Trump's golfing has long worried Secret Service
Soon after Donald Trump became president, authorities tried to warn him about the risks posed by golfing at his own courses because of their proximity to public roads.
Secret Service agents came armed with unusual evidence: not shooter profiles or spent bullet casings, but simple photos taken by news crews of him golfing at his private club in Sterling, Va.
They reasoned that if photographers with long-range lenses could get the president in their sights while he golfed, so too could potential gunmen, according to former U.S. officials involved in the discussions who, like most others interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity.
But Trump insisted that his clubs were safe and that he wanted to keep golfing, the former officials said.
These preferences posed problems for his protection that former Trump aides, Secret Service officials and security experts said have only intensified in the years since he left the White House, as his security detail shrank and agents no longer maintained as extensive a perimeter guarding his movements.
A Trump spokesman didn't respond to a request for comment.
The problems became gravely apparent Sunday when a man pushed a semiautomatic rifle through the bushes at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., in what authorities are investigating as a possible effort to assassinate the former president — the second attempt on his life in as many months.
Trump was unharmed.
In a post on social media, he thanked the Secret Service and law enforcement.
“It was certainly an interesting day!” he wrote. “THE JOB DONE WAS ABSOLUTELY OUTSTANDING.”