Trump assassination attempt: do former presidents need more protection?

The head of the US Secret Service has admitted that a "paradigm shift" is needed in the agency's approach to protecting current and former presidents, following a second assassination attempt on Donald Trump in as many months.

Acting director Ronald Rowe said the agency needed to "get out of a reactive model and get to a readiness model". He acknowledged that resources had been stretched thin during a particularly divisive presidential campaign season.

The assassination attempts on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July and at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday have "forced a reckoning" of the Secret Service's "long-time model and its relevance in today's threat environment", said The New York Times (NYT).

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What did the commentators say?

Traditionally, former presidents, major-party candidates and visiting dignitaries receive significantly less protection than sitting presidents and vice-presidents.

Ronald Kessler, an author who specialises in the Secret Service, told BBC News around 300 agents are assigned to the sitting president and vice-president at any one time, compared to the "90 to 100" who protect a former president.

But Trump "broke the mould" for shaping security details when he left office in 2021, said the NYT, because he "maintained an intense schedule that demanded a suite of protection not previously seen for former commanders in chief".

On top of that, he has remained a "lightning rod", said John Sandweg, a former acting general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that oversees the Secret Service, and "clearly requires a much greater share of resources than other former presidents".

The Washington Post reported that senior officials at the Secret Service repeatedly rejected requests for additional protection from Trump's security team in the two years leading up to the attempt on his life in July.

Now success in preventing the would-be gunman on Sunday from firing any shots is being overshadowed by "renewed questions" about whether the Secret Service "lacks the manpower, funding or operational flexibility" to consistently protect the former president, said CNN.

"Whatever other problems" the Secret Service has, said the National Review, this one can "easily be addressed with more resources and by treating Trump – twice a target, now – as if he is the incumbent president for security purposes".

The wider issue is that for years the agency has been "plagued by insufficient budgets, understaffing, antiquated technology, and scandal", said Time.

Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado, the top Democrat in the bipartisan task force investigating the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, admitted the Secret Service has "done more with less for decades", leaving agents overworked and undermining its "level of readiness".  

The whole budget of the Secret Service – $3.1 billion in 2024, according to the Congressional Research Service, covering around 8,000 staff including special agents, administrative and technical personnel – is "about the same as one stealth bomber", said Kessler. "The whole agency is suffering with a lack of money and staff."

When needed, it draws on federal law enforcement officers from other agencies. But "Congress should explore whatever creative funding ideas it needs to so that the agency can 'build a surge capacity' from within a cadre of special agents," Sandweg told Time.

What next?

In response to the latest assassination attempt on Trump, the Biden administration has asked Congress for special permission to increase Secret Service spending, warning that without it, the service would have "insufficient resources" to enhance its protective operations.

"The service needs more help. I think the Congress should respond to their needs, if they, in fact, need more service people," President Biden told reporters at the White House on Monday.

CNN concluded, however, that "issues of culture" rather than money "could be at the root of the Secret Service's staffing shortfalls". A survey of the best places to work in the federal government ranked the agency at 413 out of 459 departments.