Secret Service leadership is covering up its failures in allowing an assassin’s bullet to strike Donald Trump, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview from the Republican National Convention.
Rubio first described his feelings upon watching Trump get struck by an assassin’s bullet.
“I was actually watching, I was watching it live,” Rubio told Breitbart Washington Bureau Chief Matt Boyle. “And my impression – you know, you see this thing and it takes a second for your brain to process it. It felt like maybe something had exploded in the crowd, and maybe something had sprayed on the President or whatever, because of his reaction. And then as you know, I can hear the agent screaming ‘Get down, down, down.’”
Matt Boyle Greets Marco Rubio at RNC 2024
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Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said his concerns rose during the uncertainty as Trump was on the ground pinned by Secret Service agents.
“You start to wonder, you know, for those few seconds, he’s on the ground, we have no idea what’s actually happened,” he said. “They finally stand him up. And obviously you feel relieved, and then you realize, oh, my God, they took a shot. And at one point, because of the way they pop, you’re like, ‘I don’t know what that is.’”
The Florida Senator reflected on the scale of the tragedy if Trump had been lethally struck.
“I don’t know where this country would be on this very day, what would have happened if God forbid, obviously, would have been tragic the loss of President Trump, but I think it would have been catastrophic and cataclysmic for America at this moment, in particular,” he said. “You don’t even want to think about how horrifying the place you would have been in as a country as a result.”
Rubio said his mind next turned to the shooter.
“Now, we get pretty clear indications early on that this was not carried out by some sort of highly skilled assassin or some ninja,” he said. “This guy was, from what we know so far, 20 years old, everybody saw him walking around, people were screaming that there’s this kid who’s up on a rooftop, they knew about it for four or five minutes, they let the President take the stage. And he was close enough to take a shot.”
Rubio made clear the failures were unacceptable. “I don’t have to be an expert at Secret Service to know that there is no way in the world some kid with a rifle should be on a roof 150 yards away at an open rally from the president. There just shouldn’t be. And that’s the responsibility of the Secret Service.”
He said the Secret Service and others inside and outside the Biden administration quickly began the blame game but that the American people should not be fooled.
“Even if you’d like to go around saying, well, we turn that over to local authorities – which is not true, those local police departments were in charge of traffic control – but even that, they’re still responsible for the whole package. They put it together.”
He continued:
I don’t know if they if someone that had sat around saying ‘Let’s respond to this in the most horrible way possible.’ Like, what’s the worst way you could respond? This is it. No transparency, bits and pieces leaking out every day, mostly not from them. They should be having daily press conferences, discussing. Here’s what we learned today. Here’s what we know so far. Here’s what we’re doing next, when you don’t do that. So now people start wondering, ‘Hey, why aren’t these people aren’t telling us more? Why do we need to find stuff out from X or people posting videos?’ This has been handled so poorly. And you have to put that at the top. It starts with I think [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas, but it really starts with the Secret Service Director.
Boyle pointed out that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle is in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention. Rubio’s fellow Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) confronted her Wednesday evening after she had refused to answer their questions about the failures responsible for Saturday’s assassination attempt.
“To be fair to them, they weren’t chasing her,” he said. “They met with her. They had an individual conversation and started asking her a question that she wouldn’t answer. She told them, ‘This is not the place to discuss this.’”
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Rubio disagreed with Cheatle. He said:
I think it actually is the place to discuss this. And she gets up and walks out. And then they follow her down the hall. Because apart from everything else, she thinks she’s not accountable, doesn’t have to answer anybody she does. She should be on TV every day, with a press conference telling everybody, “Here’s what we found, here’s what we know.”
I mean, it’s not like you’re going to take this case to court – the guy’s dead. So why aren’t we putting this out there every day so the Americans understand, and being honest, and identifying where the shortcomings were internally? And we haven’t had that. We haven’t had that, we still don’t have that. And I think it’s a combination of incompetence and arrogance.
Boyle referenced a conference call between Cheatle, the FBI Director, and Senators Wednesday where reports indicate Cheatle ended the call without taking questions from Senators.
“They were they were waiting in line, people had said I want to speak,” Rubio said. “And then they basically said, ‘Well, there’s no speakers, there’s no questions left,’ and they cut off the call. And that’s really what started stirring up the anger.”
Rubio said the authorities are not being forthcoming:
I think they’re in a mode of protecting their reputation and themselves at this point. And let me be clear, when I’m talking to you, I saw a bunch of agents here yesterday that are with the President’s detail. I know some of those guys. They’ve been with us for a long time. And I thanked them. I said, thank you for what you guys do. I’m not talking about the guys that, you know, I’m not talking about them. I’m talking with the leadership of the Secret Service. And I think they’ve messed up. I think they know they messed up and now they’re [saying] “We’re not going to tell you anything. We’re going to try to find somebody else to blame it on.”
Rubio blasted Secret Service leadership for trying to blame local law enforcement for the failures, saying the Secret Service leaders “are 100% responsible for it. They’re the ones that advanced that event, are the ones who are supposed to protect President Trump and all the other leaders that they protect. They don’t just protect these people – they’re protecting our country.”
He said the Secret Service’s key mission is preventing destructive political assassinations, “and they failed in that mission. They’re trying to cover that up. And I think they’re trying to find who else to blame.”
Boyle discussed widespread credit to divine intervention for saving Trump’s life, with the president miraculously turning his head the moment the assassin pulled the trigger.
“I don’t even want to think about what it would have meant to the country, people would have witnessed a live execution, would have been broadcast to the world, the impact would have been horrifying,” he said. “The President – I’m sure he’s said it to people, he said it to me – he shouldn’t be here right now. He knows that, we know that.”
He continued, “I don’t know of any other way to explain it but the hand of God. We all witnessed a miracle. We literally witnessed a miracle broadcast on national television.”
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.