Gil Barndollar: Washington D.C Senior Fellow at Defence Priorities on the questionable security at Trump's Pennsylvania rally

Questions are being raised over the security lapses at Donald Trump's infamous Pennsylvania rally.

Republican lawmakers have confirmed they plan to investigate how the shooter managed to get up on the roof of a nearby building and fire multiple shots into the crowd before being killed.

Senior Fellow at Defence Priorities in Washington DC Gil Barndollar says there are plenty of questions about the execution of security.

"It does seem strange, if not inexcusable, that there was a shooter on the rooftop of a building just 400 feet away from the stage - that seems crazy, on the face of it."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So a little after ten o'clock Sunday morning, New Zealand
time look at what happened, And by the end of
yesterday they had confirmed it was a twenty year old
Thomas Matthew Crooks. He and a male bystander both died
at the rally. So where does security and the investigation
go from here? Gilbundola is a former Marine senior fellow

(00:21):
at Defense Priorities in Washington, d C. And is with
us good morning to you, good morning. The big Well,
the big question seems to be, how does a person
with a gun on a roof get that close to
a presidential candidate? Do we have any obvious answers?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah, I don't think we have any obvious answers yet.
I mean, that's that is the big question, above all
the you know, the downstream political impacts and everything else
people are speculating and talking about. But yeah, it seems
pretty clear that the shooter got, you know, four hundred
feet to one hundred and fifty meters or so away
from from the stage to take a shot at the
former president.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
We are lucky he's not. Did Is that a fair assessment?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeahsolutely. I mean it's it's you know, it's it's not
the easiest thing in the world to shoot someone the
ahead of that distance to put this in the in
the starkest terms, but but absolutely it looks like one
bullet missed him. It's not clear. It sounds like he
was hitting you know, uh from President Trump was hit
in the ear by glass. But he's he said, the
bullet clipped his ear And obviously, uh, you know, an

(01:23):
another guy attending the rally was killed and two people wounded,
so it was extremely close.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
For on thing, how do they work out how much security?
Is there a standard mechanism in place, it's six yards
or meters and that's what they do each and every time,
or does it very wildly depending on where you are.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
I don't want to speculate too much. You know, I'm
not I'm not in the Secret Service obviously and haven't
haven't served with them. But but usually, you know, at
risk analysis is going to depend upon to some extent,
upon the you know, the temperature, and threats, specific threats
and things like that if you have them. But generally
you're you're working off what you have to work with
in terms of terrain in the ground. To a certain extent,

(02:01):
in the size of the crowd, right, so, but it
does seem strange, if not inexcusable. You know, adds another
information that that there was a shooter on the rooftop
of a building, as I said, you know, just four
hundred feet away from the stage. That that seems crazy
on the face of it. Reporting is that there were
Secret Service snipers on another building closer to the stage,

(02:22):
but not that one itself, which is which again is
from what we know now, is kind of mind blowing.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Would you expect security to obviously overtly change between now
and Novemba, You you.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Would think so. But there are you know, there are
constraints at the end of the day, just like there
are in any kind of security or surveillance. There are
only only so many people. And you know, you can
you can put on something like this. You know you're
not going to I doubt, I highly doubt. You know,
former President Trump is going to stop doing big rallies.
And we've got the Republican Convention coming up in Milwaukee

(02:55):
in a couple of days, and I think that is
going to proceed. I'm sure there'll be heights ofecurity, but
I don't think that's going to be a fundamentally different events.
My suspicion no, and obviously sorry.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
What do you what do you do about about a
loan route? This guy, Thomas Crooks, we know next to nothing,
all of them, apart from the fact he was registered Republican,
donated to the Democrats, and no criminal record. How do
you stop a lone wolf?

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Right? I mean, I think you you put in the
best physical security you can and you and you remain
very alert. And there's obviously we have a lot more
you know, signals, surveillance and things like that, and ways
to kind of disrupt threats to the FBI obviously does
a lot of that online in terms of and we
use those You hate to say that the kind of
the war came home, but some of those things are

(03:41):
techniques that were home throughout twenty years of war on terrorism.
But we obviously have a different set of civil liberties,
you know, laws and and and things we allow inside
the United States and American citizens. It's not the same
way we treat, you know, potential foreign attackers.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
You'll appreciate your expertise very much, and we'll catch up
ensuing Gil Bandola, who's the former Marine Senior Fellow at
Defense Priorities in Washington. For more from the mic Asking Breakfast,
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