Secret Service Acting Director Calls July 13 a ‘Failure of Imagination’

As Twitchy reported earlier, Sen. Ted Cruz ended the career of Secret Service acting Director Ronald Rowe Tuesday at a joint hearing of the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees. Rowe took a lot of well-deserved abuse from Sens. Cruz and Josh Hawley for the failure of the Secret Service to protect Donald Trump from a sniper on a "sloped" rooftop in Butler, Pennsylvania earlier this month.

Sen. Mike Lee also went off on Rowe, recalling how the Secret Service let Trump take the stage 17 minutes after receiving reports of a suspicious person with a rangefinder and then didn't remove him from the stage when they learned that would-be assassin Thomas Crooks had a gun with him up on that unmanned roof.

Lee wasn't done yet, though. The Post Millennial reports that Rowe told the committees that July 13 was a "failure of imagination."

Secret Service Acting Director Rowe says what happened on July 13 was a "failure of imagination." pic.twitter.com/EwnLQshOIJ
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) July 30, 2024

Thomas Stevenson reports:

The acting Secret Service director said that a "failure of imagination" was to blame in preventing the attempted assassination of Trump during his testimony in Congress on Tuesday. Ronald L. Rowe said that the United States Secret Service (USSS) did not challenge its "assumptions" about the event.
While answering a question from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-IN), who asked, "There's some people that think it didn't really happen, which of course is completely ridiculous. It did. There are some people that think all kinds of conspiracies went on within the government, which is also false. But could you just tell them what went wrong so they understand?"
Rowe responded saying that it was a "failure of imagination," adding, "a failure to imagine that we actually do live in a very dangerous world where people do actually want to do harm to our protectees."

Predicting a safety threat from an unsecured rooftop 136 yards away from President Trump—by a guy interviewed and flagged as a rangefinder-wielding “suspicious person” 20 minutes earlier—didn’t require a lot of “imagination,” if any.

How much willful blindness can we ignore? https://t.co/GoFyTe6aFU
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) July 30, 2024

No, it was a failure of people, procedures, and systems. The USSS got complacent over the years and this is what happened.

It's criminal level negligence.
— Chris (@Bitter_Grizzly) July 30, 2024

It was criminal negligence at best.
— Roger Arnold I hate demonrats (@rogerbarnold11) July 30, 2024

It was an unimaginable failure.

Which is why so many are imagining it to be on purpose.
— Brendan Muir Team HQ (@BrendanMuirHQ) July 30, 2024

I fail to imagine that he's fit for the job
— Nick 🇺🇲 (@realduskknight) July 30, 2024

I can imagine a lot of things... but a lone sniper plainly visible on an unprotected rooftop unchallenged is not something I would expect from the Secret Service.
— Charles R. Smith🔹 (@softwarnet) July 30, 2024

🧠🕳️ pic.twitter.com/5Vrjf2DpVb
— Juni⭕️r™️ (@itsgottabejr) July 30, 2024

Hope is not a method.
— Marion County Republicans (@marioncogop) July 30, 2024

This is like saying, we didn’t see anything. But, we weren’t looking either.
— Brian LaReau (@BrianLaReau805) July 30, 2024

It’s a total breakdown of the Incident Command System
— @Higgz🇺🇸 (@MattyHiggz) July 30, 2024

The entire leadership must be assumed to be complicit.

Fire them all.
— Michael Goulish (@Mick_Goulish) July 30, 2024

He means the FBI failed to imagine a better plot.
— AdamItAllToHell (@AdamItAllToHell) July 30, 2024

The imagination lacking was coming up with a good story beforehand.
— The Class of 1984 (@DeusMachina7) July 30, 2024

At least they're making the lie slightly believable now

I mean, before they weren't even putting in the effort
— Stephen Schutt (@schuttsm) July 30, 2024

Go easy on Rowe. After all, his agency is hurting.