Always happy to discuss real estate, Donald Trump may view the apparent attempt by a gunman to target him at last night’s White House correspondents’ dinner as further evidence supporting the building of his new $400m White House ballroom.
But for security experts it’s ballistics not ballrooms that matter, and they fear an increasing risk of lone-wolf attacks targeting prominent US politicians such as the President, as well as civic leaders and other notable figures.
The attack on Saturday night raised serious concerns about how the US Secret Service responded, and whether more could have been done to prevent the suspect, named as Cole Tomas Allen, from getting as close as he did.
Many more questions will be asked in the coming days.
This is now the third apparent attempt to kill Trump in recent years, following the shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in 2024, where a bullet grazed the President’s ear; later that year, the arrest of a man with a gun near a golf course in Florida where Trump was playing.
But political violence and assassination attempts are not limited to the President. Right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead last September by a lone gunman, and there have been attacks across the country targeting lawmakers from both Democrats and Republicans in recent years.
US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr is rushed out by Secret Service agents after gunfire was heard during the correspondents’ dinner (Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP)Attacks from single, motivated and well-armed individuals are some of the most challenging threats that security teams face, despite the increasing technological sophistication of their defences.
“We’ve had political assassinations or attempted political assassinations for all time,” Joana Cook, an assistant professor of terrorism and political violence at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands, told The i Paper. “But if you’re looking at the US context and direct assassination attempts on both presidents and on acting senators, congressmen, politicians of different varieties, there’s really been a significant uptick in attacks and plots since the start of the 2020s.”
While political rhetoric of the type Trump often glorifies in has become more bombastic, Cook said other factors were notable in the rise of political violence in the US.
“There has been a shortening in the time between people going through radicalisation, or having radicalisation processes, and engaging in plots or attacks,” she said. “One of the things that’s notable is that most of these are individuals – they all appear to be lone actors. It’s not an Islamic State-led plot. It’s not an al Qaeda-led plot.”
Charlie Kirk, a Donald Trump ally, was shot and killed during an event at Utah Valley University in September last year (Photo: Tess Crowley/The Deseret News via AP)Polling from Washington DC-based think tank the Pew Research Center shows the US public is aware of the rise in political violence, but the divisions within US society means that it split on who is responsible.
Simon Morgan, founder and senior adviser at Trojan Consultancy and a former Met Police royalty protection officer, said the incident in Washington on Saturday should be seen as a success for the security services, despite the criticism they have already endured.
“Was the President harmed? You know, is he still alive? That would be a catastrophic fail,” he said.
However, he warned of the risks of future attacks by lone assailants, highlighting that it is very difficult for security services to identify individuals planning violence because they may not be part of any chatter officers are listening in to.
“We will never have another 9/11 again, because it’s just too big and the security services are very tuned into all that chitter-chatter and all the infrastructure and logistics that are needed to put an attack like that in place,” said Morgan. However: “It’s very, very difficult to anticipate an individual attack, especially if this person has not come to the attention of law enforcement.”
Still, the process put in place on Saturday, designed to control the security space at several different layers right up to the President, worked, he added. “Some of those layers can get breached by a concerted attack or an individual who’s very determined as to what they want to do. As law enforcement, we have to play by a certain set of rules. Adversaries, the bad guys, they do not play by the same set of rules.”
Trump is escorted out of the White House correspondents’ dinner after shots were fired (Photo: Bo Erickson/Reuters)Even with specialist training and high-tech equipment, as would have been in place for the White House dinner, stopping an attack is a constant battle for security forces. “No security is flawless”, said Douglas Farthing, a security consultant who has previously helped plan large-scale events involving Trump, Queen Elizabeth II and other major dignitaries.
He said that at events like the one on Saturday, security forces would have had teams trained in detecting dangerous individuals, “and they’ll be looking for people who stand out”. However, “lone actors don’t really know how to react because they’re not trained terrorists. So he would have probably just been walking in quite normally, relaxed, and committed to what he was about to do.”
Another security expert and former military officer, who declined to be named but who has been involved in planning security for state visits, said that despite the criticism, the system worked on Saturday.
“On one level, you could say, ‘Oh, it failed, he got through the cordon’, but actually, I’m sure a security team would argue this was a very successful operation, because we mitigated the threat as far as we possibly could,” the expert said. “There’s only so many things that you can control.
“I think they will certainly review it, but in some ways, what’s happened in America is a known known. You have a population where gun proliferation is rife, it’s legal, it happens everywhere, and you have a President who has managed to piss off an enormous amount of society, so he’s a walking threat wherever he goes.”
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