US Vice President Kamala Harris had a “cordial and brief” phone conversation Tuesday with her Republican rival Donald Trump to express relief that he is safe after an apparent assassination attempt, the White House said.
“Vice President Harris called former President Trump this afternoon to speak with him directly to express that she is grateful he is safe,” a White House official said in a statement. The call came after the US Secret Service thwarted a second apparent assassination attempt on Trump in less than two months.
On Sunday, Secret Service agents fired on would-be assassin Ryan Wesley Routh when they saw the barrel of his gun poking through the fenceline at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, and local police officers later arrested him. On Tuesday, Trump told Fox News “we’ve long requested more people” and that additional Secret Service protection was forthcoming.
Trump Meets Head Of Security
“I think we are getting it now. Somebody told me that they will be providing more people now,” Trump told the interviewer via telephone. In a private meeting with Trump, the head of the Secret Service told him that significant new security arrangements would be needed if he wanted to keep playing golf, The New York Times reported.
Trump asked Ronald Rowe, the US Secret Service’s acting director, in a meeting on Monday whether it was safe for him to continue playing. Rowe said the Secret Service views the golf course at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland as easier to secure because it is a military course. US media reports said that after the assassination attempt, both Democrats and Republicans have accused each other of using overheated rhetoric that is inspiring political violence.
‘No one has tried to kill Harris’
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a press briefing on Tuesday that Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s comments about Vice President Kamala Harris not having faced an assassination attempt are dangerous.
“The big difference between conservatives and liberals is that … no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months,” Vance said on Monday.
Jean-Pierre said that language could put Harris in danger. “When you make comments like that, all it does is … opens an opportunity for people to listen to you and potentially take you very seriously, and so it’s dangerous to have that type of rhetoric out there,” she said.
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