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Donald Trump
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US President Donald Trump has faced not one, but two assassination attempts in the past few years. The first one was when he was only a candidate, but the second one came recently, with him as the sitting president. How did someone get so close to the President of the United States? What failed in his security detail?

According to RadarOnline, the answer leads back to the Secret Service, which is in charge of protecting not just Trump, but his Cabinet members. Cole Thomas Allen breached security at the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C., on April 25 and reportedly managed to get off at least one shot close to the President and most of the Cabinet. One Secret Service agent was hit in the vest.

Related: Here are the celebrities who support Donald Trump

How did Cole get in? He reportedly got through several layers of Secret Service security by checking into the hotel days before the dinner. That allowed him to get close to the main dining room on April 25, carrying multiple knives, a handgun, and a Mossberg Maverick 12-gauge shotgun, according to sources.

Thomas went down a service stairwell and rushed past a Secret Service-operated screening area in the foyer before he was stopped. He is facing numerous charges, including attempted assassination of the president of the United States. He has yet to enter a plea.

After, the Secret Service insisted the “protective model” for the event “proved effective.” However, Jonathan Gilliam, a former Navy SEAL and FBI special agent, told the outlet he disagrees. “This is all absolutely ridiculous,” Gilliam said, “and although it may look like a success because no one got killed, it’s a failure. A total failure.”

It’s also part of a pattern. In 2024, a gunman got through security and into a rooftop position with a clear line of fire to Trump during a rally. A couple of months later, another man hid in the bushes at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach for hours while Trump played golf. Earlier this year, another man drove his car through a gate at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

For Patrick Brosnan, a former NYPD detective and founder of the security firm Brosnan Risk Consultants, the repeated security breaches are an “alarming pattern of incompetence” and evidence that the U.S. “is running out of time.”

“The American people deserve better,” he said. “Trump does, too.”

Thomas reportedly had a list of Trump administration officials to kill, in a descending order of priority.

Witnesses tell the outlet they were “absolutely shocked” to hear the “pop-pop-pop” of gunfire. “Everyone looked at each other for an instant with bewilderment, and then all hell and chaos broke loose,” the source said.

“It’s wild to think that this nutjob was able to come so very close to changing history with the Secret Service crawling around the hotel. He should have been dropped where he was standing the moment he walked into the building, instead of Trump waiting inside like a sitting duck.”

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