Sen. Mike Braun demands ‘housecleaning across government’ after shooting

Influential Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) on Tuesday called for a governmentwide “housecleaning” in departments responsible for handling the security of former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.

Still shocked at the ease with which a 20-year-old would-be assassin got inside the security zone of Trump’s Saturday rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, to shoot the former president in the head, Braun also called for the firing of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle .

Asked in an interview if Cheatle should still be in her job, Braun told Secrets, “She shouldn't be, and I think there's probably housecleaning that needs to occur across government because I think that kind of lackadaisical approach to it, and you get used to it. There's no accountability. You hand up this as an example of government at its worst.”

On Cheatle, he added, “The lady running the Secret Service, even though they fire no one, you’d expect that this would rise to that. How you could end up with a half an hour's notice that somebody was on a roof and it got to the point where it did, and you see where it had to be almost divine intervention — about as close as I could see happening and what the difference would have been. I mean, it's crazy, so you gotta get to the bottom of it.”

Since he came to Washington following his 2018 election, the former businessman has at times expressed frustration with the city’s inaction on big political issues, and he said keeping presidents and ex-presidents safe is one that tops the rest.

“That was dropping the ball so significantly,” he said. “It needs to be dismissed quick as just dereliction,” he said of the Secret Service bumbling in the planning of Trump’s security in Pennsylvania.

Braun, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Indiana, also said, “You know, I've seen so many instances of agencies that are ineffective. Here that had nearly, nearly tragic consequences, so I hope they push hard. Somebody needs to be held accountable because that was the epitome of lackluster dereliction dereliction in terms of what occurred there on Saturday.”

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Trump survived the assassination attempt that also killed a local father and injured two others.

Today, there were reports that U.S. security officials knew of an Iran plot to assassinate Trump, though there has been no link established between the terrorist nation and the alleged shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks.