'Dangerous moment': Analyst says Trump deliberately leaving former aides 'unshielded'

19 June

Donald Trump gestures at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., December 22, 2024. REUTERS/Cheney Orr/File Photo

President Donald Trump’s decision to strip security protections from his own former officials has left them dangerously exposed at a time of escalating global conflict and political violence in the United States, The Bulwark’s Will Saletan argued in a piece published Thursday.

According to Saletan, the convergence of foreign assassination plots and domestic political attacks is not coincidental — and Trump’s policies have made the moment even more perilous. "We're in a dangerous moment," he said.

“These two challenges aren’t unrelated,” Saletan wrote. “They’ve converged before. They might do so again.”

Last week, two Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses were shot, two of them fatally. Saletan pointed to this incident as part of a growing pattern of political violence in the U.S.—one that parallels the threats coming from abroad.

“Iran has sought to kill current and former officials in the United States,” Saletan wrote. “More recently, Tehran’s assassins gained an additional advantage: Donald Trump, more concerned with settling personal scores against his former officials than with defending them against a foreign adversary, stripped them of their government-provided security.”

"He’s leaving his former national security officials unshielded against Iran's assassins," the journalist said.

Saletan described a pattern of behavior in which Trump downplayed or welcomed foreign interference when it targeted his political opponents. In 2016, Trump said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” In 2019, when asked about accepting information from foreign adversaries, he said: “I think I’d want to hear it… There’s nothing wrong with listening.”

He added: "When he left office in 2021, he ordered protection for his last national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, but not for his previous national security adviser, John Bolton, who is notorious as an enemy of the Tehran regime. Bolton’s crime: He had enraged Trump by telling the truth about the then-president’s corrupt extortion of Ukraine."

Trump also used the Secret Service for political ends, the author noted.

“In January 2021, as he was leaving office, he ordered six months of protection—well beyond what was authorized by law—for his adult children and their spouses. Joe Biden allowed that order to stand. But this year, when Trump returned to power, he revoked Secret Service protection for Biden’s adult children, mocking Hunter Biden and calling it a waste of money.”

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