Former first lady Melania Trump has criticized “holes” in the top leadership of the U.S. Secret Service following two apparent assassination attempts against the former president in three months.
The former first lady praised the men who protected her and her husband, but also addressed issues with the leadership of the Secret Service.
“The men that were with me and my husband did a great job, but the top leadership feels there are some holes in it and some problems,” the former first lady said. said in a sit-down interview with Fox's Sean Hannity that aired Thursday night. .
“So it's because of the highest leadership that it happened,” she added, noting that her team had asked “numerous times” for more security and support, but had been refused.
Her comments come just over two months after a gunman opened fire on President Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The July 13 incident left one event participant dead and two others injured when the former president was grazed in the ear by a bullet. The campaign will be back in town this weekend.
After the first attempt, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned after facing growing calls for her resignation and multiple investigations into how the gunman got so close to President Trump.
The remarks also come in the wake of a second apparent assassination attempt on the former president while he was out golfing last month.
After the second incident, Melania Trump called it a “miracle” that the former president survived both attempts in a separate Fox interview.
““I ran to the TV and rewound it,” he said of the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “I think something was watching over me even though I was only a few minutes late. So I couldn't actually see it live, but maybe three minutes or a few minutes later. .”
“On July 13th, such a miracle happened,” she said. “And he couldn't be with us,” she added.
The former first lady also reportedly said that “the truth needs to come out” following the assassination attempt in July.
“It was a horrifying and harrowing experience trying to end my husband's life,” the former first lady said in a video posted to her X account on Tuesday.
At the beginning of the interview, Melania Trump mentioned the division she noticed when her husband ran for the White House.
“I think the world, especially the United States, is more divided than ever,” she says. “We face many more dangers, especially seeing what's going on in the world, the threats we're under, and what my husband has been through in recent months. .”
Last month, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released a scathing report about repeated failures by the Secret Service to protect former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.
The report found that investigators had multiple opportunities to prevent the shooting that killed one person, including Trump, and injured several others, and that the failure that put the former president's life at risk was “foreseeable.” He argued that it was “possible” and “preventable.”
The Hill has reached out to the Secret Service for comment.
