Secret Service's Tech Issues Helped Shooter Go Undetected At Trump Rally (theguardian.com) 155
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The technology flaws of the U.S. Secret Service helped the gunman who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month evade detection. An officer broadcast "long gun!" over the local law enforcement radio system, according to congressional testimony from the Secret Service this week, the New York Times reported. The radio message should have travelled to a command center shared between local police and the Secret Service, but the message was never received by the Secret Service. About 30 seconds later, the shooter, Thomas Crooks, fired his first shots.
It was one of several technology issues facing the Secret Service on 13 July due to either malfunction, improper deployment or the Secret Service opting not to utilize them. The Secret Service had also previously rejected requests from the Trump campaign for more resources over the past two years. The use of a surveillance drone was turned down by the Secret Service at the rally site and the agency also did not bring in a system to boost the signals of agents' devices as the area had poor cell service. And a system to detect drone use in the area by others did not work, according to the report in the New York Times, due to the communications network in the area being overwhelmed by the number of people gathered at the rally. The federal agency did not use technology it had to bolster their communications system. The shooter flew his own drone over the site for 11 minutes without being detected, about two hours before Trump appeared at the rally. Ronald Rowe Jr, the acting Secret Service director, said it never utilized the technological tools that could have spotted the shooter beforehand.
A former Secret Service officer also told the New York Times he "resigned in 2017 over frustration with the agency's delays in evaluating new technology and getting clearance and funding to obtain it and then train officers on it," notes The Guardian. Furthermore, the Secret Service failed to record communications between federal and local law enforcement at the rally.
It was one of several technology issues facing the Secret Service on 13 July due to either malfunction, improper deployment or the Secret Service opting not to utilize them. The Secret Service had also previously rejected requests from the Trump campaign for more resources over the past two years. The use of a surveillance drone was turned down by the Secret Service at the rally site and the agency also did not bring in a system to boost the signals of agents' devices as the area had poor cell service. And a system to detect drone use in the area by others did not work, according to the report in the New York Times, due to the communications network in the area being overwhelmed by the number of people gathered at the rally. The federal agency did not use technology it had to bolster their communications system. The shooter flew his own drone over the site for 11 minutes without being detected, about two hours before Trump appeared at the rally. Ronald Rowe Jr, the acting Secret Service director, said it never utilized the technological tools that could have spotted the shooter beforehand.
A former Secret Service officer also told the New York Times he "resigned in 2017 over frustration with the agency's delays in evaluating new technology and getting clearance and funding to obtain it and then train officers on it," notes The Guardian. Furthermore, the Secret Service failed to record communications between federal and local law enforcement at the rally.
Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:5, Insightful)
Multiple people "detected the shooter" for nearly a half-hour, including the whole unit of police, operating out of the same building that shooter Crooks had taken position.
Re:Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:5, Insightful)
The failure was a failure to deploy it.
As an IT guy, I call that a failure of management, not the technology.
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How is it management's fault that a bunch of men who saw someone on the roof of the building didn't go and investigate? Were they children who needed daddy and mommy's permission to investigate? Did taking the initiative not enter into the picture?
Obviously you're a progammer because shitty code is never your fault.
Re:Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:4, Interesting)
They declined to use a drone they had, denying themselves aerial surveillance.
They declined to deploy signal boosters in an area with poor reception, which is why the Secret Service didn't get the warning about the shooter before he started shooting.
Maybe RTFA before shit posting, dick.
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They can't fly a drone during the event. It would make it more difficult to detect another drone.
Re: Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:2)
I meant detecting drones from the noise.
Re: Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:2)
You can't hear a drone from the noise until it's too late, especially over crowd noise. Even a 450 size quad does not have to get very high up before you cannot hear it at all.
Got any other ridiculous theories?
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The three sekrit squirrel members were in the building overlooking the roof in question and saw him multiple times in the hours before the shooting. They even saw him with their Mk 1 eyeballs running around with a rangefinder and somehow didn't think to detain him.
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Re:Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:5, Interesting)
If it were me, I'd issue those aerosol can boat horns to security with agreed upon hit-the-deck signal, on the theory that someone with reasonably technical means could mess with your electronic communications. It'd also work if it turned out *you* didn't have the technical means to establish reliable electronic communications.
