Melania Criticizes ‘Holes’ in Secret Service Leadership

Melania Trump, in the second part of her interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday, discussed the July assassination attempt on her husband, Donald Trump, and criticized Secret Service leadership.

The former first lady, who has raised the possibility that the attempt was part of a conspiracy, first described her reaction to it.

“When he was on the floor for a while and you don’t know for those seconds, minutes—you don’t know what’s really going on,” she said. “I didn’t know that he was hit in the ear. You always question what it could be. It was really frightening, and life stops—in that few minutes it was really very difficult.”

While she did commend Secret Service agents on the ground that day, Trump pointed a finger at “top leadership.”

“There are some holes and some problems. It’s from the top leadership that happened,” she said, adding that for the agency to previously deny the Trump campaign’s request for additional protection was unwise.

The director of the agency at the time, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned just days after testifying before Congress about lapses under her watch.

“I watched the hearing, the testimonies,” Trump said, “and it kind of surprised me that one of the former Secret Service [agents] would say that he suggests that our family gets private security plus Secret Service and I’m thinking like, ‘Wow, this is really what he has in mind.’”

“I started questioning it, because I know that the people who are around us there are fantastic but for the top leadership, you have question marks. And that’s all on this administration that they could give permission what to do.”

A bipartisan Senate report later detailed the agency’s failures that day.