We have been watching & reading news & discussing this ever since it happened. MOO follows...
1. The Secret Service should have made an appearance at the presser tonight. Instead the FBI & Pennsylvania LE were the ones there addressing the events & attempting to answer what questions they could. SS messed up big time but it feels like they really, really needed to be at that presser or hold a separate one tonight. Instead, it has been crickets from them.
2. This feels like a massive security failure. Not a small hole where someone found the only vulnerability that existed. It seems like the SS planned poorly, didn't respond to a possible threat (random people trying to point out that there was a guy on the roof with a gun), responded slowly to take the shooter out (he managed to shoot 4 people -- Trump, the man who died, & two others who are in critical condition), & also had serious gaps when trying to "cover" Trump as they made their way from the podium to the vehicle. He was exposed numerous times, there is recording/transcript of them talking when huddled down with him & it seemed like they didn't easily coordinate for a "1, 2, 3, move" type of count.
3. Considering their one job, really, is to protect the person they are in charge of, based on all the things from my previous point, this feels like a massive failure across the board. Imo. Utterly unprofessional, unprepared, and underwhelming to put it mildly.
4. Imo, of all groups, the Secret Service is an elite team. The best. Very, very few make the cut to protect a former President. There is almost an American mythos around this elite team. (Just look at movies & tv too, further burnishing the image of cool professionalism & action.) And today, they have completely blown that mythos away & replaced it with an amateur, unprofessional image that resulted in one person dead, two critically wounded, & a public leader almost assassinated.
I'm sure they also lead security when leaders of other countries come to the US for official visits with the President; if I were a leader from another country, I'd be cancelling any future official trips to the US. I would have zero confidence in the security apparatus surrounding the office of the President & former Presidents.
It just feels like such a massive failure on the part of the Secret Service, from planning, through execution, through evacuation that I don't know how they as an organization will recover. It truly boggles my mind.
MOO.