The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump was a “major Secret Service failure,” Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) said in an interview with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and revealed that there would be “intense scrutiny” from Republican lawmakers.
When Hinson heard the news before a local event on Saturday, she said her first thought was to pray for Trump.
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“I knew that if anyone could survive that situation, it was him, and I think we all saw him stand up and show typical Trump strength, and I think he did exactly what he should have done, which is, he thought about what would happen if he were in that situation, and I couldn’t believe how strong he was,” she said, adding that Trump instinctively knew he needed to send a “signal to the American people that they can’t count him out.”
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“I believe this was a major failure of the Secret Service,” the congressman said, noting that there would be “rigorous scrutiny” by the oversight committee.
“I had a call from members of the House Republican Conference yesterday who are going to be doing some hard scrutiny here. They’re going to be before the oversight committee next week. … I sit on the Homeland Security Appropriations Committee and we’re definitely going to be asking these questions because it’s American taxpayer money that’s funding these entities,” she said.
“I think every American hopes that it’s just incompetence. I hope that there aren’t bigger problems going on,” she said, stressing the importance of the independent investigation because “we need to get to the root of the problem.”
“Most importantly, we cannot change what happened on Saturday. Sadly, one American died Saturday and several others were injured. But we cannot allow something like this to happen again in the future. I mean, think about how close we came to an event that would have further disrupted and dysfunctioned our country rather than invigorated it,” the congressman said.
“I think we have to be careful to get the facts right. I have confidence in my colleagues. Jamie Comer is a great chair. He will find answers to these questions,” she continued.
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“They need to do their job,” she said of the Secret Service.
“They need to protect their president, right?” she stressed, explaining that she had spoken to her two young sons about how much Trump had “accomplished” after the potentially deadly attack on him.
“Not only is he tolerant of attacks, he’s not afraid to fight,” she said, because Trump is someone she’s been battling since she first decided to run for president in 2015. “He’s been smeared by the left, and they continue to push false and inflammatory rhetoric about President Trump,” the congressman said.
“President Trump loves this country, that’s so clear to me. … So I hope that all Americans will root for the future of our country, because the future is bright,” she said, emphasizing that President Trump has made it clear he is willing to “take arrows, literally arrows and bullets for us.”
