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00:00More details are emerging about the man suspected in an apparent assassination attempt targeting Donald Trump.
00:06According to court documents, he camped outside a Florida golf course with food and rifle for nearly 12 hours.
00:14Ryan Wesley Rouse, lying in wait for the former president before a Secret Service agent thwarted the potential attack and opened fire.
00:23The 58-year-old has appeared in court facing firearms charges.
00:27Joining me now is international affairs commentator Douglas Herbert.
00:32Doug, the Secret Service coming under renewed scrutiny, even Joe Biden himself saying they need more resources.
00:40How much of this has been seen as a Secret Service failure?
00:44There's a little of everything in there, Annette.
00:46The acting director of the Secret Service, Ronald Roe Jr., basically has said that the methods used by the Secret Service on Sunday,
00:55on the day of this apparent assassination attempt, were effective.
00:58Effective because a Secret Service agent did spot the rifle barrel poking out of a fence on the golf course perimeter
01:06and was able to intercept and stop the would-be assailant before he even got off the shot.
01:14On the other hand, he also acknowledged that the Secret Service did not do a sweep of the perimeter of the golf course,
01:21that is, check all around the golf course before Donald Trump started golfing there, something you might presume that they would have done.
01:27But the reason, perhaps, they didn't do it is something he said later to reporters when he was speaking in Palm Beach.
01:33Basically that the Secret Service is right now facing a real change, a draconian change, if you will,
01:41in what is called, in euphemistic terms, the general threat environment.
01:46And what he means by that is America is now facing toxic politics, more hate speech, more violent rhetoric, and more violence.
01:55And that makes for more potential threats to a president, whether a current or former president, such as Donald Trump.
02:02He basically is pleading in the same way that Joe Biden said, as you said at the outset, for more personnel, more ability for them to do overtime, more facilities.
02:14Facilities means the equipment that they need to effectively protect a president.
02:20It's almost mission impossible given the environment in America today.
02:24I will say this. He said Trump wasn't scheduled to go out on the golf course on Sunday.
02:28Yet anyone who knows and has followed Donald Trump's administration formerly, and even as a former president, knows that he goes golfing almost every Sunday on one of his golf courses around Mar-a-Lago.
02:39So it's hardly, it doesn't take a rocket scientist, if you are a would-be assassin, to perhaps surmise that he might show up there on a Sunday.
02:47Donald Trump in the meantime saying the Democrats have made him a target by saying he was a threat to democracy.
02:54But hasn't Trump made the very same accusations against his Democratic opponents?
02:59He is that, and then he's up the ante. He's done that and some.
03:03You know, Adam Kinzinger, who's now a very prominent never-Trumper, he's become a staunch Republican critic of Trump.
03:11He said that for MAGA, Trump's movement, to pretend that they didn't light this fire, meaning the violence that led to this apparent assassination attempt, is gaslighting to the 100th power.
03:22What he means by that is it is very rich for Trump and his cohorts to try to turn the tables and say that it is the Democrats saying that he's a threat to democracy, which is endangering his life.
03:33In fact, what they say is it is Trump who is the original stoker of the mob that assaulted the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, that led to the investigation by the Congress.
03:45It was Trump who, during his trial on the Hush Money trial in New York, which was ultimately indicted on 34 felony counts, said that if he were to be indicted, it would lead to potential death and destruction, Donald Trump's words.
03:59He also promised a, quote, bloodbath if he lost in November, this coming November.
04:05He himself has said the Democrats are the ones who are out to destroy this country.
04:10Doug Herbert, thank you for that analysis.