Former President Donald Trump told Fox News host Jesse Watters during a sit-down interview alongside his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, over the weekend that the Secret Service never informed him that agents were tracking a threat at his rally in Butler, Pa., ahead of the unsuccessful assassination attempt.
Reports last week said that agents had identified 20-year-old Thomas Crooks as a potential threat, perhaps an hour before Trump’s rally began, but, according to the 2024 GOP nominee, he was never told about it and was allowed to take the stage anyway.
“Nobody mentioned it,” the former president said. “Nobody said it was a problem.”
“[They] could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15, 20 minutes, 5 minutes.’ Nobody said…I think that was a mistake,” he added.
“How did somebody get on that roof? And why wasn’t he reported? Because people saw that he was on the roof. You had Trumpers screaming. The woman in the red shirt, she was screaming. And there’s a man on the roof. And then other people said, ‘There’s a man on the roof who’s got a gun.’ And that was quite a bit before I walked onto the stage. So you would have thought somebody would have done something about it,” he continued.
WATCH:
President Trump says the Secret Service DIDN’T warn him before the assassination attempt, even though the shooter was spotted well before he got onstage.
The first joint interview with President Trump and JD Vance airs Monday night only on Jesse Watters Primetime. pic.twitter.com/5s4iR95JwC
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) July 21, 2024
An expert political scientist specializing in political violence highlighted significant parallels between the failed assassination attempt on Trump and the well-known presidential murders of the 20th century, emphasizing especially how significant lapses in security contributed to each of these tragic events.
Dr. Larry Sabato, the author of “The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy,” told Fox News Digital this week that just like in the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy – as well as the President Reagan assassination attempt – a troubled young man was able to game “serious” security vulnerabilities and get a clear shot at a U.S. leader.
“By my count, Trump had perhaps triple the Secret Service personnel that JFK had,” Sabato told the network, further pointing out the level of failure to not only identify but to move against Crooks well in advance of him getting shots off at Trump, who was grazed in the right ear.
“Protective services were inadequate in all cases,” the professor stated. “For JFK, the open unguarded windows in the Texas School Book Depository Building are obvious. And JFK’s motorcade passed tens of thousands of unscreened people and territory. That was standard back then.”
On Monday, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc, released his official 13-page preliminary findings of his office’s investigation into the assassination attempt, per Fox News:
The preliminary findings determined that the Secret Service did not attend a security briefing provided to local SWAT and sniper teams on the morning of July 13, local law enforcement said communications were siloed and they were not in frequent radio contact directly with the Secret Service, local law enforcement notified command about Crooks before the shooting and received confirmation that the Secret Service was aware of the notification, the Secret Service was seen on the roof of the American Glass Research building with local law enforcement following the shooting, photos of the shooter were sent to the ATF for facial recognition and local law enforcement said the Secret Service was initially not going to send snipers to the rally.
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