Here's a quick little history lesson, courtesy of my colleague, Zack Wolf, and his great CNN newsletter, What Matters. This blew my mind when I read it. The US Secret Service did not start protecting presidents full-time until 1901. By that point, three presidents had been assassinated: William McKinley, James Garfield, and of course, Abraham Lincoln. It wasn't until Robert F. Kennedy was killed in 1968 that presidential Kennedy candidates got Secret Service protection. All that to say, it took tragic country-altering events to change the way we protect our highest-profile politicians. But last Sunday, it seems the safety and protection apparatus of a former President and current candidate for office was tested yet again.

All right, this is breaking news.

We're following out of South Florida.

The Trump campaign says shots were fired in the vicinity of the former President at his Dural golf resort Court. Authorities say that the secret service agent fired at the man. The man was later apprehended after help from a witness who saw the person drive away. It is absolutely stunning that just a few weeks after what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, with the attempted assassination And now the FBI says they are investigating what appears to be a second attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

So after another apparent attempt on Trump's life with heated political rhetoric in the spotlight, does law enforcement have a handle on protecting this election? My guest is CNN National Security reporter, Zachary Cohen. We're going to talk about how the Secret Service might adjust its protocols going forward and why online threats may be even trickier to police than physical ones. From CNN, This is One Thing. I'm David Ryan. So, Zack, as you and I sit here on Tuesday morning, what more have we learned about how this all went down on Sunday in Florida?

Yeah, David, we saw the suspect in court for the first time. Yesterday, our team that was there had some interesting color. He was in shackles. We saw the body cam footage get released. Driver, take two steps to your right. That showed the moment he was taken into custody. Driver, walk straight back. But we're learning about of how the Secret Service ended up spotting this guy a couple of holes ahead of Donald Trump while he was playing golf on Sunday. It was really they were trying to sweep a few holes ahead of him and ultimately identified this guy in the woods, all the gun barrel poking out from the tree line. After the agent fired a service weapon in the direction of the rifle, a witness saw a man later identified as Ralph, fleeing the area in the tree line. And so the narrative of how the Secret Service It ultimately seems to have prevented another shooter from getting a shot off at the former president. They made very clear yesterday that this was ultimately a success compared to what happened on July 13th in Butler.

The subject who did not have line of sight to the former president fled the scene. He did not fire or get off any shots at our agent.

This potential shooter did not fire any rounds. In fact, the Secret Service is claiming credit for that. They're saying, because we found him before Trump got to that hole, we were able to potentially stop something terrible from happening again.

Yeah, I want to get into that. But what do we know about the suspect himself?

He seems to be an enigma. His name, Ryan Wesley-Ruth. He seems to be... There's no queer ideology that's been identified. His Internet history, that's the first step investigators take is to try to pour through a suspect's Internet history, and it's all over the place. He voiced support for Donald Trump back in 2016, and then indicated that maybe he regreted his previous political support for the former President. But his political donations range from everybody from Tulsi Gabbard, who's obviously a Trump ally. He also donated to people like Elizabeth Warren, who is a Democrat. So his political contributions don't really tell you a whole lot about his political ideology. But aside from that, the most interesting detail about him is that he seems to be very hyper-focused on more in politics.

Many people CNN spoke with describe Ruth as erratic, manic, even delusional, especially when it came to the war in Ukraine.

He had- Serving most of the time as a keyboard warrior, trying to pump up support for Ukraine.

But the keyboard wasn't enough. Ruth went to the region, arriving wearing a Hawaiian lei. Once in Kyiv, he spent weeks talking to reporters. My initial goal was to come fight. I'm 56, so initially they were like, Well, I have no military experience. So they were like, You're not an ideal candidate. Instead, Ruth set up camp in a main square. Putin is a terrorist, and he needs to be ended. So we need everybody from around the globe to stop what they're doing and come here now.

His whole mission seems to have been to drive support for getting more materials to Ukrainian soldiers, but also convincing other foreigners to come to Ukraine and help support their cause there. He does not appear to have been very successful in that, and even his fundraising efforts were not successful. His GoFundMe page had a goal of $2,500, and he's only raised about $1,800. So he wasn't even really able to successfully do that. But he's an enigma. That's the takeaway so far, based on what we know about it.

