JD Vance heaped praise on his running mate Donald Trump on Monday for continuing to play golf despite an alleged threat to his life.
Speaking at an event in North Carolina, the Ohio senator hailed Trump as “a person who’s more worried about missing a birdie putt than he is about an assassin’s attempt on his own life.” That, Vance said, is “the definition of courage under fire, and Donald Trump has it in spades.”
One man, Ryan Routh, was arrested aftet an apparent attempt to kill the presidential nominee as he played the course at Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach. Vance’s comments also came as it was revealed a second man, Warren Jones Crazybull, allegedly made repeated death threats against the former president via phone calls to security staff at Mar-a-Lago.
Both incidents followed after Trump barely escaped death at a July rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania, which saw one person killed and several others injured by shots fired into the crowd by gunman Thomas Crooks.
Multiple reports have since revealed a growing concern within the Secret Service over the extent of Trump’s exposure at his various resorts.
The New York Times has described a meeting between Trump and Ronald R. Lowe Jr., the agency’s acting director, on September 17, in which the Republican candidate was told in no uncertain terms that “significant additional security arrangements and planning would be needed if he wanted to continue safely playing golf.”
Former Secret Service officials have also spoken with CBS News, explaining how Trump’s golf outings typically offer agents scarce time to prepare, that the layout of his resorts offer significant cover to prospective assassins, and that in any case the agency “isn’t authorized to protect the former president’s golf courses 24 hours a day.”
