RFK Jr. to receive Secret Service protection after Trump survives assassin's bullet
Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose famous father and uncle were both felled by assassins, will receive Secret Service protection in the wake of Saturday's shooting of former President Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Monday.
"We are in a heightened and very dynamic threat," said Mayorkas at White House briefing Monday, two days after Trump was shot in an assassination attempt.
"In light of this weekend's events, the President has directed me to work with the Secret Service to provide protection to Robert Kennedy Jr, both prior to and after the events of this past weekend," he said. "The Secret Service enhanced former President Trump's protection based on the evolving nature of threats to the former president and his imminent shift from presumptive nominee to nominee."
Earlier on Monday, Trump called for Kennedy, running a distant third in national polls, to be protected by the Secret Service.
Kennedy is a son of New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 while running for president, and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. He had asked for protection and received multiple denials.
Mayorkas said both President Joe Biden and Trump have been subjected to death threats both before and after the shocking attempt on Trump's life on Saturday. He said he'd had been directed to work with the Secret Service to provide protection to Kennedy as well.
On Saturday, a 20-year-old gunman opened fire on a campaign rally, injuring Trump's right ear and killing a spectator.
Trump was rushed off stage with blood dripping on his face after gunshots rang out at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The sniper, identified by the FBI as Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was killed by Secret Service agents.
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris received an updated briefing in the White House Situation Room from homeland security and law enforcement officials earlier in the day. Among the officials were Attorney General Merrick Garland, Mayorkas and and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Corey Comperatore a Sarver, Pennsylvania, firefighter who had two daughters and was an avid Trump supporter, was killed in the shooting. Two other men were injured in the shooting – a 57-year-old New Kensington, Pennsylvania, resident and a 74-year-old resident of Moon Township. They were in stable condition on Sunday, according to an update from Pennsylvania State Police.
President Joe Biden on Sunday called on Americans to "lower the temperature in our politics" in an address from the Oval Office, a day after an assassination attempt against Trump at his Pennsylvania campaign rally.
"Disagreement is inevitable in American democracy. It's part of human nature," Biden said, telling Americans that politics cannot be a "battlefield" or "God forbid, a killing field."
"We resolve our difference at the ballot box," President Biden said during his Sunday address. "The power to change America should always rest in the hands of the people – not in the hands of a would-be assassin."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: RFK Jr. to receive Secret Service protection, Mayorkas says
