Candace Owens has questioned the security surrounding Donald Trump following as assassination attempt on the former president on July 13.
Minutes into Trump's speech at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, loud popping noises were heard and Trump was struck on his right ear, leaving it bleeding. He was surrounded by Secret Service agents and led from the stage after defiantly raising his hand in a clenched fist.
The former president, 78, was taken to the nearby Butler Memorial Hospital. Hours later, the FBI revealed the shooter to be Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. One rally attendee was killed and two others were critically injured, according to the Secret Service, who killed the shooter.
Shortly after the shooting, witness Greg Smith told the BBC that he spotted a man with a rifle crawling on a rooftop near the rally venue minutes before shots were fired.
"We noticed the guy bear-crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50ft away from us," Smith recounted. "He had a rifle; we could clearly see a rifle."
Smith went on to describe a scene of chaos and apparent lack of coordination among security personnel as he attempted to warn them of imminent danger.
"We're pointing at him, the police are down there running around on the ground, we're like 'Hey man, there's a guy on the roof with a rifle'…and the police did not know what was going on," he said.
Smith estimated that he and others tried to draw attention to the gunman for three to four minutes before the shooting.
After watching a clip of the interview on a live special of her podcast, conservative commentator Owens expressed her astonishment as she remarked: "You have got to be kidding me. Let me say something right now. Take this to the bank. That person was allowed to scale that roof."
Citing her experience of having been in Trump's presence when he was in office, she said: "I was around him a lot—a lot. And let me tell you something, [with] the Secret Service, there is no person that can get around the perimeter of the Secret Service where Donald Trump is without them being aware of it.
"I am not kidding when I say that my husband once almost got shot by the Secret Service, because he came down a staircase. I was speaking at the NRA, and he snaked in and came down, and they didn't know who he was. They were like, 'Freeze, we will shoot you right now.'
"So you're telling me that guy walked up and was trying to get the attention, the Secret Service saw him, and he's pointing and he's saying, 'This guy's got a gun,' and they're pretending they don't know what's going on? I mean, am I crazy?"
"Do you guys actually believe this was a failure in intelligence, all of these Secret Service agents crawling around?" Owens asked her audience. "They're trying to now tell us that common sense is a conspiracy. That is the new thing that they're trying."
Owens, who has expressed her intention to vote for Trump in November's election, stated that it is protocol for the Secret Service to surveil an area "days before" a president would make an appearance anywhere.
"They'll knock on doors," she said. "They've got to figure out every possible angle that any individual could potentially get unapproved. Because you know what? This has happened in the past. People have been shot from roofs. People have been shot from windows.
"There was a zero percent chance that some random person with a rifle was able to scale a roof, unless there was just an unbelievable failure of intelligence. And you want to know why it's unbelievable? Because I don't effing believe it. I don't believe it. I want the names of the Secret Service agents that allowed this remarkable security failure to go down, because I don't believe this."
"They knew he was going to speak, and they weren't worried about the roofs, a roof with an angle to shoot the president?" Owens continued. "And this wasn't like [the shooter] scaled [the roof] silently."
"This man was allowed time to set up," Owens added of the shooter. "Do you understand what that witness is telling us?…Oh, then suddenly, [the Secret Service] snapped back into life, guys, and they just took him out. They blew his head off. Nothing to see here, guys, he missed his shot."
"Let me ask you something, world, do you buy this s***? Hang on. Do you buy it? Because if you if you're buying this, I'm about to sell you guys all sorts of stuff. If you're buying this narrative that's coming out slowly, I mean, I'm a Nigerian prince. Answer my emails, send me a million dollars, give me your credit card digits."
Amid questions about security decisions in the moments before the assassination attempt, Anthony Guglielmi, who is chief of communications at the Secret Service, took to X, formerly Twitter, on July 14 to share a statement.
"[There's] an untrue assertion that a member of the former President's team requested additional security resources & that those were rebuffed," he wrote. "This is absolutely false. In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo."
The FBI is leading the investigation into the former president's shooting, working alongside the Secret Service. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said the investigation into the shooting of the other victims is being headed by Pennsylvania State Police.
Since the shooting, Trump has traveled to Milwaukee for this week's Republican National Convention, where he will be formally nominated as the party's presidential candidate.
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