Secret Service Reform Calls After Second Trump Assassination Attempt

Joe Biden has stressed the Secret Service “needs more help,” amid growing calls for its reform following the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, was arrested on Sunday after the Secret Service spotted a gunman by a bush-lined fence at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida.
President Biden told reporters outside the White House on Monday that Congress should increase Secret Service resources. “Thank God the President [former President Trump] is OK,” he said. “One thing I want to make clear, the Secret Service needs more help. I think Congress should respond to their needs.”
Biden’s voice adds to the calls for reform, with congress members after the assassination attempt suggesting the organisation is “compromised,” lacks leadership and should be run under its previous government department.
Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned following criticism after the previous attempt on Trump’s life during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13—nine weeks earlier. Ronald L. Rowe, Jr. has served as acting director since July 23.
Despite an enhanced protective detail after the first attempt, concerns persist about gaps in the agency’s protective perimeter strategy.
Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw told reporters at a press briefing Sunday afternoon Trump would have had more security had he been president. “At this level that he is at right now, he’s not the sitting president — if he was, we would have had this entire golf course surrounded,” he told reporters Sunday. “But because he’s not, the security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible.”
Newsweek has contacted the U.S. Secret Service for comment via email.
Rep. Tim Burchett, the Republican from Tennessee, said shortly after reports of the second Trump security breach that the Secret Service is “compromised” and lacking leadership.
“The problem is you’ve got a Secret Service, at least in my opinion, and in the public’s eye, that is compromised and that it lacks in leadership,” Burchett told Fox News.
He argued that the agency should be overhauled under a future Trump administration.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, the Democrat from Connecticut, who chairs the Senate subcommittee investigating security failures in the Butler incident, emphasized the need for scrutiny. “Certainly, a second serious incident, apparently involving an assault weapon, is deeply alarming and appalling,” Blumenthal said.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of Trump, echoed Blumenthal’s concerns. “There are so many questions to be answered. How could this happen in the fashion it did?” Graham said in a Fox News interview.
He called for structural reforms, proposing that the Secret Service be moved back under the Department of Treasury from the Department of Homeland Security, where it currently sits.
“We need more resources. We need to clean house in terms of leadership,” Graham added, saying that agents on the ground performed heroically but were let down by systemic flaws.
Former Secret Service agent Michael Matranga, who once protected President Barack Obama, suggested to the New York Times that Trump should have a security detail comparable to that of a sitting president, calling the incidents “unprecedented.”
In July’s shooting, 20-year-old gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at Trump from a rooftop less than 164 yards from where the former president was speaking before being killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper. Trump’s right ear was pierced in the gunfire. Rallygoer Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former firefighter, was killed and three others injured.