Former president Donald Trump leveled partial blame against President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the assassination attempt against him, suggesting without evidence that they personally made it more difficult for the Secret Service to better protect him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen this happened, people would ask, whose fault is it?\u201d Trump said in an interview that aired Tuesday night with Phil McGraw, who is known widely by his TV nickname, Dr. Phil. \u201cI think to a certain extent it\u2019s Biden\u2019s fault and Harris\u2019s fault. And I\u2019m the opponent. Look, they were weaponizing government against me, they brought in the whole DOJ to try and get me, they weren\u2019t too interested in my health and safety,\u201d he added, reprising his claim that Biden used the Justice Department to go after him through legal charges. Biden has said he has never involved himself in decisions about charging individuals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were making it very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s comments marked an escalation in accusations against a sitting president and vice president, the latter of whom is his current opponent. Although Trump has previously written on social media that the \u201cBiden\/Harris administration did not properly protect\u201d him, his comments in the interview took his claims a step further by personally blaming Biden and Harris, even though both have condemned the assassination attempt.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s aides have had a tense relationship with Secret Service leadership over the former president\u2019s security after top officials repeatedly denied requests for additional protection before the attempted assassination. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned last month amid anger over the agency\u2019s inability to prevent the attempted assassination.<\/p>\n
The attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pa., highlighted the significant challenges the agency has faced in protecting Trump. The Secret Service recently approved a plan to increase Trump\u2019s protection at outdoor campaign events, including using bulletproof glass. Some members of Biden\u2019s protective detail have been dispatched to Trump and Harris ahead of the November election.<\/p>\n
But no public evidence has emerged that Biden or Harris were personally involved in decisions about Trump\u2019s protection.<\/p>\n
The FBI has said that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, appears to have acted alone and have found little evidence that ideology drove his actions. Yet Trump and other Republicans have baselessly blamed the assassination attempt on Democratic rhetoric warning that Trump would undermine democracy. Trump echoed those claims in his interview with Dr. Phil.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re saying I\u2019m a threat to democracy,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThey would say that, that was standard line, just keep saying it, and you know that can get assassins or potential assassins going. That\u2019s a terrible thing \u2026 Maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has repeatedly made baseless accusations about the weaponization of government, ranging from claims about his legal cases to his recent suggestion that the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised economics data because of a whistleblower. A special counsel acting independently of the Trump White House brought the two federal cases against him.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Former president Donald Trump leveled partial blame against President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the assassination attempt against him, suggesting without evidence that they personally made it more difficult for the Secret Service to better protect him. \u201cWhen this happened, people would ask, whose fault is it?\u201d Trump said in an interview […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8669,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}