn't be able to do this stuff," Trump said.
"I made a rally three days later in Michigan, and it was incredible. That was an incredible rally, one of the best we've ever had, and the love is so unreal."
That is where the "took a bullet for democracy" line originated in an off-script moment Saturday night, becoming a campaign rally cry.
"Last week, I took a bullet for democracy," Trump told his Grand Rapids, Michigan, rally attendees in a speech that aired on Newsmax and the free online Newsmax2 streaming platform.
The remark came in response to Democrats' "throwing out" the results of the Democrat primary with the hasty campaign exit by Biden. Biden had been campaigning on the assertion that it is Trump who poses a "threat to democracy."
Earlier this month, though, a 20-year-old would-be assassin attended Trump's Pennsylvania rally and climbed a roof left unattended outside of the Secret Service "secure perimeter" at a distance of roughly 145 yards. He fired multiple times, with one shot hitting Trump's ear.
Another bullet struck and killed a rallygoer and online Biden critic Corey Comperatore, 50, behind Trump in the rally crowd, while two more were injured in the gunfire.
The shooter was killed in seconds by a Secret Service sniper, but video clearly showed his high-powered weapon was trained on the targeted individual of "suspicion" long before the shot that "whizzed" into the right ear of Trump, who had just slightly turned from what would have been a likely fatal bullet to the head.
Trump said those other two victims are expected to recover from their wounds.
"That was a pretty bad day for, by any circumstance — forget about me for a second: We lost a great patriot, Corey, and two wonderful gentlemen were badly hurt," Trump told Gorka. "This was bad, and there were some other less serious injuries, too.
"This was a bad day for this country, and certainly they should have had people on that rooftop, and they should have told me that there was a problem. I guess maybe they didn't know or something. They haven't gotten to the bottom of that yet."
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