Eric Trump Defends Female Secret Service Officers Who Protected His Father: ‘As Courageous as They Come’

Eric Trump strongly defended the Secret Service agents who are assigned to his father Donald Trump’s personal detail, while calling for “accountability” for the security failures related to the attempted assassination of the former president over the weekend.

Thomas Matthew Crooks , 20, climbed on top of a roof outside the security perimeter during Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania Saturday and fired multiple shots , hitting the former president in the ear, killing one rally attendee and wounding two others. Trump’s personal detail swiftly surrounded him and after Secret Service snipers returned fire and shot and killed Crooks, Trump was escorted off the stage and then driven to a local medical facility where his wounds were treated.

In the aftermath of the shooting, many critics have raised questions about the Secret Service’s security preparations and response during the rally. Some of that criticism has focused on the female agents who were seen in the now-viral photographs from the incident protecting Trump and escorting him to a waiting vehicle, including accusations that they were not tall or strong enough to be able to adequately protect the former president.

Eric Trump expressly knocked down such accusations during an interview with CNN anchor Jake Tapper from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Tapper asked the ex-president’s second son about the “horrible, horrible incident on Saturday” and what it was like for him.

Eric Trump replied that he had been watching it live on television with his children, and “had he not turned last minute, his head would’ve been blown off — I mean, literally, it’s that close, it’s millimeters from taking his life.” He added that the incident “puts everything in perspective” and he was glad to see the “powerful moment” when his father walked in the room at the RNC the previous night to “thunderous applause and chants of ‘USA, USA’, there were people in the audience crying.”

“How much do you, or your family, want answers from the U.S. Secret Service, given obvious failures that day?” asked Tapper. “Do you think that the head of the U.S. Secret Service should resign because of the obvious failures?”

Eric Trump replied:

I’ve been very outspoken, in terms of the people on that stage — I’ve probably said this ten times now — the people on that stage love him. They would take a bullet for him. And they demonstrated that.

One of the females on the stage, she’s with me for three years. I know every thing about her. She would take a bullet for me, she would take a bullet for him, as courageous as they come. Same with everybody else who is around him — the head of his detail was on that stage.

Believe me, the last thing that they wanted was that to happen and they did all the right things. Now, take that ecosystem that travels with him. They show up at a rally, they get up on stage. They’re watching for people, making sure don’t run up with a knife or try and tackle the president or do something else that’s stupid, throw something at him. They’re not watching rooftops 130 yards away, 140 yards away.

There was a breakdown with whatever happened there is — I don’t even want to guess. I don’t want to speculate. But they let somebody with a gun within 130 yards of the former President of the United States and very likely the future President of the United States. And there’s got to be accountability for that. There has to be accountability.

He added that “as a family member, I was enraged” to see his father’s ear shot “with a four-year-old and a six-year-old sitting on my lap and my wife sitting next to me.”

“There better be answers. There better be answers as to how that can happen,” Eric Trump said. “We better make damn sure that can never happen again.”

Watch the clip above via CNN .