Republican Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas erupted at Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on Monday as the House Oversight Committee sought to learn what went wrong at the Pennsylvania rally where former President Donald Trump was shot.
“It is a miracle President Trump wasn’t killed,” Fallon said during the panel’s hearing.
“I believe your horrifying ineptitude and your lack of skilled leadership is a disgrace,” he said. “Your obfuscating today is shameful.”
The congressman then made a reference to Cheatle’s previous job as senior director of global Security at PepsiCo.
“You should be fired immediately and go back to guarding Doritos,” Fallon said.
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Rep. Fallon: “It is a miracle President Trump wasn’t killed… you should be fired immediately and go back to guarding Doritos.” pic.twitter.com/Ejot6fG0gK
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“You just said that you have the ability to beef up the security; that you knew about the threat, and yet you didn’t,” he told Cheatle during the hearing.
“And that’s as telling as it is chilling,” he said.
Are you surprised that Cheatle has not resigned?
Fallon asked the director whether she had visited the Butler, Pennsylvania, site of the July 13 assassination attempt. She said she had not.
“Nine days and you have not visited that site,” he said. “You should have been there that night.”
“The shooter has visited the site two more times than you have, and he had a drone and he picked the AGR building,” he said, referring to the building from which Thomas Crooks opened fire.
Fallon also quizzed Cheatle about her comments that the sloped roof of the building was a barrier to placing snipers there. She admitted there was no policy banning such placement.
“So what did you act like there was one?” he said.
The congressman then said he tried to see how easy a time the shooter had.
“I have never had any law enforcement training in my life. I own an AR-15,” Fallon said.
“And the last time I shot it — I shot it once in my whole life — was six years ago,” he said.
Fallon said that over this weekend, he tried to recreate the events of the assassination attempt.
”I was lying prone on a sloped roof at 130 yards at 6:30 at night,” he said.
Using two different scopes, he shot eight rounds with each, the congressman said.
“You know what the result was? Fifteen out of 16 kill shots, and the one I missed would have hit the president’s ear. That’s a 94 percent success rate, and that shooter was a better shot than me,” Fallon said.