Well, I want to go back to what you said about the Secret Service, because it does seem that they are painting this as a success, that they prevented this guy from getting a shot off at the former president. They said he didn't even have a line of sight. But obviously, it's concerning that he was there in the first place just two months after what happened in Butler, and he was within a few football fields of the former president. How should we look at how the Secret Service responded here?

Again, it is all in context of what happened on July 13th in Butler, right? It cuts both ways, the success and the claim of success, the no line of sight. But the At the same time, look, the issue about the perimeter, the fact that this individual was not only able to get that close to the former President, but according to his cell phone data, and that was something revealed yesterday, he was apparently in the tree line or in the area for in terms of 12 hours. What?

He was nearby for 12 hours?

According to his cell phone data, he was in the vicinity for 12 hours, which gets to the other big question, which is how did he know Donald Trump was going to even be at the golf course that day? That's Some of the investigators have still not put their finger on, I think. But also, why was he allowed to remain in that area for half a day, it seems like.

Is there a difference between the protection that a current president gets and a former president gets? Because I've heard that being raised That's the talking point here.

Absolutely. That's been true throughout history. A sitting president gets a unique level of security, but it's not just the secret service. The secret service gets support from a vast array of government agencies. Dod provides the bulletproof glass, for example, that is put around a sitting president when they give a speech at a large event. A former president or a former president turned candidate for president does not normally get that protective resource because it's not something the Secret Service can just deploy on their own. Now, in the case of Trump, post July 13th and post the shooting at Butler, Donald Trump was given additional resources, including the bulletproof glass. So they have tried to ramp up the security around Trump, but that also fuels the questions.

I was going to say, how much higher can they go if they already had an event where the President was actually shot?

That's a question even Democrats are asking. Jared Moskowit, a congressman Democrat, a member of that Congressional Task Force investigating now both the assassination attempts. He was on CNN just yesterday saying, Look, I don't know. If this is the highest level of security that Donald Trump can receive, they need to create a new level of security. The secret service needs to start telling us whether or not they can actually keep somebody safe in these circumstances unless they're shutting down whole areas. And if that's what we have to do, then that's what we have to do. He's a former President running for re-election again. We have to be able to keep him safe. This is getting embarrassing for the agency, and people in Congress are bewildered why we're in this situation now for a second time. Because the threat environment around Donald Trump right now is somewhat unique for a presidential candidate. He's not just a target of two assassination attempts from seemingly domestic actors, but he's also a known target of a foreign Iranian assassination plot, too. And that's an active, ongoing threat that the intelligence community is updating the campaign on as recently as about a week ago.

The Secret Services Protective The methodologies work, and they are sound, and we saw that yesterday. But the way we are positioned right now in this dynamic threat environment, it has given me guidance to say, You know what? We need to look at what our protective methodology is. We need to get out of a reactive model and get to a readiness model.

At the end of the day, shifting away from being reactive is a much bigger and wholesale change that has to be implemented in former and current secret service officials that I've talked to. Basically, that boils down to having to strip it down to the bolts, right? Strip it down to the secret services entire ideology and the way they go about doing things on a day-to-day basis and reevaluating their entire program.

It's not something that's going to be done in the next 50 days, basically, till election day.

It certainly does not seem that way, no. But it is fair, I think, for the acting director to point out that this incident on Sunday, there were at least signs of the system working.

Look, the Secret Service operates under a paradox of zero fail mission, but also that we have done more with less for decades. And this goes back many, many, many, many decades. What I can tell you is that we have immediate needs right now, and we have great support, not only from President Biden. And you saw his public statement today where he said that he's going to direct his staff to make sure that the Secret Service has the resources it needs.

But the fact that the potential shooter was in the vicinity for about 12 hours, and the issue about sweeping a perimeter or not extending the perimeter, those are very real problems that the Secret Service has to look closely at and look at it not just in the context of Donald Trump, but political candidates and the threat environment at large.

Even beyond Donald Trump, I'm thinking of Kamala Harris and her campaign. I'm thinking of down-ballet candidates and election workers that have to actually administer this election, and then voters. How is law enforcement thinking more broadly about protecting this election as we get closer to election day?

