A Senate hearing on the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump at a recent campaign rally became tense on Tuesday, at times descending into a shouting match.
One vocal critic of acting Secret Service director Ronald Rowe was U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who accused the agency of making a political decision to deny Trump extra security during the rally.
The Secret Service has received bipartisan backlash for its handling of the former president’s campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, when a bullet grazed Trump’s ear. One attendee was killed by the shooter. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that a majority of Americans doubt the Secret Service’s ability to protect candidates from political violence.
“It’s a big concern on a lot of Americans’ minds: What were the failures, if there were failures, during this assassination attempt of former President Trump?,” said James Barragán, politics reporter for the Texas Tribune. “Senator Cruz really went after the acting director of the Secret Service, saying that he believed that these were politically motivated decisions to deny additional support staff for the Secret Service to the Trump campaign”
Rowe has served in the position since 1999, under both Republican and Democratic presidents.
“(He) really took issue with that and said that these were not political decisions,” Barragán said. “But that does reflect a sentiment among a lot of Americans and even our senior senator, John Cornyn, who’s usually more calm and more tempered, really raised questions about, well, ‘how could you guys have missed these things? How could you have turned things over to local law enforcement? So expect there to be more and more heated questioning of the Secret Service.”
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