The task force assigned to investigate what went wrong the day of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump will show whether the lapse in security was willful and intentional, said Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont.
"Well, here is what the task force is going to determine, and I kind of divide it as a former Navy SEAL. And, look, I've been on diplomatic security, I've been in charge of heads of state, you know, protection," Zinke said Friday during an appearance on Newsmax's "The Chris Salcedo Show."
"And I divide it really quickly into two. You know, preshot. And you look at the surveillance, the lack of coms, they had the shooter identified. The number of mistakes, negligence, you know, this program is not long enough. And then postshot," he added.
President Ronald Reagan, when he was shot in 1981, "was in the car. The round actually didn't hit him directly," Zinke said.
"It was bounced off the armor. What happens with President Trump? You know, he's bleeding.
"If you've ever been on a pop-up range or, you know, a range, they hit him. And so, you don't know if there's one shooter, two shooters. It could be one of those guys in Las Vegas, remember, that had unlimited ammo and killed about 50.
"So what happens? He's hit. Rather than wrap him up in a ballistic blanket and take him away from the scene, they actually allow two more pop-ups like a target," he said.
"And so this is the bottom line. We know there's negligence. We know there's incompetence. We know there's violation of protocol, etc. etc. Was it willing and intentional? Yeah. That's where, that's where the rubber hits the road.
"If it was willing intentionally to atrophy the security in a position to allow the president of the United States — whether Trump or [Joe] Biden — to reduce his security profile, to invite in many cases an attack that is serious, so that, to me, there's a big difference between assassination, you know, attempt and a plot," Zinke said.
"And I guarantee you the task force, the speaker has put some good people on board. Mike Waltz is in there. All of us are going to be able to ask questions and get to the truth, because America wants to know. I want to know, and you want to know," he added.
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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