Former president Donald Trump leveled partial blame against President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the assassination attempt against him, suggesting without evidence that they personally made it more difficult for the Secret Service to better protect him.
“When this happened, people would ask, whose fault is it?” Trump said in an interview that aired Tuesday night with Phil McGraw, who is known widely by his TV nickname, Dr. Phil. “I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault. And I’m the opponent. Look, they were weaponizing government against me, they brought in the whole DOJ to try and get me, they weren’t too interested in my health and safety,” he added, reprising his claim that Biden used the Justice Department to go after him through legal charges. Biden has said he has never involved himself in decisions about charging individuals.
“They were making it very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service,” Trump said.
Trump’s comments marked an escalation in accusations against a sitting president and vice president, the latter of whom is his current opponent. Although Trump has previously written on social media that the “Biden/Harris administration did not properly protect” him, his comments in the interview took his claims a step further by personally blaming Biden and Harris, even though both have condemned the assassination attempt.
Trump’s aides have had a tense relationship with Secret Service leadership over the former president’s security after top officials repeatedly denied requests for additional protection before the attempted assassination. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned last month amid anger over the agency’s inability to prevent the attempted assassination.
The attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pa., highlighted the significant challenges the agency has faced in protecting Trump. The Secret Service recently approved a plan to increase Trump’s protection at outdoor campaign events, including using bulletproof glass. Some members of Biden’s protective detail have been dispatched to Trump and Harris ahead of the November election.
But no public evidence has emerged that Biden or Harris were personally involved in decisions about Trump’s protection.
The FBI has said that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, appears to have acted alone and have found little evidence that ideology drove his actions. Yet Trump and other Republicans have baselessly blamed the assassination attempt on Democratic rhetoric warning that Trump would undermine democracy. Trump echoed those claims in his interview with Dr. Phil.
“They’re saying I’m a threat to democracy,” Trump said. “They would say that, that was standard line, just keep saying it, and you know that can get assassins or potential assassins going. That’s a terrible thing … Maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric.”
Trump has repeatedly made baseless accusations about the weaponization of government, ranging from claims about his legal cases to his recent suggestion that the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised economics data because of a whistleblower. A special counsel acting independently of the Trump White House brought the two federal cases against him.