CNN's Alayna Treene fact-checked Donald Trump's suggestion that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were to blame for his apparent assassination attempt.
The former president sat down for an interview that aired Tuesday night with "Dr. Phil" McGraw, saying that the president and vice president, who has since become the Democratic nominee, were partially responsible for failures that allowed a 20-year-old registered Republican to climb atop a roof at a Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign rally and fire off shots that may have struck his ear, killed a supporter and seriously wounded two others.
“When this happened, people would ask, whose fault is it?” Trump told the talk show host. “I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault, and I’m the opponent. Look, they were weaponizing government against me, they brought in the whole [Department of Justice] to try and get me, they weren’t too interested in my health and safety. They were making it very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service."
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Multiple officials from the Secret Service have been put on lead for their actions leading up to and responding to the shooting, and director Kimberly Cheatle stepped down, and lawmakers are investigating why warnings from multiple witnesses were not passed on to the GOP nominee's security detail.
"So first of all, I just want to be clear that there's no evidence whatsoever that president Joe Biden or vice president Kamala Harris have tried to purposefully make it more difficult as it relates to Secret Service staffing for Donald Trump," said Treene, the network's congressional and presidential politics reporter who previously covered the Trump White House. "But the point about the rhetoric is something we actually have heard Donald Trump and many republicans argue, that it was the rhetoric and the language that Democrats used against him that contributed to this person attempting to shoot Donald Trump, and so a lot to unpack there."
The gunman's father, who owned the rifle used in the shooting, was previously identified by the Trump campaign in a database of swing state voters as a strong Republican and likely gun owner, and neighbors say the family displayed "Make America Great Again" signs outside their Pittsburgh-area home.
"I think you're going to probably continue to hear some of this," Treene said, "and, as we know, as we move closer to November, a lot of these attacks are getting more personal, more nasty and that's kind of where Donald Trump laid this yesterday."
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