Re:Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:5, Interesting)
How is it management's fault that a bunch of men who saw someone on the roof of the building didn't go and investigate? Were they children who needed daddy and mommy's permission to investigate? Did taking the initiative not enter into the picture?
Because part of any security plan is having people whose job it is to protect a single point, and yes, leaving their post to go investigate something was absolutely not their job. Their job was to report concerns higher up the chain and then the people in charge could figure out how to move people in such a way so as not to disrupt security.
If all it took to get people to move off their post was to report that someone saw a gunman somewhere else, that would be an even bigger security flaw. If all an attacker has to do it create reports of someone with a gun to get people to move, you have an even bigger issue.
When it comes to security, you don't "take initiative" unless that's your role. Just like you don't want a developer deciding to "take initiative" when it comes to a company's network security, you don't want people whose job it is to guard a building wandering off because someone thought they saw a gun. There are other people who are supposed to investigate and handle that.
Due to a breakdown in communication, they never did.
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You do report the threat to your superiors, who then don't let the protectee take the stage until the the threat is detained and investigated.
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Unless the technology breakdown prevents you from reporting it to your superiors.
Which is the point: the technology breakdown that did prevent the report from reaching the right people was a deliberate management decision.
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Sekrit squirrel counter sniper members saw him multiple times. Presumably, they used the same comms as the sekrit squirrel team on Trump and whoever the agent in charge was..
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Presume to your heart's content, you know no more than anybody else, including half the people investigating it.
Now to masturbate furiously over how much you hate whoever it is you hate this week until you run out of lotion. Again.
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Are you seriously suggesting that the secret service, which has existed for a very long time, would not have immediate threat communications?
You are intentionally ignorant. Which is stupid.
You are stupid. Or just a lying dick.
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However, there are ALWAYS suspicious people at every event. It's chatter all the time about someone acting strangely. But at the time Trump took stage I don't think anyone saw someone on the roof or someone who had a gun. Remember, they're probably looking at every single person as a potential problem.
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As I heard it, police did climb up, surprising the person there who then started shooting. Right now, we need to wait for investigations to be done. The calls in congress that they need to fire someone is stupid, because they don't know who to fire while the investigation is ongoing. People at home do not have all the facts, the in congress is appears many just formed their own opinions by watching the news and then constantly argue with anyone giving testimony in committee.
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No, the cop in question didn't make it fully onto the roof, and fell off the building when he flinched from having a gun pointed at him.
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That cop is probably why Trump is alive, 2 inches worth of slightly shaky nerves and a few less seconds to prepare.
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Same here. Low quality people like to shift blame for their failures to "technology", in the hopes that the general public will be nicely misled. All too often that works, even if it is nothing but a lie by misdirection.
Re: Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:2)
The Counter-sniper teams lacked radios - they were communicating to the command center over civilian/public phone network using SMS text messages...
This was revealed at the U.S. SS press conference on Friday.
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Re: Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:2)
Failure to use technology isn't a technology problem - AFAIK the technology is proven to work, but first you have to deploy the technology!
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I think only a single person, on the *higher* roof (not the one Crooks was on) would have done the job. That seems to be the biggest mistake. It doesn't have to be a USSS sharp shooter, it could be a local cop with a phone sitting in a lawn chair. Just put one person at the highest point.
Re: Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:2)
But the problem cited was that communication from a cop did not reach the secret service guys, so that wouldn't have solved this problem. It was just incompetence. What kind of assholes don't test their comms during setup?
Re: Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:2)
The counter-snipers didn't have comms, they had commercial cellphones and relied on text messages from their command center, per the U.S. SS press conference on Friday
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/... [go.com]
Re:Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:4, Interesting)
One would expect counter-sniper teams to be deployed, scoping the area and ready to take immediate action if the even see someone climbing up on a rooftop with a rifle. I mean, posting even an agent on every roof in the near vicinity would be an idea.
Not arguing, just sharing a bit of what little I know.
It sounds like they had counter-snipers deployed on two buildings behind Trump. The shooter deliberately chose a location outside the Secret Service's operational perimeter (i.e. an area where local law enforcement had jurisdiction) that provided visibility on the podium but—and here's the crucial bit—was blocked by a tree from the counter-snipers who were responsible for surveying in his direction. You can see in video footage that in the moments before shots were fired that the counter-snipers on both buildings were told of a threat in that direction, since they all very suddenly turn that way, but it was the snipers on the distant side of the rally who had to do a 180 and eventually take the shot because the near ones who ostensibly were covering that area had no line of sight on the shooter's specific location.
