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A former combat veteran has offered his thoughts on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, saying the Secret Service agents assigned to the rally in which he was shot “should be fired.”
In case you (somehow) missed it, the presidential candidate was shot during a rally in Pennsylvania last week, after an attempted assassin fired at him, injuring his ear. The historic event has drawn commentary from a host of people including fellow politicians and, somewhat bizarrely, the owner of a sticker company, but now a veteran has weighed in on social media.
Taking to TikTok on July 18, user Pat Loller shared a scathing critique of the agents involved in protecting Trump during the rally. Loller, who said he is a former combat veteran and has “guarded VIPs in Afghanistan”, described the actions of the security personnel in protecting Trump as “egregious” and displaying an “unbelievable lack of professionalism”.
Loller prefaced the video by declaring that he still doesn’t think Trump should be president, before listing what he believed were a range of failures on the part of the Secret Service. Loller said the building upon which the attempted assassin was perched “should’ve absolutely been in the security perimeter” prior to the shooting, adding that Trump should have been “off that elevated position and pulled into an armored vehicle faster than anyone could blink.”
He went on to criticize the Secret Service’s delay in reaching Trump more quickly after the shooting, as well as them allowing Trump to “push them aside to poke his head out.” Loller said being able to get out of the Secret Service huddle made Trump a target again, and that photographers shouldn’t have been so close to incident.
“They have one job,” Loller added, “and that job is to move that VIP to somewhere safe, [but] they kept him on an elevated position and let him stick his head out.” The former veteran went on to declare it a “top to bottom failure”, from the initial canvassing of the area to the actual response once the threat was established.
“How are they this bad at their jobs?”, Loller questioned, “there is something deeply rotted about the Secret Service.” The video — which adds to broader theories around the supposed orchestration of the assassination and the failure of the Secret Service — prompted countless responses, amassing over 1 million views and nearly 300,000 comments.
Many users took Loller’s claims as evidence that the shooting was “planned”, “coordinated” or “a PR stunt”, while others more directly criticized the Secret Service as “goons” who “horribly executed” their orders. Others took the apparent failure of the security team more lightheartedly, saying it was an example of the Secret Service “quiet quitting” and that their response reminded them of WWE.
The investigation both into the attempted assassination and the response of the security personnel remains ongoing, and we’re sure even more people will come out of the woodwork with their own thoughts soon enough.