Donald Trump set to return to campaign trail TODAY after blaming suspected assassination attempt on...
Donald Trump set to return to campaign trail TODAY after blaming suspected assassination attempt on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at bizarre crypto launch event
, updated
- Trump heads to Michigan to resume campaigning seven weeks from election
- It comes two days after Secret Service agents found a gunman at his golf course
Donald Trump today sets out on the campaign trail, heading for Michigan to drum up more support ahead of November's presidential election just two days after an apparent assassination attempt against him was foiled at his golf course in Florida .
The Republican nominee and ex-president was whisked away by the Secret Service after a gunman was discovered on the Trump International golf course in West Palm Beach on Sunday, in the second such close call for Trump in as many months.
As security officials said they believed the suspect acted alone, Trump sought to blame Harris and President Joe Biden for the scare, citing what he called their rhetoric about him endangering democracy.
Both Biden and Harris have issued statements denouncing the apparent assassination bid, with Harris saying 'violence has no place in America.'
But Trump has claimed that rhetoric from Biden and Harris 'is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country.'
Trump's return to the campaign trail today also comes less than 24 hours after he unveiled a new cryptocurrency business in a bizarre launch event hosted on X Spaces.
The former president engaged in a wide-ranging discussion that touched on the second apparent assassination attempt against him on Sunday and his shift from being a cryptocurrency sceptic to embracing it.
But neither he nor his family provided much detail about the business - World Liberty Financial - including how it was formed and financed, or what services it would provide.
It is unusual for a presidential candidate to launch a new business so close to an election, but Trump has been looking to court digital asset advocates and their dollars ahead of Election Day on November 5.
After previously deriding cryptocurrencies as a scam, Trump has embraced digital assets during his re-election campaign, promising to make the United States the 'crypto capital of the planet' with light-touch regulation and a national stockpile of bitcoin.
Trump's Democratic rival Kamala Harris will also be campaigning this week, as she heads to the key battleground state of Pennsylvania for an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ).
That event and another interview with Hispanic media, recorded Monday and set to air today, will be the first time Harris will have an opportunity to react in person to the apparent bid on Trump's life.
The shocking incident unfolded at around 1:30pm on Sunday when a Secret Service agent tasked with protecting Trump as he strolled around the links in West Palm Beach noticed a strange object poking through the chain fence surrounding the course.
He quickly realised the object was in fact the barrel of a scoped rifle belonging to a gunman who lay in wait undetected for nearly 12 hours on the edge of the course.
The agent opened fire, driving him away before he had a direct line of sight to Trump or could fire a shot.
The suspect, 58-year-old Ryan Routh, was apprehended roughly half an hour later after a brief high-speed chase along Interstate I-95.
Martin County Sheriff William D. Snyder, who was on the scene when Routh was taken into custody, told how the suspect was weirdly calm as he was detained at gunpoint.
Sheriff Synder said: 'He never asked, ''what is this about?'' Obviously, law enforcement with long rifles, blue lights, a lot going on. He never questioned it.
'He had a very, very kind of detached, flat face. So I felt like it wasn't bothering him,' he later told Fox News.
Officials found that the loaded SKS-style 7.62x39 calibre rifle he abandoned at the scene had a serial number that 'was obliterated and unreadable to the naked eye.'
The agent who wrote the complaint said that such rifles are not manufactured in Florida, and it's likely the rifle had 'travelled in interstate or foreign commerce.'
It was later revealed that cell phone location data obtained by the FBI indicated Routh 'was located in the vicinity of the area of the tree line' at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach from just before 2:00am on Sunday morning until shots were fired at 1:30pm that afternoon.
Routh was hauled into the Paul G Rogers Federal Courthouse on Monday morning, wearing black prison scrubs with his hands and feet shackled.
He was charged on two counts: possession of a firearm while a convicted felon; and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
Speculation over how Routh was able to get into a position to take a shot at Trump as he played golf at his own personal course exploded in the hours after the would-be assassin's arrest on Sunday.
Trump's golf schedule is not made public in advance – although the game is a regular pass-time for the former president.
Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker told DailyMail.com that it was possible someone leaked Trump's whereabouts to Routh, or that he had simply staked out the course and expected him to go for a weekend round.
'If you're thinking outside the four corners here, there could be somebody at that club – at Mar-a-Lago, or at the golf club – that just doesn't like him and has different political views. And, you know, they could have fed this information,' the former FBI agent said.
He added Routh could have received information on Trump's movements by someone sharing the information deliberately or unwittingly.
Meanwhile, security experts questioned why the agency did not find Routh sooner, given he had spent 12 hours camped out by Trump's golf course and was only rumbled minutes before the former president was set to step into range of his rifle.
'How was Routh not spotted by an advance team? Did the (Secret Service) use a drone over the golf course? Dogs? If not, why not?' said Lora Ries, who oversaw the Secret Service as a top official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security during Trump's administration.
Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said that Trump's desire to golf, in private, at one of his Florida clubs on Sunday meant that agents did not perform the sort of routine site survey that might have led them to find the alleged gunman.
He said such a sweep could not have been performed without signalling the former president's imminent arrival to the golf club - a visit which was not part of his public schedule.
Trump's penchant for playing golf on his own courses, which are open to members, creates greater security challenges than past presidents like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who typically played on military courses that could be closed to the public, former agents say.
Now, as the 2024 presidential election enters its final stretch, the U.S. Secret Service is operating with about 400 fewer employees than Congress has authorized, government records show.
The problem is not likely to be fixed before the November 5 election, as the agency typically takes more than 200 days to fill open positions.
Since President Biden ended his re-election bid in July and Vice President Harris took over as the Democratic presidential candidate in a tight race against the Republican Trump, the Secret Service has had to expand its protective coverage to a wider group of officials.
That has placed unprecedented strains on the agency, according to interviews with three former Secret Service agents and a former head of the department that oversees it.
'The pace, the expectations, the pressure has never been worse than it is right now,' Kenneth Valentine, a former agent, said in a phone interview.
Acting Secret Service Director Rowe - who stepped into his role in July when the agency's former leader resigned after Trump narrowly survived the first assassination attempt - says his agents are already working at high levels of stress.
'We are redlining them,' Rowe said at a news conference on Monday.
Democrats and Republicans in Congress say they could sign off on additional funding in the coming weeks. But that will do little in the short term to fix a personnel shortage that forces agents to work long hours in pressure-filled situations.
The risk of failure was made clear on July 13, when a gunman fired six shots from atop a building at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, killing a rallygoer and grazing the Republican candidate's ear.
Secret Service agents quickly hustled Trump to safety and killed the gunman, but agency leaders acknowledge he should have never been able to fire shots in the first place.
Rowe told lawmakers on July 30 that he was 'ashamed' of security lapses in the incident.
Trump said Monday he wants more agents protecting him. As a candidate and former president, he is afforded fewer agents and resources than a sitting president.