Washington State Republican Party Chair Jim Walsh said the way former President Donald Trump responded to Saturday's assassination attempt secured his re-election.
Walsh, who is also a state representative from Aberdeen, told The Center Square he was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at a Brewers gamer, with other early arriving delegates to the Republican National Convention when he learned of the shooting at Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“One of the staffers texted me: the former president has been shot," Walsh said.
“It wasn’t so much shock, as it was dread," he continued. "We’ve been dreading something like this happening for years, really.”
Walsh blamed the deep political divide in the country for an assassin's bullet almost cutting down a former president.
“I attribute this to the intense vitriolic hatred that people in politics and people in what I call the elite establishment media have toward this man, Donald Trump," he explained. “Some of these groups have said the most hateful things about Trump, that he’s a fascist and a dictator and a threat to democracy, for years."
Walsh lamented that such rhetoric could sway an unstable person to act, adding such talk must stop.
He then pivoted to wondering why the shooter, who shot from a nearby rooftop, wasn't taken about before getting several shots off.
“The video seems to indicate that the counter snipers were hesitant, and I don’t know if that’s because they were told to hesitate or just as individuals had a moment where they weren’t sure what to do," Walsh said. "That’s what has to come out in an official investigation.”
He said it was “by God’s providence Trump wasn’t killed, but he could have been.”
Walsh thinks the assassination attempt will impact the presidential election.
“Donald Trump got re-elected Saturday," Walsh predicted. "Those photos of him with blood on his face and his fist in the air, and the blue sky and the American flag behind him; I mean, that is an iconic picture.”
Walsh said security at the RNC has been increased in the aftermath of Saturday's assassination attempt.
“There are more cadres of police and law enforcement and not from Milwaukee or Wisconsin," he noted. "And not even from neighboring states like Minnesota or Illinois, but there was a group from Florida here, so they are drawing police units from all over the place.”
As to potential security lapses in Saturday's shooting, Walsh said he expects there will be consequences.
"Secret Service knows they will have to do a better job because some of the Secret Service management, it’s gonna fall on them, and that’s probably rightly so," Walsh said. "You do this rationally, and if heads have to roll, you do that after you determine which the right heads are.”
