Dominic wrote on the long list of failures by the U.S. Secret Service over recent decades, but when it comes to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, one question in particular rises above them all: How did they allow a shooter to get on a roof that was in striking distance of Trump?
There are other questions that have been raised. Why did the counter-sniper team appear to wait until the shooter fired at Trump before taking him out? Why didn’t police and Secret Service react more quickly to numerous people who were shouting at them for minutes that a gunman was crawling on a nearby roof? Why didn’t they whisk Trump off the stage more quickly, given that there could have been a second assassin?
While all of those questions are valid, there are at least arguments that could be made about the “fog of war” and the fact that they were operating in an environment where they had to monitor thousands of people, and possibly were observing multiple potentially suspicious occurrences. And they did eliminate the shooter quickly, and acted bravely in surrounding Trump within seconds.
However, that brings me back to the central question raised. And that is, how on earth was that roof not secured in the first place? It seems like for any would-be assassin, the ideal place to shoot would be from higher ground, so you’d think that the Secret Service would want to secure all of the roofs that are within striking distance — let alone within a few hundred feet. This isn’t just a question of imperfect judgment in the heat of the moment, but something that could have been thought of in advance of the event, when the Secret Service was sweeping and prepping the area.
More than any other question, this is the one that the Secret Service needs to answer.