The acting director of the US Secret Service says the agency must undergo a complete overhaul of how it protects presidents – the following remarkable admission a second avisible atry it the life of former President Donald Trump within two months.
“When I came out of Butler, I ordered a paradigm shift,” Ronald Rowe said at a press conference Monday, referring to the July assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. “The Secret Service’s protective methodologies work and are sound, and we saw that yesterday.”
But, he added, “we need to get out of a reactive model and into a preparedness model.”
Rowe did not elaborate on his vision for the nearly 160-year-old agency. His comments come at an important moment for the Secret Service.
The agency is under heavy scrutiny after a gunman managed to shoot Trump multiple times at a rally in Pennsylvania. hits his earIt was the Secret Service’s biggest security failure since the 1981 shooting and wounding of President Ronald Reagan. One person died At the July 13 rally, two more people were injured.
The incident Sunday, which the FBI called an apparent assassination attempt on Trump, took place at a golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, after a Secret Service agent was seen pulling a rifle from among the bushes on the side of the course. suspicious, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58 had been nearby for about 12 hours, according to the criminal complaint.
Routh was arrested later Sunday and charged with federal weapons offenses.
The Trump campaign asked the Secret Service for increased security Monday morning, two sources familiar with the request told NBC News. It’s unclear how the Secret Service responded to that request.
When asked about it, Rowe dodged the question.
“I talked to the former president,” he said. “The president knows he has the highest level of protection the Secret Service provides.”
“We’re constantly evaluating on a threat basis,” he said. “If we need to add it, we will.”
The Secret Service has dramatically increased security for Trump since the July 13 shooting, according to two sources familiar with the agency’s response. Increased security involves more people and more technology.
One source said the Secret Service is doing everything it can to protect Trump as it prepares for next week’s United Nations General Assembly and protects President Joe Biden, Sen. JD Vance, Vice President Kamala Harris, Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz and others. That source said the additional resources would require additional funding from Congress.
Rowe admitted as much in a press conference.
“The Secret Service operates under the paradox of a zero-failure mission, while for decades we’ve done more with less,” he said. “And it goes back many, many decades. I can tell you that we have urgent needs right now.”
Protecting a former president in an open space like a golf course poses special challenges, especially when Trump decides on the spur of the moment to play a few holes. But many former FBI agents questioned how a man could have been so close to the former president and remained hidden for so long.
“It’s very troubling to me,” said Evy Poumpouras, a former Secret Service agent who protected multiple presidents, including Barack Obama and George W. Bush, during her 12 years with the agency.
“How did he get there, stay in that position for 12 hours and nobody saw it? Nobody cleared the perimeter?” he added in an interview with MSNBC.
The Secret Service is chronically understaffed: The arm of the agency that protects presidents, vice presidents and their families about 10% less than a decade ago. A Secret Service official told NBC News in July that while requests for additional personnel and equipment from Trump’s agents have been repeatedly denied over the past two years, no requests for resources at the Pennsylvania rally where Trump was shot were denied.
The problem does not seem to be a financial one: shows government documents While the Secret Service’s budget has nearly doubled over the past decade, the number of employees across the agency has grown by about 25%.
“It’s pretty clear at this point that we need additional personnel for President Trump,” said Anthony Cangelosi, a former Secret Service agent who worked on protective details for presidential candidates including Sen. John Kerry in 2004.
“If this was President Biden and he was playing golf on a golf course, there would be a several-block security buffer around that golf course,” he said. “Yes, former presidents do not receive the same level of protection, but that level of protection is adjusted based on the level of perceived threat.”
“Why is it that at this point, seven weeks before the election, the major presidential candidate doesn’t have extra security guarding the perimeter of his golf course?” Cangelosi added. “That’s the question that needs to be asked at this point.”