Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson (Democrat) said she has confidence in the police officers who will be dispatched to this week’s Republican National Convention, where former President Donald Trump is set to be formally nominated as the party’s presidential candidate following the assassination attempt on him over the weekend.
Asked on CNN on Sunday if he felt the city of Milwaukee was “safe and secure” for the Republican convention, Johnson replied, “Yes, I do. I have confidence in the Secret Service. I have confidence, of course, in the Milwaukee Police Department.”
“As I mentioned, we’ve been working on this for about 18 months now. Milwaukee has been designated a National Special Safety and Security Event. So this is the highest designation, even higher than what we saw just recently in Pennsylvania,” he added.
A shooting at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, over the weekend left the former president wounded, with a bullet piercing his ear. As of Sunday, one attendee was dead and two injured were in stable condition, according to Pennsylvania State Police.
Authorities said the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was shot and killed by authorities moments later after opening fire from a nearby rooftop. Investigators said Sunday they were still determining the motive for the shooting. Bomb-making materials were found in Crooks’ car and home, and his cell phone was sent to an FBI lab in Quantico for further processing and analysis, authorities confirmed Sunday.
CNN anchor Abby Phillips pressed Johnson about why security plans had not changed in the wake of the assassination attempt.
“Again, this is the highest level of designation for the Republican National Convention,” he said. “And by the way, what happened in Pennsylvania months before it happened was horrific and should never have happened.”
“This shouldn’t happen to kids going to school, or people going to church, or people going to the grocery store,” Johnson added. “And it shouldn’t happen to someone running for president of the United States. But several months ago, I and several other partners worked on a bipartisan basis to bring in additional resources for this convention.”
When pressed about reports that Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, is asking the Secret Service to reconsider its decision to allow firearms at a soft border rather than a hard border, Johnson said, “I don’t think this is a Secret Service issue. I think it’s a Wisconsin issue.”
“There was an opportunity for the city of Milwaukee to put more restrictions in place outside of the city,” he said. “Unfortunately, state law doesn’t allow us to put stricter, no, stricter restrictions on individuals wanting to own a gun. That’s a state law issue. In Wisconsin, local ordinances don’t override state law.”
Republican National Convention officials said Sunday that U.S. Secret Service would not make any changes to its security plans.
“We do not anticipate any changes to security plans for this event,” Audrey Gibson Cicchino, Secret Service coordinator for the Republican National Convention, said at a press conference.
“We are confident in our security plan for this event and we are well prepared. This has been an 18-month process. We have worked together over the last 18 months to develop an operational security plan for all aspects of security associated with this event,” she said.
Trump arrived in Milwaukee on Sunday night after posting on social media that he decided to leave for the convention earlier that day because he “cannot allow a ‘shooter’ or potential assassin to force schedule or other changes.”
in interview Trump told another Washington Examiner reporter that he had rewritten his speech for this week’s convention to focus on uniting the country.
He is scheduled to formally accept the Republican nomination on Thursday night and is widely expected to name his running mate, possibly during the party’s convention on Monday.
