President Donald Trump said the Secret Service “blew it” when law enforcement failed to secure the outdoor venue in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he was almost fatally shot two years ago to the date on Monday.
His remarks were in response to a recent report from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General. The 64-page report showed that Secret Service agents missed over 100 alerts from local law enforcement officers about the suspect who carried out the assassination attempt from the roof of a nearby building.
“Well, they blew Butler because they had one building that was empty, and they blew it,” Trump said on Fox & Friends over the phone, adding that law enforcement “should have had somebody standing on that building” to prevent suspect Thomas Crooks from firing there.
That said, the president gave credit to the on-duty Secret Service counter-sniper who killed Crooks from afar.
“Now at the same time, David, our sniper from 300 yards, was able to act within less than four seconds and took out somebody that he didn’t know existed, which was unbelievable, the job he did, because if he didn’t do that, you would have had a lot of people and maybe not me, because they were on top of me pretty quickly,” Trump said.
“I had a lot of people on top of me, and they were very brave,” he continued. “The Secret Service was very brave. They were on top of me very, very fast. They saw what was happening. Everybody saw very quickly. I knew exactly what was happening.”
Trump was delivering a campaign speech during the 2024 presidential election cycle on July 13 when Crooks’s bullet pierced his right ear. The then-former president immediately went down to the ground as Secret Service agents rushed to protect him.
In the rush of events, Trump said, Secret Service agents believed he was harmed more badly than he was because of the amount of blood.
“I knew it was the ear,” he said. “They thought it was all over. The ear bleeds more than any. So I got hit in the ear, and it was a bloody mess. But I knew I only got hit there, and they thought I got hit at many different locations because of the blood, the amount of blood, and, you know, they blew it. They blew it because of the one thing. After that, they were incredible. They were very brave.”
Trump reiterated gratitude for surviving the assassination attempt, saying he got lucky and that “God was watching” over him that day.
Corey Comperatore, a volunteer fire chief, was killed during the shooting while shielding his wife and daughters from gunfire. Two other rally attendees were shot, but they survived.
The Secret Service missed 102 radio transmissions about Crooks during the Butler rally and instead received only five phone calls and three text messages about the suspect, according to the DHS inspector general’s report released late last month.
“As a result, Secret Service members did not alert President Trump’s protective detail about concerns of a suspicious person,” the report reads. “This is because the Secret Service did not establish a joint communications room with representatives from all law enforcement agencies. Multiple protective detail members said if Secret Service members had informed them of the ongoing search for a suspicious person, they would have protected President Trump by delaying his speech or removing him from the stage.”
In September 2024, Trump survived another assassination attempt that was averted by a Secret Service agent who spotted the would-be sniper, Ryan Routh, quickly at Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Routh has since been sentenced to life in federal prison plus an additional 84 months for the attempted assassination and firearms offenses.
Another attack intended for Trump and administration officials unfolded at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington in late April. The shooting was quickly thwarted by Secret Service personnel after a would-be gunman, suspected to be Cole Allen, rushed past a security checkpoint. Allen is awaiting trial for the attempted assassination of the president, among other federal charges.