WATCH: Former acting Homeland Security chief Chad Wolf says Secret Service 'stretched thin'

Chad Wolf, the former acting head of the Department of Homeland Security in the final years of the Trump administration, joined PBS News on the second night of the Republican National Convention.

Co-anchor Geoff Bennett asked Wolf about the questions surrounding Donald Trump's Secret Service detail during the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.

"The American people really want to understand what went wrong here," Wolf said. "The response when you saw his agents dive on him and protect him and then obviously usher him out, great. But that's response, right? A big part of their mission is preventative, and that's the part that failed ... a really epic failure."

Wolf was asked if the Secret Service is stretched too thin and if that helped lead to the failure.

"The service, just like other elements at DHS, operates both from a budget and also operates trying to hire law enforcement officers. And so every federal agency that is trying to hire law enforcement officers has a challenge there. We just see the numbers over the past several years not be as high as they once were, both from a recruitment and retention standpoint, so they have challenges just like anyone else." Wolf said. "And so when you have a very active former president, and you have a big first family that requires a lot of protection for a lot of different principles, you're going to see their resources stretched thin. So absolutely, I think that's part of it."

Newsletters

PBS News podcasts

Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app

Find more from PBS News at

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

X (formerly know as Twitter)