A U.S. Secret Service spokesman summed up the extraordinary afternoon at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, Florida, in five chilling words: “We live in dangerous times.”
The spokesman made the remarks at a press conference on Sunday afternoon, just hours after a man was spotted carrying an AK-47-style semi-automatic rifle just a few hundred yards from where Donald Trump was playing golf.
The FBI is treating the incident as the first assassination attempt on the former president in the space of a few months, and photos released by police appear to show a primitive sniper's nest, which is sure to raise tough security questions about how someone was able to get so close to Trump.
Details released at the press conference underscored how Trump came within a hair of being shot again, moments after a gunman grazed Trump's ear at a rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania, on July 13. Asked by reporters how far the gunman spotted on Sunday was from the apparent target, West Palm Beach Sheriff Rick Bradshaw said, “Probably between 300 and 500 yards, but with a rifle and a scope, that's not that far.”
The security emergency began at 1:30 p.m. Sunday when the Secret Service reported shots were fired while President Trump was playing golf with friend and Republican real estate donor Steve Witkoff between the fifth and sixth holes of the 18-hole course.
Bradshaw explained that the area was surrounded by dense shrubs — a nightmare for law enforcement — allowing the suspect to hide on the side of the trail and remain largely unseen. Federal agents said the suspect had an AK-47-style rifle and a scope, as well as two backpacks and a GoPro camera, which Bradshaw said indicated he intended to record his actions.
Initial analysis immediately following the incident suggested there were two competing narratives.
The first story focused on how vulnerable Trump was even after heightened security following the Butler incident, and how easy it was for a heavily armed person to enter the golf course and hide in the bushes.
Bradshaw said that if Trump had been a sitting president at the time, the Secret Service would never have allowed him to play golf in such an open environment, but “because he's not a sitting president, they're limited to what they deem possible.”
The second theory is more positive: While the Butler County assassination attempt on President Trump raised serious questions about the Secret Service's competence and led to then-Director Kimberly Cheatle's resignation, Sunday's incident seems to shine a much brighter light on the service.
The suspect was spotted by a Secret Service agent on forward security a hole or two ahead of Trump, who spotted the barrel of a rifle peeking through dense vegetation on either side of the course and engaged the suspect, firing between four and six shots.
“The Secret Service did exactly what they were supposed to do and their agents did a fantastic job,” Bradshaw said.
From there, the suspect's arrest proceeded like clockwork. After being shot at, the suspect dropped his rifle and fled through the brush, then jumped into a black Nissan that had been strategically left there, likely to allow for a quick getaway. And what's surprising in this situation is that a passerby saw the suspect flee and took a photo of the car, including the license plate number.
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Such is the power of Florida's surveillance technology that within minutes the license plate was picked up by a state license plate reader, and the fleeing suspect was quickly tracked onto I-95 where he was quickly detained at gunpoint.
Sheriff William Snyder of neighboring Martin County, where the arrest took place, said the suspect was unarmed and “appeared relatively calm and showed little emotion.”
The exemplary way in which federal and local law enforcement worked together to thwart a potential disaster and capture the suspects in a clean sweep will take a lot of heat off this case as the inevitable finger-pointing begins, but another original story will also emerge and demand explanations.
How could Trump have come so close to being shot in Pennsylvania and then gone on to play golf in a place where security was seemingly impossible? What is happening in a country with such a painful history of successful assassinations as America that a former president has been targeted not once but twice in such a short space of time?
A sharp-eyed Secret Service agent saved the United States from a potentially unforgivable disaster. Is the security enough?
“The threat level is high,” a Secret Service spokesman said. “We live in dangerous times.”
