Trump Tells Dr. Phil, Without Evidence, That Harris and Biden Bear Some Blame for Shooting

Former President Donald Trump claimed without evidence in an interview broadcast Tuesday that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had denied him sufficient Secret Service protection and that they were therefore partly responsible for the assassination attempt against him last month.

“Our people were always fighting to get more security, more Secret Service, and he knew that we didn’t have enough,” Trump said of Biden during an interview with television host Phil McGraw, known as Dr. Phil. “I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’ fault. And I’m the opponent. Look, they were weaponizing government against me. They brought in the whole DOJ to try and get me. They weren’t too interested in my health and safety.”

The Secret Service has been under a cloud since July 13, when the shooter was able to fire, unimpeded, on Trump at an outdoor campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The attack grazed Trump’s ear, killed a spectator and seriously wounded two others. The FBI is investigating, and congressional leaders have also opened inquiries. But there is no evidence that Biden or Harris knew about any deficiencies in Trump’s protection.

The Secret Service has taken responsibility for the security lapses that made the shooting possible. Kimberly A. Cheatle resigned as the agency’s director and has been replaced.

The former president’s remarks to Dr. Phil were similar to what Trump had written in a social media post in July, when he blamed Biden and Harris for the shooting and said they had failed to protect him.

Trump on Tuesday also echoed an accusation that some of his allies — including Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, now his running mate — made right after the assassination attempt: that Democrats’ criticism of him, and descriptions of him as a threat to democracy, might have incited the shooter. Investigators have not confirmed the shooter’s motive.

That assertion by Trump came after Dr. Phil, referring to Biden and Harris, asked, “I’m not saying that they wanted you to get shot, but do you think it was OK with them if you did?”

“They’re saying I’m a threat to democracy. No, they’re a threat,” Trump replied. “They would say that. That was a standard line, just keep saying it, and you know that can get assassins or potential assassins going.” He added, “Maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric.”

Biden, who did campaign against Trump as a threat to democracy, called for the nation to “lower the temperature in our politics” after the assassination attempt and condemned it.

Trump has a history of violent speech dating back to his 2016 campaign, when he suggested he might pay the legal fees of a supporter who was accused of attacking a protester, and said of Hillary Clinton: “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.” More recently, he has suggested that shoplifters should be shot and embraced the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He has also described the outcome of a Democratic victory in apocalyptic terms.

In the interview with Dr. Phil, which ran for about an hour, Trump also repeated his complaints about Harris replacing Biden as the Democratic nominee.

“In politics, you have an opponent, and you win or you lose,” he said. “But you don’t have an opponent, and then you’re doing well against the opponent; they take him out; they give you a new opponent. They give you a nice fresh opponent.”

And he expanded his false claims about voter fraud, saying he believed he had won California — one of the most Democratic states in the country, which voted for Biden in 2020 by nearly 30 percentage points.

“If Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California,” he said. “If we had an honest vote counter, I would win California.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .