Almost two months have passed since former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated during a presidential rally in Butler, Pa., and questions still remain about how security failed to protect the GOP presidential nominee from harm's way.
In an interview on Thursday's broadcast of FM Talk 106.5's "The Jeff Poor Show," U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Hoover) said the "lax" security on July 13 in Pennsylvania "raises some serious questions" about whether it was "intentional" or "incompetence" from poor training.
"[C]ertainly there appears to be some ambivalence about it, about his security. This was not a site that would easily be secured because of the number of buildings and other issues there. But they certainly, I think, were very lax in their security plan," Palmer outlined. "It had numerous holes in it, and that's something that I don't understand, Jeff, is when you're charged with the protection of someone that high-profile ... very likely the next President of the United States, and you leave that many gaps in your security plan, that raises some serious questions."
"I don't know if it was intentional or just incompetence, or just lack of training ... That's what we've got to find out. And there are other questions about the individual, the shooter, and the other things that he was, that he had with him, the IEDs that he had, that he had made and had in the trunk of his car. And I've been told there was one by the main gas line, in one of those buildings. There's just a lot of questions that need to be answered, and I think there's a lot of different people we need to be talking to.”
Following the shooting, Palmer, a member of the House Oversight Committee, grilled then-Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle, who has since stepped down from her position, and criticized her for her failure to protect Trump.
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