This is an adapted excerpt from the July 23 episode of “The Last Word.”
With just over 100 days until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris spent her first day as the presumptive nominee for president of the Democratic Party on the campaign trail in the crucial electoral college state of Wisconsin.
Harris’ Secret Service detail, which was already very strong, should now be strengthened — not just because she has moved up from vice presidential nominee to presidential nominee, but because we have seen recent proof of Secret Service protection not being strong enough.
The director of the Secret Service resigned Tuesday after being sharply questioned by both Democrats and Republicans in a congressional hearing about how a lone gunman was allowed to get on a roof within range of a presidential candidate and fire shots that could have killed the candidate and did kill one of the spectators and wounded two others.
That is the first time in history that a Secret Service director has resigned after shots were fired.
That is the first time in history that a Secret Service director has resigned after shots were fired, even though every single time shots have been fired at a president since the creation of the Secret Service, after Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, it has always been the Secret Service’s fault. Every time.
In every single shooting, the Secret Service made the mistake of giving the shooters a clear shot. In 1901, the Secret Service allowed an assassin to walk right up to President William McKinley to shake his hand and instead revealed a handgun shooting the president to death. Congress had no hard questions for Secret Service Director John Wilkie after that, and the Secret Service director served another 10 years in that job after failing to protect the life of President McKinley.
In 1933, two weeks before his inauguration, an assassin approached President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s car in Florida and fired shots that missed him but killed a mayor who was standing on the running board of the president-elect’s car.
Once again, the Secret Service let an assassin with a gun get too close to the president-elect. Roosevelt was riding in an open car. It was an easy shot because it was an open car. The world was lucky that the assassin missed.
Congress did not grill Secret Service Director William Moran who allowed that assassin to get so close to the president. Congress did not ask why Moran allowed the president-elect to ride in an open car. Moran served three more years as Secret Service director and continued to allow Roosevelt to ride fully exposed in an open car, which Roosevelt did throughout his presidency.
Thirty years after those shots were fired at Roosevelt, shots fired at President John Fitzgerald Kennedy riding in the back of an open car took the life of the youngest president in history. As pieces of the president’s skull and brain tissue fell onto the surface of the open car behind President Kennedy’s head, his wife tried to reach back to grab those pieces while the fully incompetent Secret Service began climbing onto the back of the limousine and urging the first lady to stay in the car.
If Rowley had made that decision one day before, American history would be so much less tragic.
It was only after Kennedy was pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas, that afternoon that Secret Service Director James Rowley decided the president should never again ride in an open car. And no president ever has, since that day.
If Rowley had made that decision one day before, American history would be so much less tragic.
Rowley served 10 more years as Secret Service director after losing Kennedy on his watch because of his incompetence. Kennedy’s younger brother Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 while running for president.
The Secret Service provided protection to presidential candidates starting the day after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.
Bobby Kennedy’s assassin was able to walk up to him and shoot him point blank.
In 1975, the Secret Service allowed President Gerald Ford to be shot at twice within two weeks. Stuart Knight was the director of the Secret Service then. He allowed people with no firearms training to simply get too close to the president.
He’s the only Secret Service director in history who allowed the same president to be shot at twice. But he wasn’t finished. He became the only Secret Service director in history to allow two different presidents to be shot at. He became the only Secret Service director in history to allow two different presidents to be shot at. He was in charge when the Secret Service allowed another completely untrained pedestrian with a handgun to walk up and get close enough to President Ronald Reagan to fire shots as the president was entering the Washington Hilton. In that shooting, the Secret Service also allowed the president’s press secretary to be shot. And in that shooting, the Secret Service also allowed a Secret Service agent to be shot. All because the Secret Service and Secret Service directors had not yet figured out how to prevent pedestrians from randomly walking up to presidents and firing handguns at them. There was no condemnation of Knight after the Gerald Ford shootings — two in one month — or the Ronald Reagan shooting. He left the Secret Service after eight years as director. The Secret Service got marginally better after some of these shootings. No more open cars. No more people allowed to get close to a president moving on foot in or out of a building. And now the Secret Service thinks it has figured out how to protect Donald Trump at his rallies. The Washington Post reports that the Secret Service urged the Trump campaign to “stop scheduling large outdoor rallies and other outdoor events with big crowds.” The roof it decided not to secure was the roof the murderer used to fire at the candidate and his supporters. But at the outdoor rally in Pennsylvania, the Secret Service failed to do the elementary thing of securing every possible elevated firing position. The roof it decided not to secure was the roof the murderer used to fire at the candidate and his supporters. It was, as usual, the Secret Service’s fault. The Secret Service director was right to resign, but she should not have been the first to resign. The new acting director of the Secret Service, Ronald Rowe, is a 24-year veteran of the Secret Service. We can only hope that he will provide the protection that allows this campaign to make it to Election Day with all of the big surprises being only political surprises. Join Lawrence O’Donnell, Rachel Maddow and many others on Saturday, Sept. 7, in Brooklyn, New York, for “MSNBC Live: Democracy 2024,” a first-of-its kind live event. You’ll get to see your favorite hosts in person and hear thought-provoking conversations about what matters most in the final weeks of an unprecedented election cycle. Buy tickets here.
Lawrence O’Donnell hosts “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” at 10 p.m. ET on MS NOW. His latest book is “Playing With Fire: the 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics.”
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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