During an afternoon campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a 20-year-old gunman perched atop a roof, roughly 150 yards from the stage where Trump was speaking, and fired several shots. The attack injured Trump, killed a spectator seated behind the stage, and wounded two other attendees. The survey results indicate that only 31 percent of Americans have confidence in the Secret Service's ability to safeguard presidential candidates from violence before this year's election. In a significant blow to the agency's reputation, 72 percent of respondents believe the Secret Service bears responsibility for the assassination attempt. George Velasco, a 65-year-old Navy veteran from Tucson, Arizona, told the AP that he holds both the Secret Service and local law enforcement accountable, citing poor communication and inadequate planning. “It was as if the Secret Service expected those guys to know what they had to do,” Velasco said. “It was a very small area, a small town. How did they expect them to know how to prepare for something huge like that rally?” Over the past week-and-a-half, Congress has held multiple hearings into the circumstances of the attack. Within days of her testimony, then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle stepped down amid controversy over security lapses that resulted in Trump, one of the agency’s most high-profile protectees, being shot in the ear on live television. According to the AP-NORC survey, which was conducted after Cheatle’s resignation, a strong majority of Republicans, Democrats, and independents (78 percent) believe political division holds at least a moderate amount of responsibility for the attack. However, Republicans and Democrats are more likely to blame political speech from the other side as the cause of the shooting. Reflecting America’s political divide, Democrats were far more likely to blame the availability of guns for the attack, while Republicans were more likely to fault the Secret Service. Sixty percent of Democrats blame guns, compared to only a third of independents and 15 percent of Republicans.In the aftermath of the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, a majority of Americans now distrust the U.S. Secret Service's ability to protect presidential candidates, according to a new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
