Reacting to new reporting on the investigation into what went wrong when Donald Trump was almost assassinated at rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in mid-July, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele stated he has a few questions of his own.
Speaking with "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough, who seemed to be on the same page, Steele followed up on Scarborough's assertion that there was no way the former president's Secret Service security detail should have allowed him to put himself in further danger by posturing for the crowd after his ear was nipped by the assassin's bullet.
"Can you underline the danger to this country if something were to happen to Donald Trump, if something were to happen to Kamala Harris?" Scarborough prompted his guest. "We are on edge politically as a nation and that is why it's so critical that Donald Trump's safety and Kamala Harris' safety and the vice presidential candidates' safety is paramount over the next 50 days."
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"Joe, you made a point that everybody has kind of danced by and not really focused on what the lesson should be from both Butler as well as Trump's golf course incident that the safety and security of our presidential candidates and the president of the United States, Joe Biden, is paramount," Steele replied. "Because, as we saw in the aftermath of both of those assassination attempts, the conspiracy theories, the rife outright lying, the promulgation of, you know, all kinds of scenarios took hold of the imagination of the extremes. And they began to shape what could happen next."
"So it is paramount that those charged with the protection of our president and vice president, the heads of our government, be on point," he asserted before commenting, " Look, just my own opinion here — just watching this whole thing, that the behavior of the Secret Service of letting Donald Trump stand there and fist pump in the air and stand before he got in the car— to me that shows a compromised detail, where they have gotten in that orbit and in that Trump bubble and they are all about the man and all of that."
"What he wants them to do," Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski interjected.
"That's not the job," Steele agreed.
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