In the case of Kamala Harris, and actually this does relate to Donald Trump, former Secret Service officials that I've talked to have likened the current security that Donald Trump has afforded to what a vice president gets. So he and Kamala Harris seem to have similar levels of protection as of now and even before Sunday's incident. But to your point, down ballot candidates, senators, members of Congress, people that are running for office, and even people at the local level who are continuing to face threats everywhere, not just in battleground states. But I don't think the Secret Service or law enforcement, writ large, has come up with a good answer for that. And that's going to be something that is going to be continued to be asked. In Maricopa County, Arizona, which is going to be the epicenter of election controversy because it has been historically They've dealt with threats to election workers there. Now, unfortunately, this building has turned into a bit of a fortress, but that's the reality of elections in 2024. They're fortifying their election buildings. They're routinely training their election workers on how to report and deal with threats, and they're providing additional security to election workers who have been targeted in the past.

We want to know that our plan is providing a safe environment, but we don't want to project that we're possibly intimidating the election process by having a large amount of uniform resources for patrol cars, and things like that. But again, that doesn't seem to slow down the pace of these threats. And there's a range of different ideologies and people who would want to threaten election workers. It's more about getting at the problem from a higher level than on an individual basis.

When you talk about the threat picture, how does social media factor in? Because Because you have a guy like Elon Musk who owns his own social media platform, jumping on X and questioning why there have been no attempts to assassinate President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. He claimed he was joking and eventually deleted the post, but a lot of people did not find it funny. Of course, the affirmation Secret Service does have a history of following up with people about those posts. How does law enforcement tackle that side of things?

It seems like social media presents probably one of the preeminent challenges for law enforcement on a variety of fronts, in part because of what you just mentioned. They're forced to be reactive. They're forced to react to posts, sometimes from an anonymous person, sometimes from a bot, sometimes from an elected official. And anything that could be deemed threatening, they have to follow up on. That takes resources, that takes time, and that takes time away from being proactive and trying to get at the problem from a bigger picture level. But social media is That's also part of the issue because, as you said, X, for example, is very unregulated. Members of Congress on both sides have voiced concerns and continue to voice concerns about the fact that Twitter, in particular, is cultivating this discussion that is really susceptible to influence campaigns, both foreign and domestic. You see warnings coming from the intelligence community about actors ranging from Russia to China to Iran, really weaponizing social media in order to push narratives that they and influence the American public's perspective, both on the 2024 presidential election, but also on other issues that they deemed to either be divisive or that help further their agenda as well.

This was a second attempt in your life in under two months. What do you make of that? Well, there's a lot of rhetoric going on.

A lot of people think that the Democrats, when they talk about threat to democracy and all of this, and it seems that both of these people were radical lefts Of course, you have political candidates.

Donald Trump himself has identified social media as one of his core messaging vehicles, and he uses that to express himself directly to, I guess, what he believes to be his base.

He used it just the other day to basically blame Kamala Harris and the left for this latest apparent assassination attempt.

Absolutely. There's no mechanism to counterbalance that except for, I guess, other posters who point out that there is evidence of that. But at the same time, to go back to Elon Musk, Elon Musk does control the way Twitter's algorithm works and controls what people see and also has millions of followers himself, where he can directly push his point of view and raise various unfounded claims himself, which we've seen him do on numerous occasions, including things that the intelligence community has identified as narratives that are being pushed by foreign adversaries, including Russia. There is this whole ecosystem, this whole conversation that's happening on social media that does not appear to be tethered to reality in a lot of instances. It's being motivated and fueled by one of the leaders of the social media industry. Just to point out, too, tomorrow there's a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee where a bunch of leaders of these social media companies will be invited to testify, and X was among the companies invited. They will not be sending a representative to testify as part of that.

A lot of places that law enforcement needs to keep their eye on, and it does not seem they're getting a ton of help from social media platforms like X at the moment. Zack, thank you.

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

One Thing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Paolo Ortiz and me, David Reind. Our senior producers are Felicia Patinkin and Fez Jamil. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan Dizula is our technical director, and Steve Ligtai is the executive producer of CNN Audio. We get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasari, Robert Mather's, John Dianora, Lanie Steinhart, Jamie Sandrace, Nicole Pessereau, and Lisa Namarau. Special thanks to Wendy Brundage and Katie Hinman. Just a reminder, we're always looking for ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts. It helps other people discover the show, and it helps us know how you're feeling about it. We love to hear from you guys. We'll be back on Sunday. I'll talk to you then.