There were clearly multiple failures at play here. The fact that there even was a blindspot like that was a huge gaffe in the planning and staging. It wouldn't have been difficult to put up a partition to eliminate line of sight on the podium for anyone in that direction, nor to simply have someone stationed on the rooftop in advance (as you suggested) had anyone noticed there was the blind spot. Instead, this kid apparently was spotted by law enforcement walking around with a rangefinder nearly 30 minutes before the shooting, was spotted by bystanders climbing on the roof several minutes before the shooting, and was even spotted with a gun on the roof at least 30 seconds out, and yet the counter-snipers had no way to know he was there because lines of communication were broken and their locations were wrong for spotting him.
So many failures to get to this.
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Well, it happens all the time. The White House gets sprayed down with bullets every couple of presidents, and someone takes some shots at one fairly frequently too. Did you hear about the time someone tossed a grenade at Bush Jr.? That's a wild story.
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Agreed.. it was very human incompetence that allowed a long rifle to get within 150 yards of that podium, poor tech probably compounded the problem but they didn't secure the area.
Re: Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:2)
The height of Trumps bodyguards were not contributing factors to the numerous mistakes made in Butler, PA.
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"a failure of technology" ?
More like a complete malfunction of the Mark I 'eyeball' and associated visual processing & computing facilities
Re:Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:5, Insightful)
"It was a failure of technology" copout for incompetence and negligence. The Guardian is up for this ride and will pay for the gas.
Multiple people "detected the shooter" for nearly a half-hour, including the whole unit of police, operating out of the same building that shooter Crooks had taken position.
This is all true, but I think it's also worth pointing out that it's likely that part of the reason Trump's rally was held in a remote, outdoor location is because his campaign has a habit of not paying venues, so options with better inherent security often refuse him or demand fully payment up front. And they generally charge more. Police agencies are also reluctant to provide lots of support because the campaign regularly stiffs them.
The reason the Trump campaign has pushed the Secret Service for more resources -- and the reason the Secret Service has pushed back -- is that between his choice to use riskier and harder-to-secure outdoor venues, and his choice to hold much more frequent rallies than most other candidates, he's asking them for a lot more than they're staffed and funded for. The fact that police are reluctant to offer up all the officers the Secret Service would like because Trump doesn't want to pay them exacerbates the problem. It also doesn't help that he insists that magnetometer screenings be toned down to keep the lines moving, though that doesn't appear to have been a factor in the Crooks attempt.
Personally, I think that if he wants to run bigger risks, then he bears the potential consequences of those risks. If he wants to tone it down and make choices that are more in line with what the Secret Service is staffed and funded for, and in line with normal protection procedures, then if something goes wrong it's truly and completely on them. But as long as he's pushing the boundaries like he does, he's risking assassination and that's his decision.
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I think there have been more days with Trump rallies than days without, over the last 4 years or so at least, and his rallies started over 8 years ago. Maybe call it rally fatigue.
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I think there have been more days with Trump rallies than days without, over the last 4 years or so at least, and his rallies started over 8 years ago. Maybe call it rally fatigue.
He has a lot of them, but not that many: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Yeah, the only giant flat rooftop less than 200 yards from the venue with direct LoS to the stage is not difficult to secure. Especially since there were 3 sekrit squirrel officers stationed inside the building. But apparently the roof was too steep/hot depending on which squirrel in charge you listen to to have anyone out there.
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I doubt the Guardian, a UK news group, particularly cares about "arse covering" for US officials.
Planning failure, one local officer on roof (Score:4, Interesting)
"It was a failure of technology" ...
It was a failure of planning. There should have been one local uniformed officer on the roof of those buildings. Its called deterrence by visible presence. Its a time tested practice.
Not hidden inside peering out windows, not a countersniper team, just an ordinary uniformed officer, visible.
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Apparently quality and depth of resources drop off quickly after the POSUS detail; Trump was entitled to a protection detail suitable to a former president. The failures all point to resources that did not match the threat level. Talking to a friend that is in SWAT elsewhere, it sounds like part of the issue is the local rural police force could not back-fill the resources the Secret Service lacked. He also suggested he lack of army vets in the FBI and Secret Service leads to this persistent need to provide
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He is actually complaining about the federal aspect being vet-sparse. His comment about the rural aspect is that they are unlikely to have institutional experience in similar events.
