The Buck Doesn’t Stop With Biden

Who’s in charge of protecting the presidential candidates in this country?

AP/Alex Brandon
President Trump on September 14, 2024, at Las Vegas. AP/Alex Brandon

When President Trump campaigns in Michigan today and in New York on Wednesday, he should have a full Secret Service presidential protection detail just like President Biden and Vice President Harris do. He should have had it a long time ago, to protect him from the would-be assassins inspired by the toxic attacks Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden use against him.

You might not be able to prove it in a court of law, but you’ll never convince me that this Democratic climate of toxic attacks on Trump isn’t a major reason for the two attempted assassinations on his life. Political rhetoric has never been so foul as what leading Democrats, especially Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, have repeatedly called Trump. 

Again and again: Trump is a threat to our democracy. A threat to the nation. An existential threat. A threat to the very soul of this country. An extremist threat. And on, and on, and on.

You have to be a nut job to want to assassinate a president— any president — but this guy was clearly a Trump hater, and in his social media postings and various media interviews, he echoes the extremist rhetoric of leading Democrats against Trump.

Another point worth making in this terrible story is the simple question of who is in charge of the Secret Service. The short answer is the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas. The longer and more important answer is Mr. Biden.

“Open Borders” Mayorkas has been a complete failure and, incredibly enough, and is nowhere to be found after two assassination attempts on Trump. No accountability, whatsoever. The bigger question is, where is Mr. Biden? Why didn’t he actually fire the first Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheatle, after the incredible mistakes at Butler, Pennsylvania?

A point made by Trump in his debate with Ms. Harris is that they never fire anybody — the Afghanistan catastrophe, the open border catastrophe, the inflation catastrophe — nobody ever gets fired in the Biden-Harris administration. This is peculiar.

“Who’s in charge?” Mark Levin asked on Fox News. “We don’t have any idea who’s in charge. Who’s in charge of protecting a presidential candidate in this country?”

Mr. Levin added that “I’m a little older. I served in the Reagan administration and a chief of staff to Attorney General Meese. And let me tell you what would have happened in that administration. Ronald Reagan would have picked up the phone. He would have called Attorney General Meese. He would have said, you’re in charge of getting to the bottom of this and you’ve got 48 hours to do it.”

President Truman’s phrase — “the buck stops here” — has never been part of Mr. Biden’s vocabulary.

Not only should Mr. Biden have fired Ms. Cheatle, but it’s almost inconceivable that after the Butler, Pennsylvania, debacle, Mr. Biden didn’t immediately provide Trump with all the protection received by a current President.

Inconceivable.

And hats off to the Secret Service agent who miraculously spotted the barrel of the gun of the would-be assassin peeking out of the bushes at the Trump golf course. As much as this was a great personal achievement, though, unfortunately it was still a bureaucratic failure by the Secret Service.

The perimeter outside the golf course should have been covered; multi-layered security should be routine. It wasn’t. And it wasn’t at Butler field, either. According to some senators, the preliminary report regarding the Secret Service problems at Butler is going to be a disaster.

For his part, Trump said yesterday, “nothing will slow me down, I will never surrender.” It seems providential that he has survived two assassination attempts. God has saved his life twice. As Trump’s son Eric told Sean Hannity yesterday: “my father is running out of lives here.”

From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business Network.


The New York Sun

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