Former first lady Melania Trump criticized what she described as “holes” in the top leadership of the U.S. Secret Service following two apparent assassination attempts against her husband, former President Trump, in the span of three months.
The former first lady praised the men that protected her and her husband, but described problems with the Secret Service’s leadership.
“The men with me and my husband did fantastic, but I feel it’s the top leadership that there are some holes in there, some problems,” the former first lady said in a sit-down interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity that aired Thursday.
“So it comes from the top leadership that that happened,” she added, saying her team had asked “many times” for more security and help, but was denied.
Her comments come just more than two months after a gunman opened fire on Donald Trump during a rally in Butler, Pa. The former president was grazed in the ear with a bullet during the July 13 incident, while one event attendee was killed and two others injured. Secret Service countersnipers shot and killed the gunman. The campaign is expected to make a return to the town over the weekend.
Following the shooting, then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle stepped down as she faced growing calls to resign and several investigations were opened into how a gunman could get so close to the GOP presidential nominee.
Melania Trump’s remarks come after a second apparent assassination attempt against her husband while he was golfing last month.
After that second incident, Melania Trump called it a “miracle” in a separate Fox interview that the former president survived both attempts.
“I, I ran to the TV and, I rewind it and I watched it,” she said of the rally in Butler, Pa. “I was only a few minutes behind and, something, I guess, look over me. So I didn’t really see live live, but maybe, you know, three minutes, few minutes later.”
“July 13, it was a miracle like that much,” she said. “And he could, you know, he could not be with us.”
The former first lady also reportedly said “we need to uncover the truth” following the July assassination attempt.
“The attempt to end my husband’s life was a horrible, distressing experience,” she said in a clip posted Tuesday on the social platform X.
Earlier in the interview, Melania Trump had mentioned the division that she’s noticed during her husband’s bid for the White House this time around.
“I would think that the world, especially the United States, is more divided than ever before,” she said. “We are dealing with much more danger, and especially we see what’s going on in the world and the threats that we get, and my husband, what he went through in the last few months.”
Last month, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee issued a scathing report on the multiple failures by the Secret Service at the Pennsylvania rally.
The report found agents had multiple opportunities to prevent the shooting, calling the failures that risked the former president’s life were “foreseeable” and “preventable.”
The Hill has contacted the Secret Service for comment.