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Why would he not be alive?
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If he hadn't turned his head in the half second before the shooting started, the bullet would have domed him instead of clipping his ear. Moreover, given the gun used, it was not accurate enough to guarantee the precision needed to only hit his ear, which is why everyone who suggested it was a setup by Trump(Not here, but on Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook) is an idiot.
Re: Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:2)
The above post is a perfect example of a complete and total retard attempting to opine on a subject he knows nothing about. Most AR15s can hit within about a 2-3 inch circle at 100 yards(This, Virginia, is know as about 2-3 Minutes Of Angle). At the 150 yards the shot was taken from that's a 3-4.5 inch circle. Accurate enough for a kill shot, sure. Not even REMOTELY accurate enough for the tip of an ear. You would at minimum want a sub-0.25 MOA weapon which are very expensive, require handloading your own a
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Accurate enough for a kill shot, sure. Not even REMOTELY accurate enough for the tip of an ear.
What "tip of the ear"? Nobody was shooting at the donald, idiot :)
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Oh I see, you're just a complete retard who thinks that he suborned his secret service detail to the point that he could get them to not cover the roof of the closest large building with direct LoS to the stage not actually part of the venue by getting them to make the security perimeter in the shape of Pac Man, ensure that none of the sekrit squirrel members not in on his plan didn't catch the guy wandering around for multiple hours, that none of the local LEOs would catch the guy, that the FBI wouldn't te
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Ok then you worthless fucking shitbird, explain step by step how Trump could have set everything up so that it occurred as it did on the day in question given everyone he would have to suborn in order to do so.
Re: Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:2)
So Trump hired a 20-something to shoot live rounds in his general direction at a public rally? Really? That's the idea?
How unbelievably stupid.
And don't try and tell me they were blanks, one person died and two people suffered serious gunshot wounds.
Your TDS is showing...
Re: Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:2)
AR-15s do not normally fire a high caliber bullet. They fire 0.223 inch diameter bullets, which are only a touch larger than a 0.22lr, just much, much faster.
Re: Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:2)
So shrapnel from a bullet isn't a bullet? Amazing.
Re: Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:3)
You know we are really hitting new lows in the political discourse of this country when the excrement at the bottom of the cesspool is publicly complaining that the biggest failure of this assassination attempt is that the target is still alive.
Re: Here's the Guardian posting an arse cover. (Score:2)
The taxpayers funnel $3BN/year to the Secret Service to take the security of their protectees seriously. That they don't take their jobs seriously is an indictment, not an excuse.
United States Shit Show (Score:2, Troll)
'bout what you expect. These people have been a clown show for years. Between whoring around in foreign countries, hiring pedos, alcoholics, mentally imbalanced people, and now the debacle in Pennsylvania, they have no credibility remaining. Trump needs private security to keep himself alive.
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Re:United States Shit Show (Score:4, Interesting)
The convicted felon saluted a North Korean "General" [cnn.com].
hiring pedos
Yes, yes he did [courthousenews.com].
alcoholics,
I'm certain there were many people who drank every night after dealing with the convicted felon.
mentally imbalanced people
Yes he is. So said over 70,000 psychologists [psychologytoday.com]. Even his friends in Moscow said he is mentally unstable [businessinsider.com].
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The convicted felon
Not really, its pending appeal.
saluted a North Korean "General"
Nope. He returned the General's salute. Which is technically incorrect as he is not in uniform. In civilian attire one does not salute or return salutes.
So, it would have worked (Score:2, Flamebait)
due to the communications network in the area being overwhelmed by the number of people gathered at the rally.
If it had been a Democrat campaign rally, instead of Trump?
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If it had been a Democrat campaign rally, instead of Trump?
They might have done better (*). Given that population density [oxfordpoli...review.com] has a big correlation with politics, the Democratic party is less likely to be in Butler County, PA (246 people per sq mi) and more likely to be somewhere like Philadelphia County, PA (almost 12,000 people per sq mi.). I'm guessing it's a lot easier to overwhelm the telecoms networks in places like Butler County.
(*) Or not had the tech issue excuse, anyway.
