WASHINGTON — Members of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation are reacting to the apparent assassination attempt on Former President Donald Trump this weekend, just two months after he was shot in the ear.
“How could that happen?” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., asked himself when he heard the news.
Johnson said it’s well past time for the Secret Service to increase security around Trump with the resources they already have. And, he said more funding from Congress isn’t the answer.
“Listen, I'm sympathetic to the resources and the pace of security that they're having to provide during a campaign, but they have a lot of personnel,” Johnson said. “There are other people than agencies that can also help, if properly trained."
Johnson said he would have expected there to be cameras around the perimeter of Trump's golf course that security would be monitoring.
"[The man who is now in custody was] apparently hanging around there for 12 hours. You would think they would have noticed that. You would think they'd have people patrolling the perimeter of the golf course prior to him arriving," Johnson said. "I mean, this is is obviously inadequate security."
Johnson, who is a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said a bipartisan group of lawmakers will release its report on the first assassination attempt by the end of the month.
“Now, we're getting just the little details of the failure within the agency, but nobody's being really held responsible that we specifically know,” Johnson said.
Trump posted online that “bullets are flying” because of Democrats' criticism of him and his campaign.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Prairie du Chien, also blamed Democrats.
“They are directly responsible for this,” he told Spectrum News in a statement.
But Senator Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said there is no place for political violence in America.
“We must all come together to condemn it in no uncertain terms,” her statement goes on to say.
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, posted on X that elected officials need to “Do something. Or quit giving gun violence lip service alone.”
But Johnson said these assassination attempts haven’t changed his views on gun laws in America.
“It’s not the weapon that creates the crime, it's the individuals that create the crime, OK?” he said. “And in this case, you have political figures that are targets. That's why we provide them Secret Service protection. We need to provide better Secret Service protection.”
Trump thanked his security team for their protection on Sunday.