Erik Prince identifies for 'Blaze News Tonight' the first casualty of the second assassination attempt

Erik Prince spoke to "Blaze News Tonight" on Monday about the latest attempt on President Donald Trump's life, the ostensible incompetence of certain federal agencies, possible security considerations moving forward, and what the former president ultimately lost on Sunday.

Paradise lost

Prince, a former U.S. Navy SEAL officer and founder of the private military company Blackwater, highlighted something otherwise glossed over in other analyses of the second failed assassination attempt: namely that Trump, vilified by the media and political establishment, has effectively lost his last refuge.

"The thing that really disgusted me on top of everything else is golfing was a happy place for Donald Trump," said Prince. "He loved to do it, he's good at it, and they took that away from him."

Prince noted that now, "every time he's on a golf course and he looks at a beautiful tree line, [Trump] thinks: 'Yeah, that's a beautiful tree line, but that's also where somebody can be hiding, waiting to shoot me.' I feel bad for the guy."

Federal failures and solutions

According to Prince, Trump not only lost his happy place but came close to losing his life once again "because nothing has changed."

While Kimberly Cheatle resigned as director of the U.S. Secret Service and a handful of agents supposedly were placed on leave, the private security expert suggested that the institutional rot remains.

"Nobody's been fired from the Secret Service," continued Prince. "There hasn't been a housecleaning of the head shed or of the ranks."

'You want hunters of men — people that think offensively.'

"You know the definition of insanity is to do the same thing again and again and expect a different result," added Prince.

Blaze News investigative reporter Steve Baker pressed Prince on whether Trump needs to "either supplement or replace" his Secret Service protection before the election.

Prince indicated that it would be prudent to reinforce Trump's security detail with some of the Pentagon's more reliable operators.

The Blackwater founder indicated there is "a lot of private-sector capability that's available" but that meshing those capabilities with a federal organization such as the USSS would prove very difficult.

"The problem with the Secret Service is there's 10 or 15 percent are fantastic. Olympic-level performance. Great. Another 20 or 30 percent are just bureaucrats showing up. There's another 50 percent that are just really useless and malign," continued Prince. "It wouldn't be hard to top-grade a lot. I just don't know how deep their bench is."

While Prince indicated Trump could supplement his security detail with elements from the private sector, it would be better to source operators from "Joint Special Operations Command, which houses SEAL Team Six and Delta."

"Take some operators from there because you want people that are predators. You want hunters of men — people that think offensively; who think, 'How am I going to kill Donald J. Trump?' And you say, 'This is the 20 ways we're going to do it.' And you plug every one of those 20 ways to make sure he is safe," said Prince.

By having offensive rather than reactive thinkers on the job, Prince indicated that Trump would be more secure against the likes of suspects like Routh and also better positioned to withstand attacks by more competent killers such as ISIS terrorists, Hezbollah militants, or Latin American gangs.

Localizing the investigation

Prince emphasized that the successful capture of alleged would-be assailant Ryan Routh was entirely the doing of local law enforcement and that FBI cannot be relied upon to conduct a proper investigation into what happened.

"The real heroes of yesterday are the sheriffs because they actually coordinated with each other across county lines," said Prince. "The feds had nothing to do with capturing that guy."

Officers from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and Martin County Sheriff's Office tracked the suspect down and arrested him on I-95, roughly 40 miles away from the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he apparently evaded the USSS.

"I don't have any confidence in the FBI Miami field office to do this investigation," said Prince, noting that Jeffrey Veltri, the special agent in charge "had to scrub, had deleted his social media history because he was so wildly anti-Trump."

A whistleblower told the House Judiciary Committee last year that the FBI compelled Veltri to delete his anti-Trump posts before he took over the Miami field office, reported the Washington Times.

According to the whistleblower's disclosure obtained by the Times, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Director Paul Abbate, and Executive Assistant Director Jennifer Moore "wanted to ensure that Veltri appeared non-political, Veltri was ordered to remove all of his Facebook and social media posts that were anti-Trump."

The bureau downplayed allegations of political bias, particularly with regard to Veltri's selection for a position that oversees Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.

'That opens the intellectual can of worms for every left-wing screwball.'

"This is the same FBI office that did the bogus raid on Mar-a-Lago on this documents case," Prince told "Blaze News Tonight." "So if you think he's going to do an honest job at digging into leftist conspiracy to kill President Trump, no way."

Prince underscored the need for Florida to conduct its own investigation — which Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) confirmed Sunday is happening.

The left's culpability

Compounding the problem of security issues for Trump is the president's continued demonization by the left.

"When the left makes, creates the intellectual space and the apocryphal claims that Donald Trump is Hitler and that he must be eliminated, he must be stopped at all costs, that he's a threat to democracy — that opens the intellectual can of worms for every left-wing screwball saying 'I'm going to be the savior of the left. I'm going to kill Donald Trump.' And that's exactly what this guy was doing," said Prince.

Ryan Routh, the suspected would-be assassin, is a convicted felon, an ActBlue donor, and a Ukraine war obsessive.

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) provided a succinct biography of the suspected would-be assassin in a Tuesday Blaze News op-ed:

Here is what we know so far: Kamala Harris has said that "democracy is on the line" in her race against President Trump. The gunman agreed and used the exact same phrase. He had a Biden-Harris bumper sticker on his truck. He was obsessed with Ukraine’s "fight for democracy" and absorbed many unhinged views about the Russia-Ukraine war. His name is Ryan Routh, and he donated 19 times to Democratic Party causes and zero to Republican ones.

Blaze News previously reported that Routh has repeatedly echoed Democratic talking points, including "DEMOCRACY is on the ballot" and that the Jan. 6 riot was a "catastrophe ... perpetrated by Donald Trump and his undemocratic posse."

In his self-published 2023 book "Ukraine's Unwinnable War," Routh invited Iranians to assassinate Trump, stating, "No one here in the US seems to have the balls to put natural selection to work or even unnatural selection."

Prince said Routh "was supercharged by the left's wild rhetoric" and "trophy hunting."

"He was there to be the one — the killer of Donald Trump," added Prince.

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