Re:So, it would have worked (Score:4, Insightful)
You'd think that the Secret Service (as well as other critical government agencies) should have its own dedicated spectrum rather than rely on the shared cell spectrum.
It wouldn't solve everything, but at least the thousands of simultaneous FriendFace liveblogs from the rally wouldn't be interfering with the Secret Service's basic communications.
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Best and brightest (Score:3, Insightful)
Wonder how many text messages they deleted this time? https://abcnews.go.com/Politic... [go.com]
Local LE coordination with feds is abysmal (Score:3)
i worked a different mission, the CBRNE threat. Chem/Bio/Radiological/Nuclear/high-yield Explosives. Part of the mission was integrating military systems, usually encrypted with NSA crypto, with LE systems which often are unencrypted, and even if they are, the keying is not compatible. The usual method of doing this kind of integration is to drop one of the radios that is on the encrypted net in a command post where the un or low-encrypted systems are located and do swivel chair integration. It's not very pretty but it's the only real option given the state of affairs. They tried something similar here and the swivel of the data did not happen, sounds like.
Short of federalizing all the LE, I don't see a very durable solution.
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>Part of the mission was integrating military systems, usually encrypted with NSA crypto, with LE systems which often are unencrypted, and even if they are, the keying is not compatible.
I feel your pain. I've been involved in projects to get adjacent municipalities to have compatible infrastructure to share an emergency channel and build coordination procedures.
Like herding cats.
Basic problem, roof not denied by visible presence (Score:2)
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I don't disagree, but I also don't think most command structures are set up this way. I agree though that it should be. When we did the swiveling, we'd usually put a 25U (usually a radio guy, with skills, knows how to refill and repair the radio in the event of it going down, etc) in the CP to act as the swivel-er on the class networks. So it wasn't much different than you describe. The presumption was that they mate up with someone on the LE side who had a similar role and they can relay the correct inf
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doing this kind of integration is to drop one of the radios that is on the encrypted net in a command post
Drop off a radio, where no one in the SS command post has the job of listening to local comms? I'd say you drop off a local officer in the SS command post and that officer listens to local comms, comms they are quite familiar with. And when someone with a weapon is mentioned, shouts very loudly in the command center "GUN GUN GUN" to get everyone's attention, and hopefully cause a reflexive order by SS to go out to hold the president in a secure location rather than go on stage, and then the local provides t
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I described the usual situation with us - a 25U with radio - an operator - would end up in the CP for the LE. Maybe the delegation of an action officer for liaison. That's how the Army does things, at least. LNO is the technical term, i've served in the role repeatedly. The job is to make sure that the commander knows about serious shit and the commander will delegate authority to deal with particular issues in consultation with the other entity ...rules of engagement, for instance. If the SS is doing
What a joke (Score:2)
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They have rather a lot of jobs. Protecting the president and family (down to grandkids I think), former presidents, major candidates, everone in the presidential line of succession, certain US officials travelling internationally, probably some other people, and counterfeiting.
They've got about seven thousand employees and a budget of $3 billion.
Re:What a joke (Score:5, Informative)
I think it's inevitable when you look at a failure like this you will see a whole bunch of errors that lined up just so.
This is sometimes called the Swiss Cheese Model [wikipedia.org] in discussing aviation accidents or medical errors. You can have holes creep into your practices all over and it doesn't seem to be a problem because you've never seen the holes line up. Not yet. Then one day they do line up and you have an entirely predictable catastrophe that in retrospect you could easily have prevented.
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If only ... (Score:2)
Object lesson: Don't expect the cellular telecom clowns to run any critical networks.
Performed as should be expected (Score:2, Interesting)
Since the Secret Service was founded in 1909, 4 presidents under their protection have been shot, 3 others have been shot at 4 times. There have only been 20 presidents in this time, giving them a success rate of not being shot at of 68%.
I don't know why there's any mystique about the Secret Service being good at their jobs, the record doesn't agree. They are a top heavy, bureaucratic organization with overly strict controls over expenditures, why anyone expects an organization like that with their record t
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Since the Secret Service was founded in 1909
Stopped reading at that point, since the Secret Service was founded in 1865, not 1909.
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Stopped reading at that point,
Then you missed where he had nice things to say about you.
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While they were founded in 1865, they did not start protecting the president until 1902.
