Government officials and others called out for increased Secret Service protection for former President Donald Trump on Sunday, within hours of a second assassination attempt in two months.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., ranking member of the chamber's judiciary and budget committees, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., who himself was wounded by a gunman in a politically motivated shooting, called for an immediate intensification of security around Trump.
"Authorities just acknowledged if President Trump was president, they'd do more to protect him," Scalise wrote on the X social media platform. "This must change. There have been TWO attempts on Trump's life. Secret Service must up their level of protection of him to their FULL capabilities — including expanding the perimeter."
Trump was playing golf at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, early Sunday afternoon, when Secret Service agents surveilling the holes ahead of Trump's playing party when at least one of them noticed a rifle barrel protruding from a hedged area along the side of the course.
Agents engaged the would-be gunman, firing several shots and forcing him to flee. A suspect was arrested on Interstate 95 in neighboring Martin County and is being held. It was on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a gunman at an open-air rally was able to fire eight shots, wounding Trump, killing another man, and critically injuring two more.
Like Scalise, Graham indicated the Secret Service was not doing enough.
"These were my concerns this morning, before the second assassination attempt against President Trump," he wrote on X. "Now, it is imperative that we move Secret Service out from under the Department of Homeland Security and back to the Treasury Department, where they had more focus."
During a post-incident press conference conducted by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said Trump does not get the level of protection afforded a sitting president, which is why the road adjoining the golf course was not closed and more agents assigned.
Former GOP presidential nominee rival Vivek Ramaswamy demanded that Trump get the same protection as President Joe Biden.
"I'm calling on Secret Service to IMMEDIATELY step up its protection for President Trump to the *same* level they provide to Biden, there's no excuse not to at this point," he wrote on X. "But there's also a deeper sickness in our country that we need to cure. America is skating on thin ice, and I thank God we've now averted tragedy twice this summer."
English television personality Piers Morgan was dumbfounded at how a would-be assassin was able to get within what officials at the press conference said was about 500 yards of Trump.
"How the hell did a gunman get that close to Trump so soon after the last attempted assassination? Shocking," he wrote.
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