Former US President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump blamed current President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for last month’s failed assassination attempt against him, saying they had made it difficult for the Secret Service to protect him.
Trump’s claim came in an interview with Dr. Phil.
“When this happened, people would ask, whose fault is it?” Trump said. “I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’ fault. And I’m the opponent. They were weaponizing government against me, they brought in the whole DOJ to try and get me, they weren’t too interested in my health and safety.”
“They were making it very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service,” added the former President.
Trump appeared to blame Biden and Harris for the political rhetoric before the rally, and suggested it may have inspired the attempt on his life.
“They’re saying I’m a threat to democracy,” he told Dr. Phil. “They would say that, that was standard line, just keep saying it, and you know that can get assassins or potential assassins going. That’s a terrible thing … Maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric.”
Multiple Secret Service personnel from the Pittsburgh Field Office and one member of Trump’s security detail have been reassigned to administrative duties and ordered to work from home in the wake of the assassination attempt during Trump’s July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The Secret Service admitted in the days after the attempt on Trump’s life that the former president’s security detail had complained about a lack of security and personnel in the previous two years, acknowledging that they denied some requests.
The agency is undergoing multiple inquiries including an internal review, congressional investigations and an independent commission empaneled by the Department of Homeland Security.
Days after the assassination attempt on Trump, the inspector general of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) opened an investigation into the Secret Service’s planning of the rally.
An eyewitness to the attempted assassination told the BBC after the incident that he had witnessed “a guy crawling, bear-crawling, up the roof of the building beside us, 50 feet away from us. So we're standing there, we're pointing at the guy crawling up the roof."
They could clearly see the rifle the gunman carried. "The police are down there, running around on the ground. We're like, 'Hey man, there's a guy on the roof with a rifle.' And the police are like, 'huh, what?' Like they didn't know what was going on. We're like, 'Hey, right here on the roof, we can see him from right here! We see him! He's crawling!"
A video posted to X showed onlookers noticing the gunman and attempting to alert police to the danger for a significant period of time before he opened fire.