Pity dipshit didn't say that, huh?
Plenty of blame to go around (Score:2)
The local police weren't exactly geniuses, ignoring the crowd when they shouted about the shooter on the roof, and themselves being inside the building the kid was shooting from. A local cop even climbed the ladder to the roof, then turned around when the gun was pointed at him. They also stopped the kid a couple of hours earlier, saw he had a spotting scope in his pocket, and still let him go.
Then there's the crowd themsleves, supposedly Trump supporters, at least one of who was videoing the kid on the roo
Way to feed the conspiracy theories. (Score:2)
"Furthermore, the Secret Service failed to record communications between federal and local law enforcement at the rally."
Don't want that evidence out do they.
If the SS really did have orders to give the shooter a free shot and not to kill him until Trump was down it would fit the facts just as well.
SSDD (Score:2)
Same Stuff, Different Day.
I serviced 2-way radios in the 1970's, land mobile radios used by radio dispatched organizations including some police departments. The failures in this incident are, at least in part, the result of radio interoperability resulting from each organization using its own radios that only members of that organization could hear.
In Ohio, there was an interoperability channel on police radios that members could tune so that the Ohio State Patrol could hear and talk to local polices and
The shooter was not undetected (Score:2)
Not only was the SS and local police aware of his presence about 30 minutes before he began to shoot, but the crowd was pointing at him at calling for the police about 4 minutes prior to the shooting.
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Don't be inane. A successful assasination of Trump would be a *disaster* for Democrats. Trump would be a martyr to his cause and that would make people vote for it, and somebody else would run in his place and could easily exactly replicate him, or be more appealing.
An unsuccessful assasination is also very bad for Democrats, though the idea that this guy was a crack shot and purposly hit Trump's ear without killing him is just too ludricous to consider.
Agreed. Donald Trump is not the problem. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Plausable that somebody who preferred a moderate Republican would want to kill Trump. This could either be because they thought Trump was too extreme, or they thought Trump would cause them to lose the election.
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Want to make it clear this was not a "setup". This assassination is the product of a one-person conspiracy, and he is dead.
Just apply the tiniest bit of logic. If this was a setup by a bunch of secret service agents and Democrats, or whoever you want to blame:
1. Trump would be quite dead. There would probably be little left of his head.
2. The facts would have leaked within a day and we would know all about it.
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MAGA would dissolve without Trump, it's a literal cult. The fight between assholes to pick up the nomination would resemble the power vacuum created when a dictator falls from power.
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If it was a setup, Trump would be dead. A marksman can hit a target that size at 1000 yards, and this was only 150 yards - this is basic qualifying distance for the army. The kid had been rejected from his highschool rifle club for being a bad shot - hardly a promising person to recruit, or whatever your conspiracy theory it.
Look at how quickly the police marksman adjusted aim and shot the shooter head within a couple of seconds. Security was a shambles, but that's what a good shot looks like.
It's actually
Re:This is leopards eating faces (Score:5, Insightful)
You aren't wrong. Trump billed the secret service to stay at properties he owned.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politi... [nbcnews.com]
In total he billed the secret service $1.4 million https://apnews.com/article/tra... [apnews.com]
What makes you think it was just Donold? (Score:2)
That lead to budget short falls, unpaid agents and people resigning.
Trump also gutted homeland security (who oversees the Secret Service) and fired their director.
End result was a huge mess even 4 years out. Recruiting at that level is *hard* after all, and Trump burned so many bridges. Doesn't help that everyone knew he was gonna be back (albeit with only 65% votes in the primary
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The secret service is understaffed, however it does not appear to be due to underfunding (though the GOP loves to deny funding). The major problem is that there are so many people to be guarded now, as this includes presidents, vice-presidents, AND their immediate family. This means grandkids as well. They're being stretched thin, which may be why they rely upon police so much, especially for outdoor rallies.
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Trump was replacing established public service workers with his cronies
He was not in charge of staffing the SS. He has no say in hiring public service workers for 4 years now.
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Nice troll attempt. Trump is not president.
You ... do know that former presidents get secret service protection, right?
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Read the posting I replied to. There is no "former" stated there.
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Yes, but sadly, they get the honorary title still after leaving office. Though it is a way to subtly add insults by forgetting to add it, just like the Republican who referred to the vice president as "senator".