Donald Trump has a flair for the dramatic, especially in the heat of a political campaign. But the former president faces what U.S. officials say is an “active threat” of assassination from Iran, and he needs to help an overstretched Secret Service protect him from what could be personal and national disaster.
The danger is real and immediate. Trump is heading Saturday to Butler, Pa., for an emotional replay of the rally at which he was nearly killed in July by Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old would-be assassin. It will be great campaign theater, but for a presidential candidate under threat, it’s an unwise and perhaps irresponsible decision.
Trump is promoting his appearance like it’s a wrestling rematch. “I’m going back to Butler because I feel I have an obligation to go back to Butler. We never finished what we were supposed to do,” he said this week in an interview with NewsNation. “I’m fulfilling a promise. I’m fulfilling, really, an obligation.” U.S. officials worry that visiting the site again could attract copycat assassins — in addition to the ongoing Iranian threat.
Trump has a special obligation to protect himself at an explosive time in the Middle East. If something happened, God forbid, in Butler or any other stop on the campaign trail over the next month — and it had any link with the Iranian threat stream — there would be an intense public demand for a decisive U.S. response. That’s how wars........